The Birds (1963)

This review is in honor of my cockatiel "Bird" who recently went to that huge flock in the sky. He used to love MTV and Guns N Roses, He especially enjoyed "Welcome to the Jungle". He was with me for almost 30 years and his screeching will be missed.

This movie, directed by the amazing Alfred Hitchcock, was based on a short novel by Daphne du Maurier.

Melanie Daniels(Tippi Hedren) meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in San Francisco while picking up a bird for her aunt at a pet shop. Melanie pretends to work at the shop and Mitch pretends to think that she does until he lets her know that he sees through her ruse. I think that the expensive dress gave her away as her father owns a large local newspaper. Mitch is there to order some lovebirds for his sister Cathy who is having a birthday. Melanie and Mitch part, but Melanie knows what she wants and finds out what his address is and decides to deliver the lovebirds herself.

Mitch lives in a town north of San Francisco called Bodega Bay where the movie was actually filmed. When she gets into town, she decides to take a motorboat across the harbor to surprise Mitch. She looked really good doing it in her fancy coat, hair and pumps. She leaves the birds at the house and drives across the harbor again although Mitch sees her and drives around the harbor to meet her in his car. While she is crossing the harbor in the boat, a seagull dive bombs her leaving her with a bit of a bloody forehead.

Over the next few days, Melanie meets some of the other people in Mitch's life including Mitch's slightly controlling mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy), his 11 year old sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) and his former girlfriend and Cathy's teacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette).

The bird attacks escalate beginning with a bird killing itself by slamming into Annie's front door where Melanie is spending the night (how weird is that, not the bird dying but her staying at her crush's old girlfriend house. What, no hotel?). The birds then attack a group of children that attend Cathy's birthday party at Mitch's house. The famous schoolyard scene then occurs with the attack of crows on the schoolchildren. After that attack, Melanie goes to a bar to call her father and finds that several other attacks have happened. People are starting to become hysterical with a woman accusing Melanie of being the catalyst since this didn't start happening until Melanie showed up. Some people run outside and the birds begin a huge attack that includes the famous phone booth scene where Melanie is trapped inside the booth.

Mitch comes and picks up Melanie and they go to pick up Cathy from Annie's house and find Annie dead with Cathy crying inside. They go to Mitch's house and barricade themselves inside. There is another attack as the birds fly in through the fireplace. Things calm down and everyone goes to sleep. They later hear something upstairs and find that the birds have broken through the roof. Melanie is attacked and they manage to get her out of the room, but must take her to the hospital. Everyone calmly goes out to the car as they are surrounded by birds everywhere...just watching them.

This movie is awesome and way ahead of it's time.

Rated PG-13. 120 Minutes. I give this film FOUR AND ONE HALF STARS.

There was an instance in Capitola where some strange bird activity occurred. Apparently Hitchcock used to have a home in Scotts Valley and he requested a copy of the article from the Santa Cruz Sentinal be sent to him as "research material for his latest thriller". Read about it here www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/183/

Brian and I went to Bodega Bay years ago and it was fun to drive along the exact routes that you see in the movie. We even sat in front of the schoolyard where the crow attacks occurred. I hate crows. We also saw this movie screened at the Stanford Theater a few years back and got to see Tippi Hedren who did a Q & A in between movies. She was lovely! She is also the mother of Melanie Griffith and runs a refuge for big cats (lions and tigers).

Keep an eye out for a quick appearance of Hitchcock when Melanie goes into the pet shop at the beginning of the movie. Alfie liked to make small cameo appearances in his films. Here is his cameo in "The Birds".