The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965)

Government agent Johnson (Bert Williams) is ordered to infiltrate a gang of moonshiners operating in what the Internet tells me are the Everglades, so what we call the Particularly Weird South. He is quickly uncovered by sweaty uncouth men, and has to flee through the swamp by night. There, an encounter with what may or may not be a mad masked woman nearly kills him. Johnson just barely manages to get himself to a lonely. isolated swamp inn – which is no kind of inn at all, if you think about it. The place’s owner, Mrs Pratt (Ann Long?) and her factotum Harold (Chuck Frankle) take care of our hero’s wounds and provide him with a place to rest.

The inn is as Southern Gothic as it gets, however, everyone at the place having emotions as heightened as Mount Everest. Secrets of course do abound, as well. Mrs Pratt keeps her “mad” daughter Lisa (Jackie Scelza) – who rather resembles that other mad lady with the knife though our hero doesn’t appear to notice – chained up in the attic, and let’s not even get into the very special doll collection in the cellar. Johnson does of course fall for Lisa, and plans to eventually escape with her, once he’s figured out what’s going on around him.

Long thought lost, a print of this Southern Gothic/exploitation piece from, with and by Floridian one-time auteur (and rather more regular actor) Bert Williams was discovered a half a decade ago and restored with the help of Nicolas Winding Refn, who clearly has a taste for strange exploitation films, and does put his name and his time up for them.

The film is probably not for anyone not at least a little experienced with local productions and weirdo exploitation, for it shows quite a few of the less palatable hallmarks of this very indie (decades before we used the word) kind of movie. So expect many a scene of actors very consciously not looking at the camera while emoting to their physical limits in ways that are as intense as they are stilted; blocking and framing is often awkward, a nailed-on camera adding torpor to the less than dynamic approach. Unless, of course, an act of violence or gothic strangeness occurs, when the editing suddenly freaks out, loud noises begin to dominate the soundtrack, and short, sharp jolts of striking imagery cut through the visual dullness with heated intensity. There is also an increasing number of moments of moody swampy goodness, that provide the moments when the film isn’t shuffling its feet trying to bore you to tears with quite a bit of actual atmosphere.

These more interesting gasps of excitement occur more often the longer the film goes on, for like many of its siblings, it is frontloaded with some of its most dull scenes. It gets pretty excited (exciting might go too far) for a bit, only to slow down to a dull crawl again until the final act excitedly sketches out the place where the Texas Chainsaw Massacre will meet Southern Gothic. If you’ve seen as many films of this kind as I have over the decades, you’ll probably appreciate the contrast between extreme dullness and the sparks of the low budget visionary – I at least found this rather bracing, lending The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds even more of the quality of a dream, or really, the quality of something of made to show you an approximation of somebody else’s dream.