Killing Birds (1988)

Interesting facts

Killing Birds is a 1988 Italian horror film starring Lara Wendel and Robert Vaughn. The film is set in Louisiana where Fred Brown returns from the Vietnam War to find his wife in bed with her lover and slaughters the whole family sparing the newborn son. After the massacre, he is attacked and blinded by a falcon. Twenty years later a group of students led by Steve and Anne meet Brown, and begin their search for a nearly extinct breed of woodpecker and come across grisly occurrences including boys being killed by vengeful zombies.

Production

Claudio Lattanzi grew up dreaming of making films and met Dario Argento and Michele Soavi. Lattanzi assisted Soavi on his documentary film Dario Argento's World of Horror and was an assistant on his film Stage Fright. The producer of Stage Fright, Aristide Massaccesi then offered Lattanzi a chance to direct Killing Birds when Soavi turned down to offer to take up Argento's offer to make The Church.

According to Lattanzi, during the Christmas Holidays of 1986, he had written a story called Il cancello obsoleto about a record producer who invites a rock band to a deserted house to record a tune, without knowing that Nazi soldier corpses are buried there. Lattanzi stated that Massaccesi asked him to reshape the story by replacing the rock band and the Nazis with birds. Lattanzi said the new film would be titled Artigli (lit.

A screenplay was then written by Daniele Stroppa with English dialogue revised by Sheila Goldberg. Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi maintained conversely that Killing Birds - Raptors was from a story they wrote entitled Artigli.

The credited director on the film has been unclear, with many crew members stating that the film was actually directed by the producer Aristide Massaccesi (Joe D'Amato). Massaccesi stated in an interview "It seemed to me that the most sensible thing was to give the job of directing the dialogues to (Soavi's) assistant, Claudio Lattanzi, while I took care of the special effects scenes. In the end, I let (Lattanzi) sign as the director.

Killing Birds was filmed on location in Thibodaux, Louisiana, with a small crew of eight to nine members. The cinematographer was Massaccesi himself under the name Fred Sloniscko, Jr., one of his many aliases. The film "was shot with sync sound, and no overdubbing".

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