The Birds

Year: 1963 Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, the plot of The Birds centres around wealthy socialite, Melanie Daniels (played by Tippi Hedren). A chance meeting in a pet shop with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) leads her to pursue him to the coastal town of Bodega Bay, where he spends the weekends with his mother and sister. Whilst Melanie is seeking out Mitch she gets attacked by a gull, and Mitch is on hand to clean up the scratch and Melanie gets to meet the family. Following this the instances of bird attacks on humans increase, but without people themselves witnessing the attacks they are loathed to believe this is possible. Melanie is convinced the birds are making organised attacks on people and tries to warn and rescue them. With the attacks so widespread homes are barricaded against the birds, but they are now organised enough to be able to break through into houses.

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of Psychological thriller, outdoes himself here. The action of the gradually increasing bird attacks are played out against the romantic interest between Melanie and Mitch, and Melanie's subsequent exploration of Mitch's background. All the time the menace is growing subtly, until its snowballs into all out terror. The special effects were excellent by the standards of the early 1960's and they were nominated for an Academy Award - they lost out to Cleopatra - unsurprisingly. Particularly stunning are the shots of the swarms of birds which was made up of composites of multiple shots to achieve the required beak count. Tippi Hedren gives a fantastic and rangy performance and suffered for her art in the film. Despite Alfred Hitchcock's assurances prior to filming that when she is attacked by the birds they would be mechanical, when it came to filming the infamous scene real birds were thrown toward her face and her face was cut by one of the birds. The whole scene taking seven days to film and Hedren was reportedly traumatised by the incident so filming was subsequently postponed for a week. The Birds seemed to be the pinnacle of Alfred Hitchcock's work. The skill of his artistry, the wit and the idiosyncrasy in his work all converged here and from this point his work headed (quite rapidly) in a downward direction. But it is here in The Birds his genius is most apparent.

The Birds features in our Interactive Haunted House of Horror guide to horror films and scary movies.

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