The Birds

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Classic Horror Special

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When I went over 'Psycho' in my "Screening Suggestions", I highly recommended it as the quintessential Hitchcock movie. However, with that, there comes a real flip of the coin. One may very well argue their preference for 'The Birds', and it would be very well warranted. Where 'Psycho' helped launch the slasher genre, this helped make nature scary in such a way that it hasn't even really been attempted since because the idea seems so absurd - birds! (except maybe 'Birdemic: Shock & Terror', but let's try not to count that as a movie).

For yours truly, I sort of split the film into two parts. The first half of it is a lot of talking, getting to know characters, etc. and subtle things start happening around them. The second half plays the horror card a lot more, and the suspense of it all still holds up fairly well today - although some of the green screen effects may not. Still, this is a masterfully scary movie for its time, using something so everyday that it makes one wonder about the effect it had on audiences at the time. Imagine leaving this and looking around at birds all perched and eerie-looking. Time has passed, and it might not have the same effect nowadays, but try Googling "birds attacking humans" and you'll find out things are a bit more common than we think.

The film opens at a San Francisco pet store where Malanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) comes across Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), who is looking to buy a couple of lovebirds for his sister, Cathy's (Veronica Cartwright) 11th birthday. After a brief misunderstanding, Mitch leaves empty handed, but Malanie decides to make amends by purchasing, and delivering the lovebirds as a gift. When she finally tracks him down in Bodega Bay, she takes a boat across the bay to deliver the birds, she is attacked by a gull. Thinking it strange at first, they sort of brush it off, but further attacks start happening and becoming more abundant. Soon enough (and after some long character developing stories from everyone), Melanie and Mitch find themselves trapped in a house, surrounded by flocks of crows, gulls and more. 

With them end up being Mitch's ex; a teacher named Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), Mitch's mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy) and the young and terrified Cathy, who really sells it with her acting. It makes me wonder what cruel technique Hitchcock may have used on her to make her cry as distressfully as she did - like a traumatized kid who just witnessed her cat get hit by a transport truck. As far as explanation for the birds behavior, we never do get it, but that's also what makes it so good. We don't always need to be spoon-fed such things, and sometimes no explanation lends itself to the experience - as though you're one of the trapped people in a scary situation with no clue as to why it's happening or what to do. This further lends itself to the film's truly bizarre ending, which is quite a "WTF" moment, but it leaves you to interpret what Hitchock meant by it all.

Those who know me well know that on this particular coin-flip of film, I very much prefer 'Psycho'. There was something truly disturbing there that has held up to this day very well. With 'The Birds', though a lot of it does still hold up, a lot of it can look pretty dated and corny. There also seems to be a lot about it that's trying to be almost too symbolic, if you feel like doing some deep digging on the subject. I don't mind symbolism, but I mean, to directly quote an article "The Birds is a political allegory about the psychological violence of capitalism and the fear-mongering of the Cold War." 'Psycho' is just about a killer who lost his damn mind, and is the grandfather of slasher horror.


Between liking one or the other more, it's all gonna depend on what you're after. I may prefer 'Psycho', but I can't deny that a lot of the emotions that run here along with certain visual sequences are still pretty scary. For example, at one point we see a character with his eyes pecked out, covered in blood. That scene works as something scary now, let alone 1963. One could easily make this not such a "thinker" and have fun with it as a suspenseful thriller all the same. That's what I did, and the entertainment value is certainly still there. I don't find it to be perfect, but it gets a tremendous amount of respect from me for what it has accomplished. If nothing else, I have memories of this being something scary enough to lose sleep over as a kid, so much like with Freddy, these birds have a certain horrific nostalgia tied to them as one of the first things that legitimately scared me.

4/5

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