A film that still holds up

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 1999)

Spoilers!
Tippi Hedren is still a star for this film (recent SF film festival promo commerical paid trib. with a Bird's take-off and a Hedren stand in actress). We see 'Hitch's intro to the thing, with the sort of 'environmentalist' apologetic against man's exploitation of anything fowl.
Given that, the bird's attack cause . . . they're mad, basically. No more turkey dinners. No more aviaries. No more producing tons of eggs that just go bad anyway on the store shelves, anyway. The bird's are fed up and just aren't gonna take . . . well - 'nother movie.
Basically, it's an adaptation of the 50s monster movies. The monster gets loose, authorities are slow to react, to see the larger picture. They run through hoops to explain the evidence. Eventually the army gets called in - save in the other films you saw the jeeps and trucks rolling - here it's just reported on the radio, toward the end.
The birds rampage the town, then chill for awhile, then rampage, chill, rampage, and so on. People get cut up, killed, eyes get pecked out, and so on. Pretty bloody for early 60s. There are just some classic scenes, of course, borrowed and parodied so often since. The bird gather on the jungle gym next to the schoolhouse, as Tippi sits there oblivious. Tippi and kids run in panic as the jungle gym birds alight and swoop down on them. Tippi heads for phone booth as the birds attack the town - birds smash into the glass of said booth. And, of course, the final scene where they slowly drive off, to get Tippi some professional (medical) help, amid thousands of birds just quietly milling around outside the battered homestead, getting up the strength to set off again.
It's different from the other monster attacks movies in that you don't see the army in control, and the monsters vanquished. It's sort of left up in the air (no pun intended) - the big question mark (literally) at the end of some of those films. Did the army successfully rout the birds? Was it a worldwide conspiracy or phenomenon? Did things get back to normal, or was it the beginning of the end for humanity?
Of course, you wonder how the birds could be so intimidating and powerful. Can an angry seagull, even a bunch of them, really do battle with someone holding so much as a baseball bat? I don't know. Blackbirds, ravens - maybe. They seem big with their wings spread. But tons of sparrows? That has to have been a little bit of a joke.
Anyhow.