Warbirds [DVD]

Wow, look at that cover. It brings to mind the late great "Q the Winged Serpant", or the ridiculous but delightfully cheesy "The Giant Claw" - among others. They're favorites of mine, so how could this fail to deliver?

How indeed.

I'm not quite sure how I managed to get through the entire thing, but I did. This film is simply awful, and I'm talking about in every regard. From the crass (and very poor) CGI work of the planes (don't worry folks, no actual planes were hurt during the making of this film, in fact there isn't a single real plane in the whole thing - not even a mock up!) to the "acting" that was a notch WORSE than the CGI work.

The acting and poor FX is right at the start of the movie, so if you get to see this you'll know what you're in for during the opening ten minutes. If you have any common sense you'll bail at that point.

Drama? None. Gore? None. Action?.... well, if you like cartoons (the CGI is a very sad effort with no realism at all)....

All in all, the idea promises a lot, but the film delivers nothing. It's not even "so bad it's good", it's just bad.

I won't bore you with details of the "plot", because it's as plastic and transparent as the rest of this nonsense. Basically it's the Second World War - there is a secret American mission in the Pacific campaign (you should be able to guess what it is - since there's a big lump of metal in the cargo hold ready to be dropped........) when the plane crashes on a remote atoll. Japanese soldiers have been on the island, and they've dug up some eggs - eggs which have started to hatch! The Japanese are all but dead, and now the Americans must try to survive. The end.

Sometimes bullets kill the birds, sometimes not. Sometimes you want to reach for the remote. Actually, you want to do that quite a bit. I watched it all so you wouldn't have to. --LOL--

Avoid.

About 40 years ago Hammer Films issued a teaser poster entitled 'Zeppelin Vs Pterodactyls' showing a Zeppelin being attacked by prehistoric flying reptiles... The synopsis was something like 'In the last weeks of WW1 a Zeppelin on a bombing mission over London is swept off course by a violent storm and ends up flying over a Lost World where it is attacked by Pterodactyls'.
Fast forward to 2008 and this Sci-Fi Channel 'cheapie' bears some resemblence to the original Hammer concept... 'In the last days of WW2 a B-29 Bomber on a secret mission over the Pacific is blown off course by a violent storm and ends up flying over a Lost World where it is attacked by Pteranodons!' See the similarities???
I wonder if this was just a coincidence or that one or more of the writers had seen this old Hammer poster and had written their own take on the subject?

Whatever the case I must admit I bought a secondhand copy of this DVD witrh some trepidation... and I sat down to watch it with very low expectations indeed... But believe me by the end of the 90 or so minutes I realised that for the most part I had really enjoyed this piece of nonsense and to be fair its not as bad as the critics say! Its by no means perfect, but it does have its plus points...

As far as the plot goes gutsy 40's gal Maxine West and her Women's Air Service Corps crew are delivering a new B-29 Superfortress bomber to a frontline squadron. On arrival she receives new orders and must fly the B-29 with a 'special cargo' and passengers to a secret location in the Pacific. By this time I had already guessed what that 'cargo' was... but I won't spoil the surprise...

Caught in a violent storm they are forced to make an emergency landing on a remote island (which just happens to have facilities to land a B-29!) where Japanese Engineers three months earlier accidentaly unleased a slumbering Prehistoric terror to the Island in the form of vicious Pteranodons which apart from a few soldiers, have wiped out the whole command!

The Americans overpower the surviving Japanese and realise that they must get off this island quickly before they are all slaughtered by the Pteranodons and their valuable 'cargo' is lost forever...

Now I love cheesy 'B' pictures... Monster and Horror movies in particular and 'Warbirds' never tries to be anything else... The CGI isn't perfect, but I think it actually fitted well into the overall look and feel of the movie as it played very much like a graphic novel or a comic book... in fact there are references to comic books and I feel that this was a deliberate intention on behalf of the film's makers... The fact that it runs like a comic book gives it that 'pulp' 1930's-40's feel and again that benefited the story...

Some parts were corny and absurd, but I didn't feel I wanted at any point to fast forward or turn off (not like I did watching 'Troll Hunter') and there was enough action (yes ACTION) to keep me hooked until the rather obvious climax... Yet there were things that the makers of this film could have easily been tempted to do but didn't, and thank God they didn't because it added to my enjoyment...

Maxine West (played by Jamie Mann) is a tough no-nonsense type of gal who 'wants to die happy in Clark Gable's bed' and is determined to bring her crew home... Strapping on a .45 she blazes through the prehistoric hell and never once smudges her lipstick! What a girl! Actually she and her co-pilot Betsy, make a great 'comic book' team and a period sequel with these two characters fighting more cheesy monsters would be very welcome! :-)

This movie is by no means perfect, but its enough if viewed in the right way with tongue firmly in cheek, to become a guilty pleasure... but even so its a lot of fun and a perfect way to kill 90 minutes... Theres even a reference to King Kong which I kind of liked...

Not a bad film and worth seeing, good comic book pulp fun with reasonable monsters and a reasonable cast... Check it out... you might be surprised!

A 'B' Class movie. The plot was a bit stretched to embrace an impossible idea. A bit of fun nonetheless.