EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on December 23, 2021, but now Vinegar Syndrome has a new release that’s been newly scanned & restored in 2K from its 35mm interpositive, complete with a commentary track with film historians Amanda Reyes and Sam Pancake, “Don’t Remake Hitchcock Movies” – an extensive making-of documentary featuring interviews with its cast and crew, “The Silence of the Birds” – an interview with composer Ron Ramin, “The Locations of Birds II” – a locations featurette with production assistant Craig Edwards, a still gallery and reversible cover artwork.

Look, I don’t write these articles to beat up on movies, but this is like shooting dead pigeons in a barrel.

Some facts:

Rather than playing Melanie from Hitchcock’s The Birds, Tippi Hedrin plays Helen, the owner of a local store that knows all about the birds and remembers the events of the original. Why is she a different character? Is she there under witness protection? Did Hedrin only do this movie to get a check for her animal charity? Was this a worse experience than Roar?

This is not the first — or the last — sequel that Rick Rosenthal would make, what with being part of the best Halloween sequel and the worst. He made sure his name was not on this movie, as Alan Smithee is credited.

Ken and Jim Wheat, who wrote this movie, made a bunch of other sequels, like Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, The Fly II, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, It Came from Outer Space II and The Stepford Husbands. They’re probably better known for The Silent Scream and Pitch Black.

Why would this movie be made? Was Showtime obsessed with sequels? Is it worth sticking around for the last ten minutes where seagulls go nuts and most of the cast gets killed? Would Hitchcock hate this movie? Did he once give Melanie Griffith a doll of her mother inside a coffin? Am I obsessed by movies that most people know better than to even try to watch?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and forever.

PS: Craig Edwards worked on this movie and shared this amazing article about his time on the set.

Directed by Walter Matthau’s son Charles and written by a pre-90210, Melrose Place and Sex In the City Darren Star, Doin’ Time On Planet Earth is about Ryan Richmond (Nicholas Strouse), who lives with his family in the Holiday Inn with a spinning restaurant on top that they own in Arizona.

Looking for a date for his brother’s wedding takes him to a computer dating service where he discovers that he’s an alien living on Earth, a fact confirmed by Charles and Edna Pinsky (Adam West and Candice Azzara, wearing a beehive hairdo that’s also a bird cage), who go even further to proclaim Ryan as the alien prince destined to lead his people home.

Roddy McDowell plays a preacher, Paula Irvine (Liz from Phantasm 2) shows up and Hugh O’Brien (one of the dads from Twins), Maureen Stapleton and Dominick Brascia (Evil Laugh, Friday the 13th: Part V, the director of Hard Rock Nightmare) appear.

It’s a strange coming of age science fiction mix that never really seems to go anywhere, but if you can say anything about Cannon, they at least allowed filmmakers to do something even if it didn’t always work out.

I despise the narrative that Cannon’s films with Bronson and J. Lee Thompson are poor. Having already worked together on St. Ives, The White Buffalo and Caboblanco, they would also make 10 to Midnight, The Evil That Men Do, Murphy’s Law, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and this film at Cannon. And you know, while this is not the best movie they made together, it is in no way a bad movie (that said, Thompson got sick during the making of this movie and it was finished by second unit director Robert C. Ortwin Jr. ).

The film starts with Orville Beecham’s (Charles Dierkop) three wives and children being murdered by masked men. Chief of police Barney Doyle (Daniel Benzali) arrives with reporter Garret Smith (Charles Bronson) to the scene of the crime. Smith soon discovers that Beecham is the son of a Warren Jeffs-like Mormon preacher and the murders have something to do with a family feud over a doctrinal dispute. As that sect supports blood atonement for perceived crimes, Smith decides to push his investigation and soon learns that someone even more brutal is behind the crime: The Colorado Water Company.

The red trucks that the water company uses are actually Lincoln Hawk’s trucks from Over the Top painted red with signs covering the Hawk Hauling logo on the side doors.

Wait — is this Bronson’s Chinatown?

Written by Paul Jarrico, who endured the blacklist in Europe, where he wrote La Balada de Johnny Ringo, and based on the book The Avenging Angel by Rex Burns, this might not be the Bronson film you expect — he’s a reporter who doesn’t carry a gun instead of a killing machine — this was an attempt from Bronson to do something different after Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. He told Newsday, “I prefer to play different characters in films. And I wouldn’t want to be in a weekly TV series. I imagine a lot of series stars fall asleep playing the same guy every week. Some of them relax when they know their show is signed for a whole season. I admire Tom Selleck; he keeps bringing new things to his series.”

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about this film, click here.

Directed by William Tannen and written by Dennis Shryack (The Car, Cannon’s Fifty/Fifty, Murder by Phone) and Michael Blodgett (Lance Rocke from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; he also wrote the novel that this is based on), this Cannon film stars Chuck Norris as Danny O’Brien, a cop who put away a serial killer known as Simon “The Terror” Moon (Jack O’Halloran, who beat up Superman a few times) three years ago. Since then, he’s had a series of dreams about the murderer and is in a relationship with his therapist Kay (Brynn Thayer). Actually, they’re now married and about to have a child, which would make this the worst time for Moon to break out.

What could make this movie better? What if Steve James played Chuck’s partner Robinson? They did it. And it’s great, because the world needs more Steve James.

Chuck just wants to be with his new wife but the mayor of Los Angeles (Ron O’Neal) wants him on the case. He also wants him to admit that Moon is dead, but we all know that Chuck doesn’t listen to authority.

Somewhat similar to Silent Rage, this has Norris against not just a near-unstoppable slasher, but also his doubts as to whether or not he can live up to “The Hero” name that the press has given him.

Chuck would follow this up with another film for Cannon, one where he’s back in a familiar role — Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Rusty Lemorande and Albert Pyun, this is a sequel — of sorts — to Cannon’s Alien from L.A., this film suffered as many late Cannon films did due to lowered budgets*. In fact, the pre-production work and storyboards were wasted as the final film bears little resemblance to the script. Lemorande — the producer of Yentl and Captain EO — originally started as the director and stopped when the film was about halfway completed. He claims that he only made eight minutes of this movie.

Actually, he posted a note on IMDB: “I’m the named director of the film. Only the approximately first 8 minutes of the film were written or directed by me. The remainder of the film is actually the sequel to Alien In LA which was tacked on and renamed Journey to the Center of the Earth in order to fulfill contractual commitments by the production company to foreign distributors. The remainder of the footage I shot (my film) has never been seen by the public (and few others) due to the lack of funds at the time to shoot and insert the many special effects shots required. The storyline of my version/script is entirely different from that in the above-titled film (the released version).”

Two years after the filming stopped, Pyun came on and this became a sequel, but he wasn’t happy with this movie either and doesn’t have his name on many of the re-releases.

Kathy Ireland plays Wanda Saknussemm, is back but the truth is, the footage in this comes from a canceled sequel to Alien from L.A. That may explain why there’s a whole different story with Crystina (Nicola Cowper) being in charge of rock star Billy Foul’s (Jeremy Crutchley) dog and some young kids taking the dog’s basket into a cave to discover a different world, which ends up being Atlantis using the sets from the first movie over again.

Somehow, Pyun made this movie with zero budget and somehow turned out something. I’m not saying that it’s good, but it is something. I wonder how Pyun got Emo Philips to even be in this.

*The budget is so low that George S. Clinton’s music from Avenging Force and American Ninja 2 gets used as the soundtrack.

Directed by Eugene Marner (who also directed Cannon’s Beauty and the Beast) with a screenplay by his wife Carole Lucia Satrina (who wrote three episodes of Tales from the Darkside, as well as Cannon’s Beauty and the Beast and Red Riding Hood), this Cannon Movie Tales has quite a star in its cast: Christopher Walken as Puss, the cat who can change into a man when he wears a special pair of boots. As for his master Corin, he’s played by Jason Connery, the son of Sean.

Corin was the son of a poor man who gave him his cat — Puss — in his will and when the cat becomes a man he makes it seem like Corin is a very rich man. That fake wealth gets him introduced to Princess Vera (Carmela Marner, the director’s and writer’s daughter), who he falls in love with and there’s also an ogre who can turn himself into a lion, a tiger and a bear. So that may be frightening to kids, but despite Golan and Globus making this to play in their British theater chain for matinees, I’m not sure how many kids wanted to watch this.

Then again, seeing Walken as a singing and dancing cat is definitely worth your time.

You can watch this on Tubi.