Zombie 5 - Killing Birds Review

Written by: Steve Lewis   

Not a terrible worthless piece of garbage but close to that calibur.  It's predecessors, no matter how bad they were, still made the Zombie films highly eye catching and attention attaining.

A Vietnam vet returns home to find his wife in bed with another man.  After he kills them both, he then slaughters his parent's who just happen to be stopping by to visit.  About twenty years later, a group of researchers venture to the same home to study the mating habits of a rare species.  The dead starts to rise and people start ending up as corpses.

Trash.  Basically the world to describe the film.  The first half of the movie is drawn out so much that I almost conked out.  We don't even see the first zombie until 55 minutes into the film.  Between the Vietnam vet killing his family and the first zombie sighting, it's quite uninteresting.  The story becomes confusing from the very start.  From why the vet kills his parents and spares his little boy to why the dead start to rise.  We never get an explanation to why they do or how they fit into the film.  Even the back of the DVD cover makes me laught because of this, "Soon, the dead rise and a vengeful winged terror swoops down upon the living!"  Oh, and the birds really have no meaning.  There is one bird attack and it's at the beginning with a good eye ball rip out.

I noticed some foreshadowing of deaths among the research group.  One example is when Steve, lead character, and Ann, the reporter, visit the blind man for some information about the species they were going to study.  I noticed when they were leaving the blind man's house and walked outside, everyone else in that group was sitting down.  Steve and Ann were the only two standing as if they were the only two alive.  Of course, I was right and they became the only two left in the film.  Another blatant scheme of forshadowing was with Rob, the computer nerd.  When we first see Rob and Brian trying to start up the generator, there is a scene that shows Rob's neck compass dangling near the gears of the generator.  To anyone who doesn't get it, the gears are probably going to take part in the downfall of Rob in which they do as he ends up getting mauled by them later on.

The death scenes kept my thirst for blood at a quinch.  I liked them.  I thought they were brutal and sufficient.  I didn't like the prosthetics used for slicing the through.  The came off as fake as I ever seen them.  One thing I pondered about is how the zombies always knew how to break through certain part in the wall to grab a person.  They must have had x-ray vision or something.  These all seeing dead heads would bust through a wall perfectly to where someone would be standing.  They also weren't your Romero type of zombie.  They didn't eat human flesh.  They were what I like to call them "muscle zombies."  Apparently, they were strong and could put up a hard struggle with the living.  The zombie makup was quite bland and nunnoticable.  They are just dark figures from within shadows of light.

I was surprised to see Robert Vaughn, Dr. Brown, in this film, but I guess his run with low class B movies runs strong.  But I thought his performance was well respected with a couple of classic lines, "I meant to frighten you and I liked it."  The other actors were young and inexperienced unlike Vaughn who has a long line of blood ties to acting within the family going back to the 19th century. 

The score was the sterotypical sound of any of one these zombie films.  It intensified through the movie from happy go luck melodies to progressive intense beats.  The dialogue audio was horrendous.  The score would become louder than the audio.  At some points, I could hardly understand what the actors were trying to say.  Also, at some points the pitch in the dialogue became so high that it would static.  Annoying and irritating it was to my ears.

The DVD is not bad but it's not that good.  The transfer is incorrectly framed but it says anamorphic widescreen on the front so don't be fooled.  The extras contain an interview with Robert Vaughn and some still pictures.  The interview deals with about a minute of the Zombie 5 and the rest of it deals with his other films which I didn't really care to see because it didn't relate to the film.   The still pictures were nothing special, it's basically what you see in the film.  The DVD art is stylish and fits nicely with the other zombie film covers.

I give the film a score of 2 out of 10. I give the DVD a score of 3 out of 10.