Review of Cry of the Winged Serpent

I just saw a screening of this at the Artcraft Theatre in Franklin, IN as part of the B-Movie Celebration going on this weekend. The director was there to introduce the film and talk about it afterwords. As it turns out, Jamie Wagner is actually another pseudonym for Jim Wynorski, who's having a retrospective of some of his films shown this weekend (August 17-19, 2007). I think it's a fun movie and that's all it sets out to be. The plot concerns an amulet that causes a giant bird to wreak revenge on drug dealers, held in the hands of a young Central American man whose family was massacred by a drug cartel. Maxwell Cauffield is a cop on the case who lost his wife during a drug ring shootout. The acting is pretty much game, the movie is slickly shot, the special effects of the bird are adequate and it has a clever ending. So, as it stands, it's enjoyable and something to watch on a rainy day when you have nothing else to do.