Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) was a moment in time. Bloody Disgusting discovered the film in tandem with Severin, who acquired it and shared it with the world. It became part of pop culture for a brief moment, nearly dethroning Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 The Room as the worst movie ever made. There was something magical about finding super bad genre films that were also incredibly entertaining. This was ruined by Sharknado, which was misunderstood by general audience as “accidentally bad”, when in fact it was always meant to be terrible. Sharknado‘s success spawned so many copycats that it quite literally killed the “so good it’s bad” subgenre. It’s D.E.A.D.
Birdemic may have been the last of its kind, and for that, director James Nguyen has sort of become Hollywood royalty. The man’s passion and heart bled into that film. Sure, we laugh at it, but I don’t laugh at Nguyen, who is as authentic as they come.
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While we can never rekindle that special moment in time, we can however look back with a smile, which is why this new release is pretty exciting. Before the hype, before the Birdemic parties, and especially before Sharknado, Nguyen directed yet another film. Yup, an authentic Nguyen movie none of us have seen yet.
Rifftrax releases Replica, a 2005 film by Nguyen that’s, “Set in the near future, in the hallowed halls of clip art-adorned offices, technicians clone organs from stem cells using cool near-future technology. This is directly to the benefit of Joe, who has a shiny new kidney, which is good because he’s so aggressively average he makes Caspar Milquetoast look like Casper van Dien! He’s got two suits, a job in sales, a new girlfriend, a dead girlfriend, and another new girlfriend—or is it the same dead girlfriend? It’s all part of the fun!”
Featuring classic Nguyen technology (“Nano 3000”), the film is available at the aforementioned link for a pricey $7.99 – but it’s worth it if you have a group Birdemic fans clamoring for more.