The Bird's the Word

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2012)

**SPOILERS*** The film "The Birds" starts out like a 1930's screwball comedy with handsome and available criminal lawyer Mitch Brenner, Rod Taylor, getting under rich socialite as well as jet setting Melanie Daniels, Tippi Hedren, skin about how spoiled she is. That's when Mitch spots her at a local San Francisco pet store where he's looking to buy a pair of love birds for his 11 year old sister Cathy's, Veronica Cartwright, birthday. Annoyed and at the same time impressed by the handsome stranger Melanie find out where he lives and plans to buy him the birds herself as a present and at the same time give him a piece of her mind in the bargain. That's when the light comedy ends and the sheer horror begins in the movie.
Traveling all the way up to Badoga Bay, to present him the love birds, where Mitch is spending the weekend with his mom Lydia, Jessica Tandy,and sister Cathy things start to happen in the little fishing town that there's no logical explanation for. The birds in the area, finches blackbirds ravens and seagulls, start to go on a rampage against the people living there! At first it's just one bird at a time being aggressive but as the days ware on they mass in the hundreds and thousands and attack anything in sight. Melinia getting a room from local teacher Annie Hayworth, Suzanne Pleshette, finds out that not only is she Cathy's teacher but had an affair with Mitch. There's also a side story in the film in that Annie's affair was broken up by Mitch's widowed mom Lydia in fearing that she's take him away from her and that also effects Mitch relations with Melanie as well. That all soon disappears when the birds come on the scene,by the tens of thousands,and start both terrorizing as well as killing the citizens in Badoga Bay!
One of Alfred Hitchcock's biggest hits,it grossed well over 11 million dollars in the box office, with things in it that he's not really known for: The eye popping special effects scenes of the birds on the attack in the air as well as on the ground in the movie. There's that famous scene with Melanie sitting near a monkey bar outside the school where at first one black bird lands on it and then within minutes it swamped with hundreds more as an unsuspecting Melanie with her back turned is just enjoying the view! Not for once realizing that she's, and those in the school, are about to be viciously attacked by them! There's later in the movie the scene when Malanie is trapped in the attic of the Brenner house and attacked and almost pecked to death by hundreds of attacking birds that's even more terrifying and bloody, being shot in color, then the famous shower scene in "Psycho". In fact actress Tippi Hedren was so traumatized by it that she actually suffered a nervous breakdown and was sidelined for a week after living or acting through it!
***SPOILERS*** With all the great scenes in the film it's the final one that really stuck with me. That's when the birds by now in the hundreds of thousands overrunning Bodaga Bay and now completely in control allow the few remaining residents to leave unharmed in a show, if you can call it that, of compassion. In what seems like the birds knowing that after what happened to them that they'll never come back there again and go tell those living outside of Bagoda Bay what to expect if they ever did!