Part of what has allowed Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds to live on as one of his most enduring masterpieces was its unapologetic, ambiguous ending. So why spoil that lingering note of ominousness with a sequel? Especially one made for basic cable? Money, one guesses, and out of greed hatches The Birds II: Land’s End. Despite the subtitle, it’s not based on the clothing catalog, although it is as shallow and disposable.
Dim bulb Ted (Brad Johnson, Flight of the Intruder) and dim babe May (Chelsea Field, The Last Boy Scout) transport their two tots to an island shore town for the summer. Hoping for a season of R&R, the family instead ends up being dive-bombed by stark-raving-mad seagulls. The process is so routine that no suspense is to be found, but the telefilm is not without its cheap pleasures, fleeting they may be.
It’s also not without a multitude of problems, leading one to wonder things like:
• Why is ’63 Birds star Tippi Hedren here if she’s not playing her Melanie Daniels character?
• How did the shot with the boom mike escape the editor’s notice?
• Why did director Rick Rosenthal (Halloween II) take the Alan Smithee credit for this, but not for Russkies?
At least the little girls get to discover a washed-up corpse with its eyes pecked out, and their dog fails to survive an onslaught by owls. But what a cop-out ending: The birds simply fly away. Hey, I may have sat through all 87 minutes of this, but I’m not that stupid. —Rod Lott