Hamilton, ON: A veteran of feathered-foe movies is shooting a new MOW, Kaw, about birds run amuck. Rod Taylor, remembered for his roles in The Time Machine (1960) and Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds (1963), plays a rural doctor who begins to understand why the birds surrounding his town are suddenly wreaking havoc and killing people.

‘Things have certainly changed since The Birds,’ Taylor said, on the set of Kaw, now shooting in Hamilton, ON, on the same soundstage as the ’70s cult TV show The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. ‘Now there are only about a dozen trained birds on the set – the rest are done by computer. Not back then – there were thousands of birds on the set in 1963.’

Though Kaw has a small town beleaguered by a small army of birds that seem to have gone insane, the similarities stop there, insists producer Gordon Yang (Earth Storm) of Scary Films Productions, a Prèmiere Bobine company.

‘In Hitchcock’s film, the birds’ behavior is never really explained. But in Kaw, it seems an avian flu has infected the creatures, making them go berserk,’ explains Taylor.

The townsfolk’s ability to determine what is going on is complicated by a secretive Mennonite community that lives nearby. There, the secret of the vicious birds is known, but kept quiet. Taylor plays the village doctor, who begins to piece together the mystery of the psychotic birds.

‘The film ties in to a number of anxieties that the public has,’ notes Yang, ‘including disasters like the recent hurricanes to the avian flu possibilities. It has turned out to be very timely indeed.’

The veteran actor acknowledges that he wasn’t that thrilled by the idea of working with birds again. ‘When they called and asked me, I told them to fuck off,’ Taylor says, laughing. ‘The birds in the original could be so unpleasant. Now you don’t have to deal with them so directly.’

Actors on the set include 11 ravens brought in from the Czech Republic, birds who last appeared in Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm. ‘These are very well-trained birds,’ says Yang. ‘We’ve been very impressed.’

Working with a $1.8-million budget, Kaw will screen in late summer 2006 on the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. and on Scream in Canada. It is directed by Sheldon Wilson (Shallow Ground), with John Tarver serving as DOP. Production closes Dec. 9.