Awesome Hitchcock movie with horror moments and hair-raising scenes

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2010)

This suspenseful shocker deals about a beautiful and rich girl named Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), at the beginning she is shopping in a San Francisco pet store when she meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Mitch is looking to buy some birds for his young sister's birthday , he recognizes Melanie but pretends to mistake her for a shopkeeper. After that ,she decides to buy the birds and driving up to the pacific isolated coastal California community called Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends his weekends with his mummy (Jesica Tandy) and sister (Veronica Cartwright) . Shortly after Melanie Daniels is crossing a lake, then she is cruelly nipped by a gull. Gradually, events of bird attacks on people by pecking increases. Kids are attacked at a birthday party (where appears as little girl Morgan Brittany). Meanwhile, children are sent home from school run by teacher (Suzanne Pleshette), townspeople (Charles McGraw, Karl Swenson, Chapman) take refuge in a lunchroom, a gas station is burnt, Melanie is trapped in a phone booth, and, finally, everyone hides in homes tightly closed against repeated attacks by the birds.
Hitchcock's classic about a gorgeous woman who follows a gentleman until a quiet place where suddenly happens mass bird attacks . After frightening spectators of the 60s with ¨Psycho¨ director Hitch took one more successful outing at the terror genre with this excellent movie full of subterranean hints. Exciting scenes when birds attack with death dropping fiercely , its menace magnified similarly to crop-dusting images in ¨North by Northwest¨. Interesting screenplay by Evan Hunter based on Daphne Du Maurier's (Jamica Inn,Rebecca) short story. Al always, Alfred Hitchcock cameo, this time as man walking dogs out of pet shop. Wonderful Tippi Hedren as obstinate Melanie , she's marvelous and brilliantly dressed by Edith Head , but she had a tortuous involvement to Hitch, habitual issue with his leading ladies. Acceptable special effects by Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney's usual, and Albert Whitlock in pictorial designs and the future director John Bud Cardos as bird wrangler. And colorful and evocative cinematography by Robert Burks, also Hitchcock's customary. Rare and strange electronic musical score fitting to bird attacks. This delightful film is stunningly directed by the master Hithcock. Followed by a lousy and cheesy sequel in 1994 titled ¨The birds II : land's end¨ by Rick Rosenthal under ordinary pseudonym as Alan Smithee with Brad Johnson, Megan Gallaher and again Tippi Hedren. Rating : Not for squeamish but well worth seeing because it is an immortal classic movie. This is Hitchcock at his best.