The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds

The delirium induced by moonshine may very well have been an impetus for the creation of The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds, a 1965 deep dive into the whirlpool of repressed sexuality, implied familial degeneracy (which always means incest), and just plain Southern sleaze. It's the kind of movie Sandra Bernhard would host in an abridged form on her classic USA Network show "Reel Wild Cinema," back when I was a boy in the ungreat Nineteen-Nineties.

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds/Night Tide | byNWR Double Feature! Trailer

Johnson, a hulking, unappealing man who looks like a plumber, works for the government busting up moonshiners in the Florida Everglades. The film opens with him in an office, telling his story, which includes the sweaty oaf remembering a noir-esque scene with a former girlfriend he "deserted" in a hotel room—and they look as if they fit together about as well as peanut butter and salami. Next, we get confusion as he penetrates the inner circle of the moonshiners or something, and then everyone is in a boat out on the river. The moonshiners shoot, and his boat explodes in flames, although we're not certain why. Swimming to shore, he is almost killed by a nude, knife-wielding woman in a plastic mask. The weird, jump-cut style presented in these scenes includes the woman being filmed standing still, shot from different angles in a jarring montage style, while screaming noise music and incessant, dissonant drumming are heard on the soundtrack.

Mind you, these aren't "still shots"; they're clips of her standing posed, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze, knife held up as if to strike. Very strikingly strange—and a nice little addition to a film that struggles in many ways.

Johnson makes his way to Cuckoo's Nest Inn (really) and meets the caretakers: Harold, Patt, and the blonde daughter Lisa, who is chained in the attic and beaten by Patt, a repressed religious fanatic who looks as if she has dirt rubbed into her face. (Nearly everyone in this film is badly groomed, dirty, and looks as if they smell gross.) Johnson and the caretaker (who is wearing a weird Manos: The Hands of Fate false beard, with silly-putty bags under his eyes) go toe-to-toe while Johnson wanders around the absurdly manse-like inn, and the nude woman specter in the plastic mask attempts his life yet again.

One would be tempted to dismiss The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds, which features much dialogue rendered incomprehensible by the echoes in the room, as basic exploitation fare—it was actually thought “lost” for a significant amount of time. The finer plot points don't really coalesce, rendering the whole thing with the aspect of a disjointed, bad fever dream. There is blood here, and submerged lurking fear and terror—the symbolism of male sexuality exploiting, abusing, and grinding against the repressed "mommy complex" of Patt, the abusive religious psycho that would creep forth in a new form in varied works in the future, most notably Carrie by Stephen King. (The relationship here between Patt and Lisa is similar to that of Carrie White and her mother as depicted in King's book.)

Oedipal, Electra—define and interpret it as you will. It has a horror of familial degeneracy, and that always means incest, as we've noted before. Also, a fear of male sexuality—the brutal, predatory nature of it—and the confusion between that and the "Daddy Adoration" the chained (repressed) young girl Lisa experiences, chained in the attic of the mind. Someone slips on her face ("masked killer") during the "full moon"—the mystical cycle of womanhood, unrestrained, thirsting for blood.

At the end, we journey into an attic, a "chapel of death," and the climax is quite good, although the incessant drumming on the soundtrack can be a bit much. The images are frequently jarring, and the film, like so many other great low-budget and exploitation films, has the weird, unsettling aspect of a dream.

It's inept, but it's a fascinating ineptitude that stirs subconscious psychological depths—or at least hits certain notes. Such films have a value beyond their individual failings. Everything else is for the birds, whether they be cuckoo ones or flying high and clear in a cloudless, cinematic sky.

Fin.

Written and directed by Bert Williams. Starring Williams, Chuck Frankle, Jackie Scelza, Ann Long, Sherry Saxe, and Larry Wright. Larry Wright, incidentally, was also in the utter turkey-like excrement known as Blood Freak! (1972).

My book: Cult Films and Midnight Movies: From High Art to Low Trash Volume 1

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My book: Silent Scream! Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Edison's Frankenstein--Four Novels.

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