From 1963, it's The Birds.
While watching this with Andrea (look, it was her idea to stick around and watch this with me!), I greeted each bird attack by calling the birds "the BOIDS!!!"
It just got funnier every time!
Loosely based on the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, the film was also inspired by a real life event that occurred August 18, 1961, a mass bird attack on the seaside town of Capitola in California.
The film opens with the credits (of course) as they pass sans music across a montage of birds (BOIDS!) in shadow and silhouette, flapping across the screen.
In early 1960's San Francisco, socialite Melanie Daniels and lawyer Mitch Brenner have a meet-cute in a pet store.
Melanie rents a boat in town and crosses the bay to stealthily leave the lovebirds at the Brenner farm. While returning by boat across the bay, Melanie is attacked....
By a BOID!
Now we're getting somewhere!!!
It's a seagull, flapping it's wings furiously, clawing and pecking at the hapless Melanie in her boat, gashing her forehead. Mitch witnesses the attack, helps Melanie to get her wound treated.
Boy that bird attack was weird, huh?
Mitch invites Melanie to dinner to meet his sister and mother, Lydia, who has a problem with Melanie's socialite reputation (she reads the newspapers). Lydia also has a problem....
With BOIDS!!
Her hens are all in a tizzy and on a hunger strike, refusing to eat their feed.
Melanie spends the night with Annie (No, it's not like THAT... but it feels like it could be?) so she can stick around Bodega Bay another day for Cathy's birthday party.
It's quite a lovely party with cake, ice cream and....
The BOIDS!!!
Yep, there's screams and terror as Cathy's nice little birthday party is attack by seagulls!
What the hell?
That night at dinner at the Brenner farm, Melanie, Mitch, Cathy and Lydia have to contend with...
The BOIDS!!!!
A god damn flock of sparrows rush in through the chimney and ATTACK!!!!!
Melanie should get in her car and drive back to San Francisco but NO! She sticks around another day.
Hitchcock sets up this really cool scene. Back in town near the school, Melanie is sitting on a bench with a playground behind her. The short is framed with Melanie in the foreground and just over her shoulder you can see some monkey bars.
A bird lands. Followed by another. The another. Melanie needs to turn around and see the bird are starting to gather.
Then Hitchcock zooms out and we see the entire playground is just covered in a ton of birds.
BOIDS!!
The school where Annie teaches is attacked....
By BADGERS!!!!
No, dammit! BOIDS!!!!!!
And Annie gets killed. (So she may have been a lesbian?)
Then downtown Bodega Bay is attacked by....
Pandas!!!
Fuck NOI!!!! BOIDS!!!!!!!!
Who cause a gas station to catch fire and explode?!?!?
Melanie joins Mitch, Cathy and Lydia as they barricade themselves into the Brenner home. The birds cannot get in now.
Except....
Mitch missed a spot and Melanie enters a room that is jam packed with....
Balloons!!!
Oh come on! It's BOIDS!!!!!!!!!
And they almost peck and claw poor Melanie to death before Mitch can drag her out of there.
Tippi Hedren (making her movie debut as Melanie) spent a week shooting this scene and it was a traumatizing for the actor as it was for the character.
Come the dawn and Melanie is desperate need of medical help. And the house is still surrounded by lots and lots of bird who are just...
Sitting there.
Menacingly.
Slowly, step by tentative step, the foursome make their way to Mitch's car and they drive away, the assembled masses of bird just watching them as we reach...
The End!
...
The end?
What the hell???
Wait! What was the deal with the birds? Why were the birds attacking? Why did the birds not attack at the end???
Alfred Hitchcock hears your questions and is slowly counting the fucks he gives about them.
Zero. The number of fucks he gives about answers is zero.
In fact, that scamp Alfred did not want to include a "The End" title card at the end, just have the cast drive off, fade to black and leave the audience wondering, "Is that it?"
The studio made Hitchcock put in a "The End" title card.
What the studio did not make the director put in the film was a reason for the bird attacks.
Screenwriter Evan Hunter had proposed some foundational ideas such as the townspeople having a guilty secret to hide with the birds an instrument of punishment. Hitchcock wanted to up the ante on the horror of the bird attacks by keeping the reasons for the attacks ambiguous. The characters are uneasy knowing the birds could attack at any moment and they don't know why AND the audience is also uneasy, not being privy to any knowledge the characters do not have.
By the way, the film used mostly real birds. Some of the crows were ravens and the seagulls had been gathered from nearby landfills. The sparrow invasion used a combination of wild sparrows and others purchased from a pet shop. About a quarter of a million was spent on making some mechanical birds to fill out the avian cast.
The Birds is a masterful example of suspense and horror in film with Alfred Hitchcock ratcheting up the tension with each successive bird attack. Even if you've seen the movie before, there is still a remarkable sense of tension, pondering when there will next be an attack by...
The BOIDS!!!!
Next week, Cinema Sunday's spotlight on Alfred Hitchcock continues with North By Northwest.
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