Should I Watch..? 'The Birds' (1963)

The Birds is a mystery horror film released in 1963 and is loosely based on the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the film depicts a series of strange and deadly attacks on a remote beach community by an ever-increasing number of murderous birds. The film stars Tippi Hedren in her credited film debut, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette. Initially released to a fairly mixed response from critics, the film has massively grown in stature in the years since and is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. It was also the last Hitchcock film to be nominated for an Oscar. It would eventually be followed by a sequel in 1994, The Birds II: Land's End, which was widely derided and featured a new setting and characters although Hedren would reluctantly return in a cameo.

Enigmatic socialite Melanie Daniels meets handsome lawyer Mitch Brenner in a San Francisco bird shop, who is looking to purchase a pair of lovebirds for his younger sister birthday. However, not everything is as it seems - Mitch recognises Melanie from a prior court appearance and quickly deduces that she doesn't actually work there. After dropping hints, Mitch leaves without purchasing anything while an intrigued Melanie finds out who this mysterious man is after running a check on his number plate via her father's journalistic empire. She decides to buy the lovebirds for Mitch anyway and secretly follows him to his remote family home in Bodega Bay in northern California.

After making enquiries in town with local school teacher Annie Hayworth, Melanie learns the identity of Mitch's sister and surreptitiously leaves the lovebirds at Mitch's place. As she rows across the bay, she is inexplicably attacked by a seagull and meet Mitch at a nearby diner who tends to her wounds. While Melanie and Mitch wrestle with their growing attraction to each other, they are unaware of the insidious growing threat against Bodega Bay by the growing number of agitated avians gathering in the skies above. And none of them are prepared for the chaos about to be unleashed...

Even casual fans of cinema know that nobody does suspense quite like Alfred Hitchcock and rarely has his talents been better utilised than with The Birds. The film builds slowly, feeling more akin to his earlier thrillers like North By Northwest featuring characters trading in secrets, talking in code and wallowing in Sixties glamour full of cigarettes and fur coats. In fact, when the first bird strike does arrive, it has so little fanfare that I found myself wondering if it actually happened because there is literally no warning. It isn't as big a swerve as Janet Leigh's fate in Psycho but there are echoes there.

Unlike Hitchcock's famous proto-slasher, this film has no memorable soundtrack at all beyond the curious screeching of the birds that seems to be permeate every scene. But in truth, that's all it needs - it gives the film an authenticity that makes it more terrifying. And it is genuinely terrifying. Some of the effects have dated but there are still many scenes, such as the sudden home invasion by an army of sparrows, that send a true shiver down your spine and feel horribly real. As the story unfolds, it turns more into an apocalyptic survival-style thriller that feels more like a zombie flick than anything else. It's easy to see this film's DNA pass down into films as diverse as Night Of The Living Dead, Alien and even underrated B-movie Tremors. The film is at its most effective once the full scope of the havoc becomes clear (crucially, without explaining why) and it soon becomes obvious how this film has terrified generations of children as crowds of screaming kids flee from their feathered tormentors.

• Hitchcock first saw Hedren in a 1961 TV commercial and decided to cast her in the lead for this film which was then in pre-production. Years later, Hedren stated that she was the victim of unwanted sexual advances from Hitchcock and developed an all-consuming obsession with her. She also noted that after she turned him down, she was injured on set during the shoot when mechanical bird props were replaced with real birds at the last minute.
• The film's bird sound effects were provided by an early synthesizer called the Mixtur-Trautonium, with artists Oskar Sala & Remi Gassmann commissioned to perform for the film. Hitchcock's previous collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann, allegedly suggested the lack of musical soundtrack for the film and was credited as a 'Sound Consultant'.
• Japanese director Akira Kurosawa was working on a list of his 100 greatest films shortly before he died. Restricting himself to one film per director, Kurosawa chose The Birds to represent Hitchcock's large body of work due to how uneasy he felt watching it and his admiration for Hitchcock's ability to actually film it.
• Although it was loosely based on du Maurier's story, there is some element of real-life in the screenplay. In 1961, reports of a massed bird attack in the town of Capitola was brought to Hitchcock's attention which detailed seagulls dive-bombing people's homes and crashing into cars - elements he then included in the final film. The cause of the attack was also unknown at the time but was later confirmed to be caused by toxic algae the birds had eaten.

As influential and as culturally significant as this film is, I can't honestly say that it's not in the same vein as Hitchcock's best work. For starters, I wasn't convinced by Hedren's performance. Her best scenes are in the early parts of the film where things are much more conventional, coming across as a Hepburn-like lead with plenty of attitude and sex appeal. But once the birds start their reign of terror, she feels as though she withdraws much more as her character is reduced to a mere damsel in distress. Something didn't click with me, for some reason. The rest of the cast aren't that great either - Taylor is your typically square-jawed and excessively stoic hero, Tandy doesn't look much older than her supposed son Taylor and Pleshette doesn't get enough screen time, despite being a more interesting character than the other leads. It's disappointing to see in a Hitchcock film (where characters are normally the lifeblood) that the human cast are overshadowed by the film's effects and overwhelming levels of tension.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against films that violently pivot into something else halfway through. Psycho is a prime example as the film suddenly switches its focus from the supposed lead character to the cop investigating their murder while one of my favourite J-horror films Audition pulls a similar change of direction, veering from a mild rom-com to a ultra-violent revenge thriller with acupuncture needles. But The Birds feels a bit too jarring to me, like it's two unrelated films being forced to coexist within the same running time. And while I fully appreciate the impact the film's second half would have, I wanted to know more about these characters and why I should care about them. I found the first half more interesting despite feeling a bit slower. Maybe I've become too accustomed to survival films these days, which follow the template Hitch lays down here a bit too closely, but I imagine the film was much more impactful back in the day than it is today.

The Birds is undoubtedly one of Hitchcock's more essential films and fans of his would be well rewarded giving it a chance. It expertly builds its tension to maximum effect before unleashing a truly frightening vision upon its audience. It hasn't aged that well in places and thanks to too many imitators, it has lost a little of its initial power. But the film remains a dark and disturbing watch, perhaps even more than Psycho, and it deserves its reputation as one of cinema's greatest chillers.

Great For: scaring generations of viewers, influential generations of filmmakers, fans of Hitchcock's work

Not So Great For: Tippi Hedren's career, my mother, ornithophobics

The Fifties were arguably Hitchcock's greatest period of productivity with classic films like Strangers On A Train, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo and North By Northwest among the many highlights. Remarkably, the man had been directing films since 1925 after making his debut with the silent movie The Pleasure Garden. For over fifty years, Hitchcock would become revered for his mastery of the macabre and become synonymous with tension and suspense in films. Even his final film, 1976's Family Plot, would still be hailed by many as Hitch trying something new even at such a late stage in his career. His professional reputation remains as solid as his personal reputation - with allegations of backstage bullying and sexual harassment - has become tarnished.

While The Birds may be classified as a horror film, it also works as a good example of a survival film as it pitches its cast of characters into a battle for survival against overwhelming odds. Traditionally, this is the usual style for most zombie films from George A Romero's pioneering Night Of The Living Dead to Edgar Wright's tongue-in-cheek homage Shaun Of The Dead. But it isn't just hordes of shuffling undead that can threaten a film's plucky cast - take Assault On Precinct 13 which places its rag-tag cast of characters in a police station besieged by lawless gang members or how about the action film to end them all, Die Hard which sees Bruce Willis' lone cop trapped in a single building by a heavily-armed gang of professional criminals. It may seem a stretch but the sense of claustrophobia, the growing menace and the sense that the heroes might not make it to the end all appear in this film, maybe not for the first time but rarely as effectively.