He's done better

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 1999)

I think Mr. Hitchcock concentrated a bit too much on his experiments and too little on actual scares. The choice to have no musical score was daring, but the inclusion of subtle musical cues would have only benefited the often flat suspense scenes. The choice to have the movie end before real resolution did not I feel have the desired effect. I understand what he was trying to do, but it felt more like they ran out of money or time and said, "Why don't we just end it here." And the other guy says, "Works for me. Bye."
The other really annoying thing is that Tippi Hedron's character behaves in such an incredibly foolish manner near the end of the movie (spoilers until the end of this paragraph). A. Why did she refuse to wake up Mitch, who'd been the absolute hero of the whole scenario and saved her butt a couple of times already, before going up the stairs. B. Is her reaction upon seeing the birds in the attic realistic? She manages to lock ***herself*** in the room with the birds. Pretty lame. You can't chalk it up to shock because she'd been attacked by birds about 7 times that day already. She should have been bird-savvy by then. C. It's impossible to believe she had no chance to open the door behind her. Impossible. One more thing. D. I would have left that wacky maniac-bird infested town long before they went back to the house. And E. Why did so many people consciously choose to go outside when the birds attacked. I'll stop here, but I could continue right through ZZ.
All these gripes aside, it's still a decent movie. The acting is pretty good. And Hitchcock as usual gave us some 3 (or 2.5) dimensional characters to latch onto and a decent story before bringing the maniac birds on the scene. It always helps when you care about the characters. (note to modern genre directors: characters and story are what drive films, not special effects and cheap thrills. Put together a movie with strong characters, strong story, then add the cheap thrills and effects; now you have good movie.) And the attacking bird scenes were pretty effective and not as cheesey as you might think for a movie made in the early sixties.
Two and a half stars (out of four).
Take care, Mike