In our first full episode, The B-Movie Boys take on Birdemic: Shock and Terror, one of the most infamous eco-horror disasters ever committed to digital video. We break down James Nguyen’s Hitchcock-inspired nightmare, from its baffling performances and green-screen birds to its earnest environmental message and jaw-dropping technical choices. Using the Schlockometer, we examine where Birdemic fails, where it accidentally succeeds, and why movies that swing this hard deserve to be celebrated, not dismissed.

Mentioned in this episode:

1. Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)
2. The Birds (1963)
3. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
4. James Nguyen
5. Sundance Film Festival
6. 7-11
7. "Just Hanging Out" by Damien Carter

Our Links:

1. BMovieBoys.com
2. Official Discord
3. Patreon
4. Facebook
5. Instagram

Incoming transmission. Incoming transmission. Let's boogie.

Welcome to the B movie Boys, where B movies get the love they deserve and the respect that they don't.

I'm Dave Michaels.

And I'm Bryan Betz.

And I know what I'm in the mood for, Bryan.

What are you in the mood for?

Hanging out with my family, Having ourselves a party. Is music a category on a new scale?

Music is not a category, but I think we could probably fit it in somewhere.

Okay, you ready for this one, man? This is our jumping off point.

Yeah, I've never been more ready, but also not ready at all.

I could tell that from when me and you watching this movie and the comments that you're making while watching the movie. You seem to be in over your head. Briefly.

There was a lot going on and I was trying to make sense of all of it, and I shouldn't have been trying to do that.

Ah, just enjoy that ride in that blue hybrid plug in Mustang.

That blue plug in Mustang. They wouldn't invent an electric Mustang until 10 years after this movie came out. But he had one.

Yeah. That's the most that's wrong with this movie.

That's it.

Who really knows?

No one knows. It might have come out only on YouTube. It might have been at a bar at Sundance. Who's to say?

There's so many conflicting stories.

And they're all coming from the same source. Famous director James Nguyen.

James Nguyen. This man made a movie.

He did, and that should be applauded. But then maybe it should be like one of those Polish applauses with only the one hand that's just flapping in the breeze.

But he would have still found a way to make that clap with all the Foley that he used in this movie.

Oh, yeah, that's. I think he found like a good handful of six to seven files. He was like, I'm gonna reuse all of them as many times as possible.

No, this was my first time seeing birdemic and I suspect it will not be my last.

Yeah, there's two more men also, so buckle up.

Oh, boy. Cool.

Now that you have seen it, because you know, the hype that was behind this one, it is kind of why we dove in with this movie first, because, yeah, it's a really hyped movie.

It's a more modern B movie, and there's a lot of interesting things going on under the hood that I think really defines what this show might be exploring.

Yeah, I agree with that. This is definitely. It's a famously bad movie. It's often cited as one of the worst movies ever made. But there's some things in here.

There's like, there's a message, there's a heart, there's effort. It's just a matter of, you know, did this person actually know how to make a movie?

I'm not positive he knows how to make a movie, but maybe we can find out if he knows how to make a good B movie.

With our patented schlockometer, we can break down the categories that we suspect make a great B movie.

And it is entirely arbitrary, folks.

Probably the most arbitrary thing we've ever done.

This one for sure. There is almost no substance behind it, not like the other ones, which were scientifically developed in a lab.

But what more appropriate way to treat B movies than with a completely arbitrary scoring system?

Exactly.

But first, let's tell you the story of birdemic shock and terror.

The tale of birdemic shock.

Gather round, boys and girls, for we have a story to tell you.

Rod is a young software salesman living a pretty comfortable life in Silicon Valley. When he reconnects with Natalie, an old classmate who is now trying to make it as a fashion model, and the two of them start dating.

That was like the first 20 minutes of the movie. It boom.

This movie is called birdemic, and there are no birds for a good half.

Hour for a long bit. But there is a lot of Rod driving to and from work.

He drives a lot. There's so much driving in this thing. Like Ryan Gosling was in a movie called Drive right around the same time.

And that movie is false advertising, believe it or not. Compared to this.

Things seem to be going great for both of them, with Rod getting a big bonus at work, a million dollar sale, and planning to start his own company. While Natalie lands what's supposed to be a major modeling break with Victoria's Secret.

She's just sitting in a condo, gets calls. She's like, victoria's Secret? Yeah, I'll do it.

Let me go down to the one hour photo and take some shots.

I get my headshots done at CVS.

Doreen, you're gonna have to wait for your lunch shift. You're trying to get my good side for Victoria's Secret. And stop calling it a passport photo.

You don't pose for passport photos. Not like this.

At the same time as she's at the strip mall getting her Victoria's Secret fashion photos taken, the world around them starts quietly falling apart, as opposed to now, where it's very loudly falling apart.

Very loudly. Yeah.

There's wildfires burning in the distance, dead disease birds mysteriously washing up on beaches.

And the polar bears are going hungry because their food is also endangered, such as seals.

Let's just get all the messages and stuff them all in there.

But none of that bothers Rod and Natalie because they're still in the getting to know you phase. They're going out to dinner. There's, you know, musicians singing phenomenal songs to a crowd of two people, both of them.

It's very private. The way they're dancing.

It's so crazy. This guy's just up there singing the best song that's been in any movie ever.

It really is like, I don't understand how the Academy didn't. Look at this. Go like, I know. I know we shouldn't. I know, but. But our issue here at the Academy is that they have to perform the song live on a stage.

And frankly, we. We can't have people falling out of their seats for being so moist.

Hanging out with my family.

How are ourselves a party? It goes on for so long, and frankly, wasn't long enough.

Could have used more. I did find this song on Spotify afterwards. 5 minutes and 44 seconds long.

Yeah, it is. Yeah.

And I'm pretty sure the second verse, he hints at some incest.

Does he, now?

Oh, yeah.

There's a whole line about how, like, the girls are getting their makeup on and the guys are hoping they're gonna get it on, and then grandma's walking around making sure the boys don't get too excited.

I mean, right? Well, you know, I guess. Right? What?

Yeah. And then hanging out with my family.

Gonna find my baby. Gonna. That's pretty much what's going on now, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. The family reunion after spending a romantic night together at the motel. Cause how could you not?

After that, Rod and Natalie wake up to find that their town is suddenly under attack by flocks of eagles and vultures.

I appreciate the weight you put behind the word suddenly there, because there's been nothing more sudden. That's Ever occurred in the history of the world.

It's, hey, we're going to bed, we're going to rub our feet together, we're going to wake up and there are birds attacking.

That's it. Just like that. By the way, birdemic shock and terror.

Don't forget shock and terror. Here's the shock and the terror. The shock is that, oh, this is happening now.

And the bird and the epic, I guess, like it's all here now.

It all came together, got all the ingredients.

He could have started the movie now and been just fine.

Yeah, but then it wouldn't be a romantic thriller. It'd just be a thriller.

I mean, things have to be thrilling to be a thriller.

Let's thanks. Have to be romantic to people.

They say two wrongs don't make a right. They've never seen bird devic.

These are not normal birds either, by the way, the ones that are washing up on the shores and whatnot because they spit acid. They burst into flames and hit the ground. And the movie says this is all just happening because pollution and global warming.

Yeah, that's what pollution and global warming do. They make birds explode and attack people and spit acid. I didn't realize that they were spitting acid.

I thought they were getting shot and just bursting bird juice over everybody.

I see the confusion now. Yeah, it's very tough to tell what's happening when they don't show you what's happening.

Acid makes sense, though.

While trying to escape, Rod and Natalie team up with an ex marine named Ramsey and his girlfriend Becky, who helped them fight off the birds and get out of town.

Can I ask a question about this movie? Because you said get out of town. Do they?

Do they?

Because it seems like they're traveling, I don't know, a few miles down the road and they're like, we're at the beach. We're safe here. Oh, no. Birds back in the van. Let's go to the park. All right, we're safe here. Oh, God, we're out of gas. We drove both miles.

There's birds outside here too. They never think, hey, you know what we should do? Go inside for all of the gas.

That they don't have. They more than make up for it in bullets.

That's true. They stocked up on one, forgot about the other.

That should be like the trade off that you should get in Grand Theft Auto when you put in the unlimited ammo code. There's like, that's fine and all, but also, now your car is feet.

Oh, also there's a Gas shortage now and any car you get in will only go for a mile before you have to switch up again.

They did say that Venezuela oil was terrible. They weren't lying along the way. They managed to rescue just two random kids.

Yeah, there's two children. One hiding under a car, one in a trunk.

That's right. But the one under the car is the one I want to talk about the most.

Because this kid's laying here just on the pavement underneath this SUV type thing and is very, very casually saying, the birds, the birds, they killed my mommy.

They killed my mommy.

Our heroes rescue these kids, they put them in the car and these kids are so grateful after watching their parents get pecked to down that they say.

I want a happy Meal. I'm going to play the psp.

I've never hoped for a child to get AIDS before. I've never hoped that.

No. Who would hope that?

It's worse than that? Because watching this child, I was like, I don't even want them to get like hiv. I wanted to skip that phase altogether.

Just go straight to the end, get.

Right to the aids.

These are real shitty movie kids.

It's pretty awful.

Just extra mouths to feed. They want McDonald's.

They're not happy with 711 sandwiches.

I get it. First of all, I get it.

I read that the bulk of the craft services for this movie was provided by 711 and I said defied. Provided by.

I don't think you going there and purchasing it means it's provided by craft.

Services was purchased at 7:11. I don't think it was provided by.

It might have been. They did get that one convenience store guy to act in this movie.

That's true.

And I have to imagine that his family doesn't talk about that anymore.

No, no. Remember that time you traded a bunch of sandwiches for a cameo in the worst movie ever made?

He's one of the best parts of it though.

As they drive from one place to another, they keep running into more bird attacks. And briefly meet a scientist named Dr. Jones who's studying what's happening.

He's not. He's standing on a bridge and he's just more or less doing like Jesus on the high, but talking about climate change and whatnot.

They have this bird flu disease.

This bird flu disease. God. This is where James Wen just leans in so hard. So hard. Like Jon Favreau is a very heavy handed director.

Famously between me and Brian, Jon Favreau wouldn't even have a place at this table because he'd be like that's a bit much, guys.

I think I have to go sit over the light handed people table.

I don't even really know how to like describe James Wynn because he has this earnest want to make this movie.

Yeah.

But he also is kind of like Albert Hitchcock and Al Gore had a love child and only fed that love child paint chips.

He has said that his inspiration for this movie is the birds and an inconvenient church.

I'm extremely aware of that. Yeah, because I said there's other fucking Alfred Hitchcock movies out there. Stop remaking this one.

Make one about you being up high or something and you can't stand it. Like Vertigo.

Nope, it's got to be the birds. He's already got the 3D clip art for the birds.

He does have that, in fairness. There's a big stuffed bird in Psycho too, though.

Well, that's true.

It's not really a romantic thriller.

He'd find a way.

He would find a way. You absolutely do that. Dr. Jones keeps talking. They learn stuff. They're clearly not interested in learning stuff, but it goes on for forever.

You have a picnic outside and then.

Things get real bad because Becky, one of the people they just picked up, she's just going to get all lit.

Up by some birds while taking a shit.

It's important to say that is a very big Jurassic park moment here. But then her beau Ramsey, the ex marine guy, he dies trying to save a bus full of tourists. A parked bus. A double story parked bus.

I have so many questions about these tourists because they're banging on the windows asking for help. And then as soon as Ramsey gets on the bus, they're like, we don't want to leave the bus. What do you want me to do then?

It's very complicated. A lot of motivations that are not fully realized.

Well, and then they all die because of bird acid juice.

Of course they do that. Good old bird acid juice.

Rod, Natalie and the kids keep going. Stopping at a gas station where gas somehow costs $100 a gallon now. And then they get robbed by a desperate guy at gunpoint. And then a bird gets him.

So this guy robbing them at gunpoint might as well have been like, you're gonna need the ambulance. But not for me. Like that guy.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. They just have a gas can ready to go. They give it to him, and then they don't pick the gas can back up as they make their very slow exit.

There was like five people on set, and continuity definitely was not one of them.

There were five People on set, and four of them were in this scene.

Our heroes escape into a forest. They meet an environmentalist who talks about the planet being destroyed. And then they have to run from a massive forest fire out of nowhere.

But I need to talk about this man.

His name's Tree Hugger.

Yeah, they're not even trying here anymore.

I think they eventually give him a name in the second one. It's Tom Hill.

I'm so glad they took the entire movie to come up with that. Yeah, this guy looks like Woody Harrelson. But if, like, you flipped Woody Harrelson inside out, then I don't know what that even means.

But I can't get that out of my head watching. So they slapped, like, a wig on him. They're, like, talking about the environment. He's like, okay.

He's like Hoodie Warrelson in a bad wig.

Hoodie Whittleson.

And he hears a mountain lion. So everybody's gotta go. He's gotta go home. And then they gotta go back to their car. And the forest is on fire suddenly. But that's where he lives.

So I hope he's okay. But also, the birds don't attack there because they know him. He's a good dude.

The birds, with their moral compasses, they understand not to attack this Woody Harrelson looking motherfucker with his Anton Chigar haircut.

You guys are safe here, but you gotta fucking leave.

There's actually a real fucked up story about Old country for Old Men that does involve Woody Harrelson. It's fascinating. Have you ever heard this?

No.

That's nuts.

For literally the same story. Like, it's crazy how much it mirrors it.

That's wild.

And that was a nice break because now our heroes are going to reach a beach.

Yeah, I know. We just ate a picnic at the park, but now we're at the beach, and guess what? These kids want Happy Meals.

They do. And Rod's going to describe in great detail what it takes to catch a fish. I shouldn't really say great detail.

He doesn't go into, like, the lore of lores. That's it.

The lore of lores.

The lore of lores. That's my New book. I'm gonna write it now. I love it. Fisherman's book for a guy never fucking fishes. Be perfect. He lists out, like, all the stuff.

He's like, I found a rod. Hey, I can use this for fishing. Hey, look at that. There's a rope tied to this with a hook. Oh, my goodness.

And once I catch the fish, I'm only going to chop off its head and put it on the grill. That happened to be in the car that we happen to be driving.

How lucky for us. In this point and click adventure.

It is a point click adventure.

And Natalie's like, I'll fry up some seaweed.

Thanks, Natalie. Thank you. You're so contributing that volunteer. You see the sea. You're like, there's weeds in there.

And the kids are like, I want McNuggets.

These kids just tie a brick to their feet and drum it in.

They could probably see a McDonald's from.

Where they are, and it's probably open. Tell you the truth, they haven't gone.

Very far in this movie, as far as I can tell.

Well, they're on the beach again. They're having their lovely cooking meal with their seaweed. Natalie's trying to sell it. It's not working. There's one last bird attack.

Bunch of peaceful doves. They just show up.

The bad birds, they fly away, leaving Ron, Natalie, and the kids watching, disappear into the sky as they fly away for literally forever.

They just, literally do not move on flying.

Because depth perception. He didn't even make them smaller to make.

He didn't even think they were farther.

Away on his Photoshop.

Nope, they didn't get smaller. They just stayed there. Stay flapping.

Roll credits. Birdemic shock and terror.

I read that the ending was inspired by Apocalypse now. And he was like, yeah, the birds left to give humanity another chance.

I'm ready to score this thing. I'm so ready.

Let's score this thing. Our first category is entertainment value.

10. Easy. Easy, Ted.

10.

Cannot look away.

I only had it in an eight, but I'll meet you at a nine.

I'll happily do nine.

All right, cool.

This movie rules.

No, this movie is a whole lot of fun to watch, especially if you have an appreciation for. What's the word? How movies are supposed to be made, Right?

If you speak film language, like, you recognize rules, like the 180 degree rule and things like that, and you could point out when that rule's being broken, you'll have a great time.

Oh, we're gonna get there, buddy. Don't you Worry.

Our second category is genre exploitation.

This is, according to the director, a romantic thriller.

Yes. He has said repeatedly that it is a romantic thriller.

It lacks romance, sure. It lacks thrills, sure. But it didn't promise us. It promised shock and terror.

They did promise shock and terror. And it didn't deliver on those either, really. I suppose it does start off as a bad romance.

Shout out to Lady Gaga, and then it turns into a bad thriller. So it kind of covers both. God. It doesn't feel very tropey.

No, it really doesn't. And there's a lot of reasons behind that that we're going to get to.

I feel like you have to be familiar with movies in order to do the things that movies do.

Yeah. And I mean, he even said he was self taught. And the thing about being self taught is you still need to have learned something along the way.

You had a bad teacher.

He loves his teacher, though. We'll get there.

Oh, God. He loves his teacher. Genre exploitation. I feel like it's having a hard time even sticking within its genre. I enjoyed watching it. I like it. Damn it.

So I want to give it like a three.

I was going to say a three. That's fine.

Cool. Next category is memorable characters.

All of them. Every one of them. Rod, Natalie. Tree hugger.

Yeah, I was going to say the Singing Man 3.

I did. We're good. Nailed it.

These characters are so unmemorable that I had when I was putting together the document that we referenced for the characters in the movie. I confused Rick and Ramsey. I had a picture of Rick in Ramsey's spot and then didn't even realize Rick wasn't on the sheet.

I like that you're describing people that no one are going to give a shit about.

Yeah, well, they're two of the main characters in the movie. Ramsay's the guy that gives them all the guns.

That's a good point.

He's in the other hotel room.

Yeah.

No, Rod and Natalie are the main characters. Natalie's mother is phenomenal.

She's the best. And she definitely doesn't have cancer.

She definitely doesn't have cancer. As soon as she came on screen, I was immediately reminded of the room.

She has definite room mom vibes, for sure.

She's also the best actor in this movie.

100%.

She's the most believable actor. I don't know. I couldn't remember Rod's name after this movie ended.

I think I'm torn somewhere between like a nine and a four.

Okay. I was gonna say two.

Oh, okay, so four it is. Got it.

Four. The next category is low budget ingenuity.

This is the part I was dreading. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't. I don't either. The. The film had such a limited budget that they were. A lot of these actors were pulling double duty.

And then James Nguyen went and gave them false names in the credits as crew members. Just made up names.

No one worked on this movie. There was no crew.

No.

They just did it all. Guerrilla. No permits, no nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. Which. I mean, low budget ingenuity. Just do it illegally.

Honestly, I think I'm going huge on this one.

If you can't afford cgi, just drag and drop some gifts of birds on your movie. Done. Boom.

But it worked.

I mean, you could. Those are definitely words you could put together in a sentence. Did it work?

What'd you give for entertainment value?

But a lot of that entertainment is derived from how much it didn't work.

Exactly. Ah, man, I got a pretzel in my head.

I will say this movie only cost $10,000 to make, and it took him four years to make it.

That number right there is just crazy that he pulled this thing off then.

Yeah, it's impossible.

After Sundance rejected the movie, he drove around in his own van covered in banners and fake blood and fake birds just to draw attention to it so he could eventually sell the movie.

But he also put typos all over the van. Like, the website was like, bindemic.com wasn't even birdemic.

Yeah, the title was spelled wrong on the car.

He convinced a local bar to show the movie at Sundance, and that was the exposure it got. And it got seen, and it got picked up, and it got sold. He did Sundance his own way, but it worked.

Yeah. So not only did he gorilla shoot the movie, he guerilla marketed it. I guess that is some low budget ingenuity.

He did what he had to do. I mean, he kind of lived the dream briefly. Jesus Christ. I think I'm gonna go like a nine.

Holy shit.

And I say that making movies really, really, really hard and the fact that he even did it is impressive.

Such a small budget, it's. Yeah, okay, nine. It feels dirty, but I'll. I'll go with you on this. The next category is technical incompetence.

Also probably a 9.

I mean, editing, effects, sound, cinematography. How bad were they? They were awful. Probably the worst I've ever seen. And how funny they were. Hilarious.

Absolutely. The thing that kills me about the editing is just how long he let scenes hang after they were done in.

Just silence and then just random shots of things that didn't matter at all for forever. Like murals in restaurants and spots on the roof for solar panels.

And then just completely giving the middle finger to the 180 degree rule when it comes to any conversation at all. He doesn't care.

No. He's like, they're two people. You know the two people. I'm going to shoot them from every angle. I'm inclined to go 10 on technical incompetence.

Yeah, I think I might. It's very incompetent.

That settles at 10.

Jeez.

Next category is quotes. I don't remember anything from this movie as a quotable thing other than that fucking song that's been stuck in my head since I watched it.

No, there's kind of just moments and they're usually around sales of how Rod's like, woohoo just made a million dollar sale. I'm going to the Sizzler.

Or he does something along the lines of like, oh, we just sold the company for a billion dollars, and he starts doing finger guns and pointing the clap for forever. Those aren't really quotes, though. Are they just gonna keep doing it, Brad? I'm gonna go with a three for quotes.

I was gonna go two. I like three. Three's good. Next category is the Holy Trinity. Blood. Boobs, Booms.

We got them all covered, baby. The boobs look terrible, though.

I feel like we don't really get boobs.

We get a little bit of boobs.

James made them wear bathing suits in their love scenes because he didn't want them to actually have sex with the actors.

He didn't trust them at all. He said, these are two young people they're absolutely going to fuck for real life.

Blood. Yeah, kind of. There was a little bit of blood and booms. There were some small little booms whenever.

At the gas station, CGI exploded a little.

Birds inexplicably become kamikaze birds and blow up on impact.

No, the Holy Trinity is not totally here, is it?

Not totally, but, like, there was an attempt.

Yeah, I'm going to go down the middle on this and go five.

All right, five. I'm with you. The next category is the Audacity. How insane was the idea?

Not that insane, no.

It's the Birds meets An Inconvenient Truth. He said it himself.

It's just it was only a $10,000 budget. He funded the entire thing himself. He was himself a Silicon Valley software engineer with a passion for wanting to make this movie.

And he just couldn't make that million dollar sale to finance his movie.

I don't think it's a crazy idea. I don't think the audacity of trying to do this is much at all.

Like one or two exploding birds.

Yeah. And is heart next?

Heart is next.

That's good. Because where the audacity struggles, it more than makes up for in heart. But they are kind of one in.

The same sort of. They're definitely linked together, at least in this instance. The idea wasn't crazy, but, God, did he commit to it.

He leaned in so hard on this thing to the point that he ended up making Birdemic two because he finally got a little bit more money. Not even a lot more money.

And then Birdemic 3, he was just obsessed with making another one, despite everyone telling him, stop being the fucking Birdemic guy. If you want to have a career.

If you do one more, you're just going to be the Bird Dimmick guy. You're not going to have an actual career. Do a short film. No.

Couldn't be bothered. He had to go make Bird Demic movies.

Had to do it. What are we thinking for the Audacity? Like a three, four?

I think I'm gonna go with a three. It's not really anything reaching for the stars here.

There's nothing about this that's like, oh, that's a fresh idea. Which leads us to heart. Did the filmmaker actually care?

I want to take it a step farther because there's a complicated thing around this movie, and it's kind of the reason why it felt like the perfect movie to start with for our episode one. Is this intentional? And it's really hard to say yes and no to that.

I don't know, man. It doesn't feel intentional to me. This feels like a guy who wanted to make a movie, knew what he wanted to make. The comedy is all accidental.

100%, it's all accidental. But I don't know how someone does this. How they're sitting alone in their room editing this movie on their computer and they're saying this is okay.

Especially when they have pictures of Hitchcock sitting next to him.

This is cinema.

He said that this movie looked like a $100 million picture.

Oh, my God.

James Wynn's a very fascinating man.

At some point, I believe he has heart. I really do. But at what point does it become delusion?

I think it's all delusion because after the movie got sold to Severin Films to put this thing on A dvd. And they didn't joke around with the dvd. It had way too many features for whatever this movie was. They took it very seriously.

James Wynn goes out, he goes and celebrates. He starts acting like he's the toast of Hollywood.

He hears rumblings as his movie is now making its rounds kind of through the midnight movie circuit that Paramount's interested in working with him. And he thinks, this is where my three picture deal's gonna come up. This is where I'm gonna make it.

And he's still going on kind of talk shows about Birdemic because he's the Birdemic guy. Birdemic was a smash hit. But he starts blabbing about this Paramount deal. That's not a deal at all.

No, no. He got one email and he ended.

Up burning the bridge because of that.

Yep, yep.

And he never really went anywhere because of that. It's absolutely incredible. Just you had a guy fly really close to the sun very, very briefly and he couldn't handle it.

It reminds me a lot of the room.

It reminds me a lot of the room too. But it also reminds me a lot of the Boondock Saints kind of in that director's journey too.

Yeah. There's something about it that's. He doesn't have it.

He doesn't have it.

Doesn't have it. That's what they all say in Hollywood, right? Huh. That's wild. Yeah. Because I'm having a hard time gathering my thoughts on this one.

The way I kept looking at it. Cause I had a really tough time with this one.

Also is he's a software engineer, so he's a guy who kind of more thinks in systems than he does kind of in language and story.

Well, that's clear.

I feel like it shows a lot of how he knows what a movie's supposed to feel like, but he's not really aware of how to make it.

That that makes sense. I think he has some of the technical know how, but not enough to actually put it together by himself. But he was going to try anyway.

Which has to be respected. He made a movie, the movie got.

Seen, which is unbelievable.

You have to go 10 for heart.

Yeah, you do.

I don't think any of it's intentional. I know that he's kind of a bit butthurt about it. All the actors are not. They leaned in.

Eventually they. Yeah. And I think we'll see that in Birdemic two, should we ever get there.

Yeah.

Final category is cultability. Does this movie belong at a midnight screening?

Absolutely.

It's Criminal. That it's not already one of the major midnight movie regular viewings up there with the Room and Rocky Horror and all of those.

But I feel like a lot of that has to do with James Wynne again, because Rocky Horror, it built its following through time.

Right.

This James Wynn almost dictated the rules for being at the movie theater. He kind of made up the traditions and helped them along by like posting them on the site. Like, you're watching this movie.

We're all watching it together. But let's really watch it together. Hmm.

Yeah. I don't know how I feel about that.

Everything about what he has done with this movie has felt so unorganic.

Yeah.

But I love it, damn it. I do. I really love this movie.

It is good in a. In the way that, you know it's bad. It's so bad. It's good.

I can't get over him dictating how midnight screening should go. I can't get over that.

Yeah. And I think that has to cost him some points in the cult ability section. You can't have a cult with a big. With a bad cult leader.

I want to go with a 7.

6.

7 sort of in there. I didn't even do the hand thing.

Where are you?

How dare you, Brian. Did Brian go to the principal's office?

I also had seven for this, so I think that's where we'll put it.

I think that's safe.

It's like right on the precipice of being a major midnight screening kind of movie. But there is something there that's holding it back.

I think we know what it is. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, Before I tell you what our total score is, should we talk about how the critics received this movie? The few of them that bothered.

I'm so curious how they received this movie.

Rotten Tomatoes. This thing has a 19% critical score and a 28% audience score.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. 1.7 on IMDb and a 1.6 on Letterboxd.

Yeah. So it all sounds right. Yeah.

As far as how good of a B movie it is, How B of a movie it is.

Yeah.

We gave this bad boy a 63.

Really?

Yeah.

I feel like we went a lot of go big or go home on this one, though.

It was a lot of high score, low score, high score, low score.

So interesting. Maybe that's going to be worth a revisit one day when we get our sea legs. Yeah.

Once we once have a better handle on. On how these movies are going to go, we might have to come back to The Birdemic.

We might have to back to the shock.

Back to the terror.

This was a very fun one to talk about for our first episode. I'm so happy we did this one. So happy.

Maybe the best one to start off, but now we need to go into something a little bit older, I think.

I think we do need to go on the Wayback Machine a bit and get a little more weird because Birdemic. People know the name Birdemic.

Yeah, Birds pandemic. You smash them together. You got it. Not that audacious.

Not that audacious. But Bryan, why don't you tell everybody what we're talking about next episode because we're only putting the audacity to the test.

We sure are. In two weeks time, a fortnight, if you will, we will be talking about Deathbed: The Bed that Eats.

Have you ever seen Deathbed: The Bed that Eats?

Of course not. I have not seen Deathbed: The Bed that Eats.

I haven't either. And that's why we're gonna have to throw another schlock hop in order to watch it all together.

Woohoo. The schlock hop was a lot of fun for Birdemic.

So if you are not on our discord, check the show notes for that link and join us for the next schlock hop. We'll make an announcement on our social media too. @BMovieBoys on all of the things. Some of the things. Not all the things, but most of the things.

Enough of the things.

Follow some links. You know, they're in places. You know how the Internet works at this point. Yeah, like, follow, and subscribe.

I will say that because we are a new show and that does help us a lot, especially if you leave a review. Five stars, please. But you know, go with your heart.

Just lie. Five stars. Lie. Just make sure you go to church and you just apologize for your sins later. It's. That's how it works, right?

We just watched a movie that compares itself to An Inconvenient Truth. So play with the Al Gore Rhythm for us.

Oh, God damn it, Bryan. How dare you?

With the algorithm?

We gotta get you out of here, man. You have to lose it.

Bmovieboys.com or send your emails to bmovieboyspod@gmail.com.

You got anything else?

That's it for me.

Fantastic. You guys are the absolute best. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Be sure to set your VCRs for February 4th when we talk about Deathbed: The Bed that Eats. But until then, keep your blood fake, your boobs real, and the booms as big as the budget allows.

The Be Movie Boys is a MacGuffin Media Network podcast hosted and produced by Dave Michaels and Bryan Betz. Edited by Dave Michaels. Social media support provided by Micah Perdue. Visit bmovieboys.com for more.