The film is set in Louisiana where Fred Brown returns from the Vietnam War to find his wife in bed with her lover and slaughters the whole family sparing the newborn son.

Twenty years later a group of students led by Steve and Anne meet Brown, and begin their search for a nearly extinct breed of woodpecker and come across grisly occurrences including boys being killed by vengeful zombies.

Fred Brown, a soldier, returns to Louisiana from the Vietnam War to find his wife in bed with another man and kills them both and his parents, only sparing his son.

Twenty years later, a small group of college seniors, Steve Porter, Mary, Paul, Anne, Rob, Jennifer, and a local cop, Brian, are assigned to locate the Green-billed woodpecker, a rare species which will be officially extinct by 1992, four years after the current point of the movie.

The group makes the former home of Brown their “base” for as long as they're searching, which turns up nothing on their first day other than a rotting corpse in an abandoned truck.

While exploring the aviary she discovered earlier, Jennifer is chased into a tool shed by a zombie, only to be beaten to death by another hiding in there.

[1] Claudio Lattanzi grew up dreaming of making films and met Dario Argento and Michele Soavi.

[1] Lattanzi stated that Massaccesi asked him to reshape the story by replacing the rock band and the Nazis with birds.

[2] Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi maintained conversely that Killing Birds - Raptors was from a story they wrote entitled Artigli.

Massaccesi stated in an interview "It seemed to me that the most sensible thing was to give the job of directing the dialogues to (Soavi's) assistant, Claudio Lattanzi, while I took care of the special effects scenes.

[7] Massaccesi said he personally took care of shots involving special effects, allowing Lattanzi to sign for the film.

[6] Lattanzi stated that he acknowledged Massaccessi's presence on the set, and described the film as being directed "in symbiosis" with Massaccesi, and that he had specifically chosen certain shots and scenes.