The Good & Bad Of 'The Birds'

Rating: 9/10 (6 December 2006)

This is one of the landmark films where if you saw it in the theater when it was released, you never forgot the experience. What I'll never forget - and this is true, so help me - is that moments after I left the theater, a couple birds swooped over my head. I thought I'd have a heart attack at the age of 18!! I never forgot that. It still creeps me out.
Since then, I've seen the film at least a half dozen times, both on TV, on VHS and on DVD and always found it fascinating....even 40-some years later. Sure, it doesn't pack the wallop it did when it came out, but it's still scary enough with unique, memorable scenes.
THE GOOD - Those scenes with the birds becoming larger and larger in numbers while sitting on the jungle gym bars, or the telephone wires are some of the most memorable in movie history. Who can forget them, especially if one first saw this film at a young and impressionable age? The suspense and the terror that director Alfred Hitchcock mounted with these scenes are almost unparalleled in film history, so kudos to him for that. Also, even though the special-effects are dated, they were still good enough to be effective today. The birds attacking the kids can still look plenty real. The ending also was very suspenseful and a very good one. This movie is certainly one of the most unique ever made.
Acting-wise, I'm sorry Tippi Hedren never made it in the business with that classically-beautiful face and pleasant demeanor. Her acting seemed okay to me, so I don't know what the deal was with her career....or lack of one. Rod Taylor, meanwhile, was fine and Suzanne Pleshette was good in a low-key role. Viewing this in '90s, it was interesting to see such a young Veronica Cartwright, someone, of course, I was unfamiliar with back in the 1960s.
THE BAD - A lot of these pertain to my personal beliefs, not to the film-making. For instance, I can't stand shrill, hysterical women so Jessica Tandy's role in here as the crabby old protective mother of star Rod Taylor is extremely irritating to me and takes away from the enjoyment of the movie. I have no problem with the rest of the major players, as I mentioned above.
I did not appreciate the usual cheap shot at Christians, which was becoming more and more frequent in the 1960s. The only "religious" person in the movie was some wild-eyed doomsday predictor - and drunk - at a restaurant. I'm not surprised Hitchcock, a biased pagan himself, included that in the film. It wasn't untypical of him, and it wasn't there by accident.
Some of the scenes were too talky and melodramatic, mostly those with Hedren and either Taylor or Tandy but then, too much action would have spoiled the suspense, so I just put up with some of those annoying-dialog scenes and wait for the birds to re-appear!
ONE LAST NOTE: When are they going to produce a good DVD of this film? The disc I owned was almost identical to the VHS, a very poor transfer. I got rid of it, but would be happy to reacquire this film with a sharp DVD transfer. It certainly deserves one.