too shallow a plot even for a Twilight Zone episode

Rating: 3/10 (8 June 2005)

My daughter informed me that the movie, The Birds, was based on a short story--only 33 pages long, in fact. I only found this out recently, but I am not the least bit surprised, as I found the movie to be way too shallow to deserve the positive acclaim it has received. I think what had happened was that by the mid-1960s, Hitchcock had established quite a reputation for himself so people just assumed this was yet another great film. I don't think so. To me, it seems that the brilliance of Vertigo and North By Northwest just isn't evident in this shallow movie. Okay, here's the plot: In a small town, the birds go nuts and start attacking people. A man meets a woman in the midst of the carnage, so, of course, they must fall in love (or something) rather than just LEAVE THE STINKING TOWN. Yes, I know that they were "trapped" in the town--no one ever heard of using a car? Yeah, the gas station blew up, but that STILL doesn't explain this. If you want to see a movie about a town in terror, watch Village of the Damned--this one SHOULD have been the Hitchcock movie!