The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds

I saw this film at the Drive-In, I believe it was The Arrow, when I was 11. The producers invited everyone who showed up free pizza at the end of the film. Both of my parents were in the film. I remember my Dad telling me that they lost a reel of the film when they were shooting in the Everglades which is why the story may not seem to flow very well. They didn't have the budget to re-shoot what they lost.

When I watch a super-low budget, amateur movie like "The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds," I try to view it as if it were an amateur play at the local playhouse. My primary question: Did I enjoy it. The answer here is, yes, I (mostly) enjoyed it.

With that out of the way, the basic story line to "Nest" is pretty clever. (And director Bert Williams does just enough to hold the viewer's interest through to the very end where he ties things together.) The basic story line concerns undercover government revenue agent "Johnson" who has his cover blown and escapes into the everglades to avoid certain death. After an "interesting" encounter with a knife-wielding female, Johnson further escapes to an island housing the titular Cuckoo Bird Inn. The Inn is owned by religious fanatic, Mrs. Pratt, who is accompanied by caretaker, Harold, and Mrs. Pratt's daughter, Lisa. When he arrives, he is the only guest in the Inn. The balance of the film remains concerned with events at the Inn.

Now, if there is a defect here it is in the dialogue, which (not surprisingly) fills up quite a lot of the 1:20ish running time and can get rather sluggish at times. This movie would have suffered nothing by trimming its run time by 10 to 15 minutes. However, there are discernible plot points that move the action along. These center on Johnson's continued "snooping" of the restricted areas of the Inn and its surrounding property (much to the chagrin of Harold and Mrs. Pratt). What he eventually finds indeed qualifies the movie as a "horror" movie, though we get most of that in the last 20 or so minutes of the film.

Florida during the 1960s and early 1970s gave us some really strange gems, including "Two Thousand Maniacs!" (1964) "Miss Leslie's Dolls" (1972) and "Blood Freak" (1972). I will add this to my collection of Sunshine State curios.

If you tell me that a film is extremely rare &/or was lost for decades and miraculously resurfaced or got resurrected, chances are that this will equate to some immediate interest. This one turned out to not ultimately work as a mystery thriller, but still proved to be worth a look. Just have to add that if the character Harold's beard was fake, it has to have been one of the worst in the history of makeup, but if it was real that would be even more disturbing.

The premise for this film was really interesting. The result is a sort of hazy, but not really satisfying dream-like blurb of overly theatrical acting, tv-banal camera work, and at times an obvious lack of budget.

This being said, the film still gets you going. You want to know what's going to happen, nothing is really predictable, which I liked. The heat. Sweat, nigh time, and thunderstorm filled ambiance was real fun. Ambiance is a thing too often neglected in films nowadays, where more attention is placed on cheap tension.

There are a lot of unexplored themes, or themes that are barely present, which got me wondering, are some parts of the film missing? Then again, it might be voluntary, to add more suspense. The plot goes into some kind of texas chainsaw massacre meets jesus camp thing. Overall, this movie would deserve a good remake. The one thing a remake should really imitate though is the music. I found the slow surf guitar, drums, and occasional choir chanting to be really awesome. Even the half-cheap sound quality of some of the music present just added to the mix really well. Sometimes switching in music wasn't well timed, but eh, oh well. In general, the music really added to the film.

I once reviewed "The House of Seven Belles" as perhaps the shoutiest film ever. IMHO this is a technique often employed by bad performers to simulate emotion when they can't really do the necessary acting - and here there's definitely signs of this, particularly from the lead. However, there are some more nuanced aspects as well, which helps.

Overall, this is admirably trashy in terms of plot, atmosphere and use of locations, but what impressed me most was the soundtrack - a sort of hawaiian-influenced lounge jazz with bongos that most of the time was very effective.

Worth a look.