Produced for cable TV, this feeble follow-up to the classic Hitchcock thriller transfers the avian carnage from Bodega Bay to the New England fishing town of Land's End, where a young couple and their two daughters are besieged by squadrons of malicious gulls and their assorted winged cousins. Despite some opening scenes suggesting an actual motivation for the bird attacks -- something Hitchcock left eerily ambiguous -- there is little variation on the formula, which overstays its welcome long before the lackluster climax (which owes more to
The Killer Shrews than to
The Birds); the pointless proceedings are further bogged down by a dreary adultery subplot. Even the presence of
Tippi Hedren fails to provide even a slightly clever nod to the original, as she is wasted in a minor role as the proprietor of a local diner who has her own theories about the cause of the bird attacks. Direction was credited to standard DGA pseudonym
Alan Smithee when
Rick Rosenthal withdrew his name from the final cut. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide