On the Opposite End of the Hitchcock Scale...

...there's Birdemic.

Last week I settled down with a bunch of friends to watch Birdemic, a film legendary for it's... well, horrifyingly low quality. And as far as bad movies go, I can't say that I've ever seen worse. Birdemic has got some of the worst production values I have ever seen. Ever.

I mean, the CG birds look like they came from After Dark.

I'm pretty sure you can still see the orange tips on the guns people shoot:

Overall, the film has all the crisp video clarity of a low-budget porno... or, um, so I hear.

Speaking of "porn" (please don't read too much into that, Mom), I don't think I've ever laughed harder than I did during the "love scene" in Birdemic. We see our two lovebirds shacked up in some third-class hotel. As they snuggle down for the night, the camera pans tastefully down to their feet, where we see...

...that our lovely leading lady has been running around in the parking lot outside.

Oh, and then there's the music, which mostly sounds like someone made MIDI files of the bass track of several popular songs - like John Lennon's "Imagine," for example.

Really, we could talk about all the terrible aspects of Birdemic and be here all day. Seriously, if you took all this movie's faults and laid them out flat, to look at it all would somehow take longer than it takes to actually WATCH the movie.

Which, by the way, you should never do.

This may sound strange coming from someone who (almost) unironically called Shark Night 3D the best movie of 2011, but something about the way Birdemic was put together REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the outright theft of classic music. Maybe it was the less-than-YouTube camerawork. Maybe it was the complete insanity of the presumption that somehow global warming causes birds to explode acid.

Actually, I can sum it all up to one word: effort.

See, even when a movie (like Shark Night 3D) KNOWS it's going to be bad, the production staff can still turn the movie into an enjoyable experience. Bad writing can be spiced up with a tongue-in-cheek tone. Bad effects can be played up for their cheesiness. Movie makers can give the audience SOME sign that they're in on the joke.

That's what I loved about Shark Night 3D. Everything about the movie - from the camerawork to the performances to the plot itself (I STILL go ga-ga for the concept of "shark snuff films") - indicated that the minds behind the film were trying to make an enjoyable movie experience, if not a particularly QUALITY one. Birdemic, on the other hand, takes itself ENTIRELY too seriously without ANY of the skills it would take to back it up.

And, yes, I mean skills. Surprisingly, as much fun as I had watching Birdemic, I was ultimately kind of offended that this movie, which gave no indication that it was actually TRYING, achieved some sort of cult status. The actors phoned in every line, the plot was poorly thought out and formulaic, and the camerawork was so amateurish it actually sent my filmmaking friend into spasms of physical pain.

If I got the impression that Birdemic was some kind of labor of love, I think I'd be a bit more generous in my evaluation. Of course, if Birdemic HAD been a labor of love, there is NO WAY its mother would let it come outside dressed like it is.