The Birds

This weekend I just watched Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) starring Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette.  I’ve always loved this classic thriller where nature goes on the attack.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a San Francisco socialite meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a pet store in San Francisco and they hit it off.   Melanie impulsively buys two love birds for Mitch’s sister Cathy and plans on driving up the coast to Bodega Bay to drop them off and surprise them.  Shortly after her arrival, a gull swoops down and attacks Melanie but this is just a hint of things to come.  Melanie gets closer to Mitch and his little sister Cathy but has a harder time breaking the ice with Mitch’s mother, Lydia (an excellent portrayal by Jessica Tandy).  Little by little we see normal characters deal with the abnormal situation where birds of all species start attacking the people of Bodega Bay.  

This is one of those movies I enjoy watching every time I watch it and is one of my favorite atmospheric horror movies.  It’s a Technicolor classic where the town and its colorful citizens add to the tension and humor of the very abnormal situation.  Terror slowly escalates and the bird attack scenes are especially horrifying and fun to watch.  If you haven’t seen this movie or watched it for a long time, take a look and you’ll quickly get sucked in to this wonderful Hitchcock classic!