THE BIRDS (1963)

THE BIRDS (1963)

Tagline: ...And remember, the next scream you hear could be your own!

(Horror, Mystery, What The Heck [PG-13]

I loathe you. You have no manners. You're arrogant and conceited and... I wrote you a letter about it, in fact, but I tore it up.

In this one, Melanie Daniels pretends to work at a bird shop when a handsome dude named Mitch Brenner shows up. He knows she is messing with him and decides to be the biggest jerk on the planet. Of course, she is all about that and actually stalks him all the way to the small town of Bodega Bay, CA. Once there, Melanie cons Mitch telling him she was already staying there and weaves an assortment of other lies. This ends up in them having dinner… which makes total sense and is a solid foundation for a great relationship (sarcasm). In a seemingly unrelated set of events, it doesn’t take long before birds all over the small town are attacking every human they see because of some unexplained reason. Can this town survive an onslaught of nature’s fury?

First off let me say that in spite of my extremely accurate premise above, director Alfred Hitchcock manages to give us characters we are actually rooting for by delivering some common humanity beneath both Melanie and Mitch’s otherwise un-relatable character. I have watched a bunch of “birds will kill you” movies lately and this one by far has the best story outside of what is going on with the birds themselves. However, when it comes to the reasons why the birds are attacking and any kind of story behind that at all, this script couldn’t be more of a failure. Honestly, I have zero idea how this damn ending got approved. It’s surprisingly bad. 

Where this movie succeeds is in the acting department. As bizarre as the story is, the acting is quite good. Rod Taylor (who plays Mitch) is really solid. Rod actually played a character in the movie KAW which also coincidentally had to do with birds that will kill you. Actress Tippi Hedren is also very good in this. She is best known for this movie and is still acting as of 2022, but if she really was born in 1930, she is 92 as of the writing of this review. Her daughter is Melanie Griffith who is also pretty famous in her own right. Suzanne Pleshette is also very good in this as Annie Hayworth. She is probably most famous for playing Bob Newhart’s wife on “The Bob Newhart Show”.  Annie is probably the third weirdest character in this movie. She literally moved to Bodega Bay and became a school teacher to be near Mitch who broke up with her 4 years earlier. Speaking of weird characters, Jessica Tandy is amazing in this as Mitch’s mother, but man she’s a pain. One thing the script does well with all of these characters though is make them likable to an extent. Jessica Tandy is probably best known for DRIVING MISS DAISY. 

Effects wise this movie was extremely difficult to shoot and features over 3,000 trained birds. This means that when you are watching this a very large portion of the birds in the film are real. They also used some hand puppets for some shots. There were also a lot of new film techniques developed just for this movie. While by today’s standards, some of the shots look pretty goofy, you really have to commend the overall effort. One of the birds hated Rod Taylor so much he would come over and bite him even when the cameras weren’t rolling.

The setting lends to the movie's often frightening atmosphere but there is no actual musical score for this movie. It was partly inspired by a real-life headline in the August 18, 1961 edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel that screamed: "Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes". The article went into detail about how “millions” of birds attacked the area and did all sorts of damage, even chasing residents back into their houses. 

Overall I found the storyline of this movie to be more “odd” than good. I can appreciate the acting and effort and have to give it credit for that. I can also see myself wanting to watch this again at some point. With that said this has to land at a 4 out of 7 for me. It’s pretty solid in the arena of “birds will kill you” movies, but it’s nothing mind-blowing. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF ALFRED J HITCHCOCK PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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