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story identification - What movie or tv show has a tribe of "bird men" outside a walled city in the desert?



A long, long time ago in the era known to some as the 90's, I was channel surfing and caught the end of something that might have been a TV show or a movie, I have no idea which.


It was set in an arid, rocky but also sandy area. There were at least two local factions that didn't get along. One was slightly more 'advanced' and living in a walled city, and the other was a much more... tribal group who disguised themselves as birds, even though there were no birds on the planet/in the area.


Google-fu hasn't been helping me, only directing me to lists of other campy/terribad science fiction movies.



Answer



I believe the film is Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), a silly space opera spoof that I find quite underappreciated. The scene is as follows, once Dick and Marge Nelson (Jeffrey Jones and Teri Garr) are captured by the desert-dwelling tribe of bird people (a reference to Flash Gordon's Hawkmen):


Photo of Sirk and Semage from the film, in and out of their bird masks.



Sirk: "We wear these masks to disguise ourselves as birds."
(The tribe starts clucking.)
Dick: "Ah, excuse me. Do you really have birds this size on your planet?"

Sirk: "No."



Quote and images from BadMovies.org


I thought this movie was quite a lot of fun as a kid, and I still find it pretty amusing as an adult. The obvious Flash Gordon parody elements don't work as well after so many years, but there are a lot of jokes, like this one, which are so simple and dumb that they never really wear out. And Jon Lovitz is great as the villain.


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