Classic film review: The Birds

ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S THE BIRDS

Birds gather all around the houses.  First in their ones and twos.  Then more begin to gather. Nobody quite knows why.  People begin to get uneasy even if they’re not quite sure why. After all, they’re only birds.  What harm can they do?
  This sets the scene for one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most remembered films.  It caught the imagination of many cinemagoers by striking a nerve with the public.  Many folk to have a fear of birds fluttering too close to their heads.  The Master of Suspense harnessed this latent fear and brought it to the surface in this truly terrifying film classic based on a short story from Daphne DuMaurier.
  As the story continues, the sense of menace grows.  Isolated incidents suggest that birds have lost their natural shyness in the presence of people.  They seem to have become more aggressive, perhaps even malevolent.  We don’t know why, but birds don’t like us any more.  
  This film scared the living daylights out of me when I was a youngster, Even today I find it almost painful to watch the terrifying scene where a huge swarm of birds try to get into a school and finally break in through a chimney. Part of the sense of terror comes from the thought that this maybe could happen.  Dracula and Frankensteins’s monster seem implausible.  Birds gone bad seems like a much more likely plot device. Add to this fine performances from Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor and  you have a classic that is unlikely to be bettered.  We may get to test this for ourselves soon as rumours abound of a remake due for release next year.   This horror chassic is readily available on DVD and as part of a boxed set of Hitchcock’s finest films.  Nobody’s film library can be called complete without a copy of The Birds.