Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Kaw / USA / 2007

The Sci-Fi Network has carved out a comfortable niche for itself in the Bad Cable Horror industry, with such memorable films as S.S. Doomtrooper and Locusts: The 8th Plague among its recent yield. And while the films are almost always B-quality, with from-the-past actors and bad special effects complementing rather formulaic screenplays, they are undoubtedly worthy of cult followings. They are outwardly self-aware, sensitive without question to how bad they really are, while simultaneously offering some blithe midnight-movie entertainment. (I imagine their target audience falls somewhere between “Insomniac” and “Drunk.”)

After feasting on a pasture of dead cows, ravens begin attacking the residents of a requisite small farm town. Sheriff Wayne, played by Sean Patrick Flannery, happens to be facing this nightmare on his final day; tomorrow, he and his wife leave for greener pastures, a new life, the Big City, etc. At the same time, social outcast Clyde—Stephen McHattie—escorts the high-school soccer team through a dangerous forest, where ravens begin dive-bombing the bus; sadly, not all the young, beautiful athletes will survive.

As is later explained by Oscar, an Amish farmer, “They have the sickness that you call mad cow disease.” That you call is, of course, screenwriter Benjamin Sztajnkrycer’s means of ostracizing and demonizing the film’s Amish characters, who are portrayed as two reticent men with strange Old English inflections and an ashen-skinned little girl. They are the obligatory catalysts—strange, foreign, unfamiliar, they are burdened with introducing terror to nature. But unlike past mediums of destruction—meteors (Slither, Creepshow), man-made toxic waste (Return of the Living Dead, Prophecy), and even experimental hormones (Alligator)—the depiction of the Amish as morally aloof is nothing but ignorant hogwash, as well as cowardly and safe: the Amish can’t complain because, of course, they don’t watch television.

Having spent my adolescent years watching and rewatching George Pal’s The Time Machine and Hitchcock’s The Birds, I am predisposed to liking anything with Rod Taylor, even something as awful as Kaw. In the end, Rod Taylor is grand, the only true gleam of professionalism throughout, though his rather innocuous “Doc” leaves much to be desired. When he’s not acting grandfatherly to the corner-store cashier or swatting away crazed ravens with a broom, he barely exists. A real shame that such a revered actor, having been gone from film for a decade, could wind up doing such forgettable midnight-movie waste.

by Adam Balz | Source: The Sci-Fi Network
27 Apr 2007 10:46 AM | Submit Comment