The Birds

1963 fowl movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: This slut buys some love birds and makes the trek to Bodega Bay to hand-deliver them the guy she currently wants to sleep with. Suddenly, seagulls and crows begin to attack humans for no good reason. Oh, snap!

"Are the birds gonna eat us, Mommy?"

Again, Hitchcock does a lot of subtle things with the camera here that enhance the experiences and set this a few notches above your standard birds-attacking-people-for-no-good-reason movies. The Bodega Bay setting is often framed so perfectly, and there are a lot of interesting visual perspectives you're not used to seeing. I'm not sure if Hitchcock was trying to show you things from a bird's eye view or not, but it kept things naturally uneasy. I also like the decision to use no music at all in the movie, just those exaggerated, almost comic bird sound effects. I saw this one as a kid (I think at my dad's house) and some scenes just never leave the mind--the creepy school children song chanted while crows gather on the monkey bars, the shot of the dead farmer with his pecked-out eyes, the seagulls floating into the overhead shot of a fire in the middle of town, that horrifying Tippi-in-the-phone-booth scene. Speaking of Tippi, I'll still contend that the scene where she's attacked in the attic is the most erotic five minutes ever filmed. I also love the scene where a bird puppet attacks Rod Taylor's arm, and the Night of the Living Dead-esque drama that unfolds as the characters hide inside their boarded-up house. Another great Tippi shot: the quick cuts between a moving line of fire and Hedron's slightly-changed expressions as her eyes follow the flame's movement. And who wouldn't enjoy watching so much footage of birds attacking children? Seriously, what's better than that? Speaking of that, I could understand an argument that the special effects in this are dated, but I really love them. They're dated in a good way! This movie also has a great stunt when a guy pumping gas gets hit in the head with a bird and falls down. The final shot--the car driving off with the lower half of the screen covered in bird and the upper half a gray sky with sun rays slicing across--is also really beautiful. There's an interesting subtext that takes this out of B-movie realms with poor Mitch and the women in his life--the old flame, the feisty aggressive new fling, the oppressive mother, and the little sister (what an age difference!). It'd be fun to look at the birds as symbols or examine this movie from a feminist perspective, but I'll save those kinds of thoughts for the next Disney cartoon I watch.

[Too Much Information Alert!]: The first time I pleasured myself, it was while watching that birds-attacking-Tippi scene. That wasn't at my dad's house. He showed me that when I was three, too young to masturbate. Speaking of toddlers, I tricked Sophie into watching this with me by telling her it was Rio. She didn't seem to enjoy it very much.