The Birds

The Birds
Released: May 30, 1963

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Leading Characters: Tippi Hendren - Melanie Daniels, Rod Taylor - Mitch Brenner, Jessica Tandy - Lydia Brenner, Veronica Cartwright - Cathy Brenner
• Horror/Thriller
• PG-13 for violence, gore and frightening/intense scense
• #396 on list

 Chic socialite Melanie Daniels enjoys a passing flirtation with an eligible attorney in a San Francisco pet shop and, on an impulse, follows him to his hometown bearing a gift of lovebirds. But upon her arrival, the bird population runs amok. Suddenly, the townsfolk face a massive avian onslaught, with the feathered fiends inexplicably attacking people all over Bodega Bay. *taken from Netflix


As horror movies go I did not find this a horror, but maybe back in the day this was scary stuff! Even though I wasn't quivering in fear, I did find it a good movie.
There are some slow parts and some overkill acting but that is made up for by some great scenes. One of our favorite scenes is when Melanie is waiting outside Cathy's school. She sits down on a bench with the jungle gym behind her. A grow lands on the gym as the camera pans back to Melanie, after a few seconds it pans back to the gym and you see a few more birds have landed. Back and forth this panning goes until the camera rests on Melanie for an incredibly long amount of time, so long that you're dying to see that blasted jungle gym. Once the camera makes it back to the gym you think, "hmmm, maybe I didn't want to see that gym..." when you see that the whole thing is covered by crows .
Another great scene is showing the town from above after a small fire, then the birds start coming back. This scene was made by the makers marking out on the ground of the stage where the cast could walk. All the places outside of the tape where then blacked out after filming and the town was painted in place. It looked so real that John and I didn't know that it was painted until we watched the special features after the movie. 

Some interesting fact about the movie:
There is no musical score for the movie, fearing that the music would be too much with the mixture of bird calls and screams.
The climatic scene was so physically and emotionally tolling for Tippi Herdren that it put her in the hospital for a week and some of her scenes were filmed by her double.
The Birds is voted the 7th scariest film of all time by Channel 5 and The Times in 2006.


I do have to say that we didn't like how the movie ended. I thought there was going to be at least another 30 minutes when the scene blacked out and the ending titles started to roll. You never find out why the birds attached or how they all ended up in such a small town. 
But all in all we rate it 3.5 stars out of 5.