Tippi Hedren is roped in for a few scenes as a link to The Birds (1963) and apart from that, the highlight of the cast seems to be James Naughton, playing a budding photographer (who'd rather photographically document what's going on with the invasion of the birds than live)! He's the chappie who was in some of those Planets of the Apes TV spin-offs in the 70s - oh and Ally McBeal's dad later on! Brad Johnson plays the lead - again, pretty badly, and the kids aren't much better, adding to the real feel of a made-for-TV outing. Their family dog does a good turn!
Anyway, the story is about a family of four who go to stay in a house (detached, middle of nowhere, by the beach) so that he can write a book (or something) for the summer. His wife gets a temporary job with the aforementioned budding photographer (who also instantly has the hots for her) and yes, much like the story of Hitchcock's The Birds and Birdemic, a load of birds start terrorising everyone for no apparent reason on Amity, er, Gull Island! The quality is pitched somewhere between those two other films, but much further towards the latter than the masterwork!
Most of the camerawork is gulls in flight at close quarters, flapping around madly, so few long-shots like we saw, laughably, in Birdemic! Most of the 'special effects' are centred around people having their eyes pecked out. There's no suspense or tension, start to finish. It's short and sweet and I guess credit should be given for effort - someone having a go - but it does feel like it might have worked better as some sort of comedy-thriller/horror than to take itself seriously, as it seems to do.
Anyway, worth a look for fans of Hitchcock's film and Daphne Du Maurier's story, even if to just see how not to do it!
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