The Birds: Collector's Edition (US)

Three years before, Alfred Hitchcock had terrified audiences with the macabre tale of Norman Bates, his mother and Marion Crane and had taken a little bit of time out from movie work to pursue his television career. All the while though, he must have been thinking of what to do next and bought the rights to a Daphne du Maurier short story called The Birds. In this short story, set shortly after the Second World War, a small farming family in Cornwall is attacked by a group of birds of various different types and breeds. They wreak utter havoc, ringing down bombers that are sent to destroy them by clogging up their engines before mysteriously disappearing.

Tippi Hedren plays Melanie Daniels, a wealthy socialite who is in a pet store when a handsome man walks in. Pretending that she works at the shop, Melanie strikes up a conversation with the man who asks all sorts of questions about different types of birds. Clearly eager to get to know the man, Melanie bluffs her way through most of the exchange but, when it comes to getting a bird out of the cage, her cover is blown and it turns out that the stranger, a lawyer called Mitch Brenner, knew who she was all along and is to see how far she'd go to keep the pretence going. Describing how he was there to buy a couple of love birds for his young sister's birthday, which he was going to spend up the coast, he leaves empty-handed but suitably amused having rumbled Melanie Daniels.

Melanie decides to buy the love birds and take them to him as a way of getting to know him better but his hotel room is empty. However, one of Mitch's neighbours, who is in the corridor the corridor and sees Melanie leaving the cage outside the door with a note, explains that Mitch has gone away to Bodega Bay for the weekend so decides to pay Mitch a surprise visit and, with the birds in the passenger seat, drives up the coast to pay a surprise visit.

Deciding to get her own back and surprise Mitch, Melanie's rents a small boat and sails across the Bay so she can leave the birds in secret as driving along the coastal road and up to the house would create too much noise. On the way back from the house, a seagull flies down from out of nowhere and attacks Melanie, drawing blood from a nasty cut on her forehead. Small towns being what they are, it isn't long before everyone knows what has happened and Mitch comes down to see how she is. As the love birds were a big hit with Mitch's sister, Melanie is invited to stay for tea so she buys a few things and rents a room to stay the night.

It turns out that the seagull attack was only the tip of the iceberg and, slowly but surely, the numbers of birds in the town grow and grow without any explanation as to why they are there and when, if at all, they will leave.


I always have a really hard job when it comes to ranking Alfred Hitchcock's films as I like some more than others and think that some of the ones I like the most aren't necessarily his best. I'm pretty certain that his greatest work is Vertigo and my favourite of his films is Psycho but creating a top five or even a top ten of best films and favourite films would be extremely difficult. The Birds would probably be on both lists as it is such a magnificent piece of filmmaking and a movie that I could watch over and over again. The beauty with this film is that Hitchcock (and du Maurier) didn't set out to frighten with something that is genuinely considered scary, but turned something you would see every day and not consider at all harmful and twist it into a terrifying monster. Just as people left Psycho and never looked at a shower the same way again, people watch The Birds and look at seagulls, crows and starlings in a completely different way.

Tippi Hedren is one of Hitchcock's best blondes (Grace Kelly is probably number one on the list) and she gives a remarkable performance here, perfectly believable as a flighty playgirl, but resolute and helpful when Mitch's mother is deeply traumatised. As Mitch, a cocksure lawyer, Rod Taylor is extremely good, putting those rugged good looks to find use and is perfectly believable as a loving son and brother who has put his mother's life before his own and chosen not to settle down in a relationship because it might upset his mother. The film is chock-full of great performances including one from a very young Veronica Cartwright, who would go on to star in another genre masterpiece, Alien, some 16 years later.


The Birds is virtually unsurpassed in its scenes of terror when the winged creatures mount an onslaught with some incredible cutting that escalates the pace and fear generated by the attack. Even though some of the close-ups were achieved by using hand puppets, many others used real birds and I can quite believe the apocryphal tale of Tippi Hedren spending a few nights in hospital after filming one incredibly tense scene during which she was pecked numerous times. Hitchcock wasn't known as the 'master of suspense' for nothing as, in between the attacks, the tension is palpable as the townsfolk gather round in whatever safe place they can find and a single caw is enough to set your nerves on edge. There are some films that don't age well because of 'the monster' which, in the case of some films, really loses something when it is quite clearly a man in a suit or, in the case of Jaws (which has aged quite well), a mechanical shark.

I'm pretty hardened to genre films by now, but the sheer intensity of the attacks still gets to me and, even though I now have the film ends, the amount of tension and suspense in the final few scenes has barely diminished since the first time I saw the film.

The Disc

Extra Features
As is quite usual for a Hitchcock DVD, there isn't a great deal on the disc and one can only hope that, when they make the inevitable jump to Blu-ray, the master's greatest films will be given retrospective documentaries, interviews and commentary tracks. As it is then, all you get is a nice retrospective featurette, All About The Birds, which runs at nearly 20 minutes and has contributions from people including Pat Hitchcock, Peter Bogdanovich, production designer Robert Boyle and actors Tippi Hedren, Veronica Cartwright and Rod Taylor. They talk about how they were cast, what filming was like and how the visual effects were created. Without being overly long, this is fairly comprehensive and a good look at the film

There is also one deleted scene, the original ending (which was quite properly ditched in favour of the one that we have now), a storyboard sequence, Tippi Hedren's screen test, two pieces of Universal International newsreel entitled '"The Birds" is coming' and 'Suspense Story', some production photographs, production notes cast and crew filmographies and the theatrical trailer as well as 'recommendations' and a link to the Universal website.

The Picture
Just to show how well the film was made, the matte paintings, rear projection and fake birds aren't an issue as they were done so far at the time that you really don't notice that the backgrounds aren't real and that the wide look down on the town was achieved with some stock footage which was embellished by someone painting on a piece of glass which is layered over a photograph. There is still some print damage evident with the occasional scratch and graining, though not enough to put you off the film. Even the softness isn't too bad and it is a very good transfer.

Colours are extremely bright and vibrant and I can't imagine that the film looks that much worse than it did in 1963 although the only way to really find out is following a high definition restoration process. Hopefully we will have these in the not too distant future.

The Sound
For a film made in Mono sound which is replicated here, the soundtrack is incredibly impressive and really has you on edge during the frenzied bird attacks which have quite sublime sound design, layering sound upon sound to create something that, combined with the visuals, is startling to watch. Unusually for a Hitchcock film, there is no score, something he wanted to do with Psycho but was persuaded by Bernard Herrmann to have one for that film, a decision that worked beautifully and, just as the music played a huge part in Psycho, the lack of music (and sound in general) works extremely well here as there are lengthy periods with almost no sound and the tension builds in a way that it wouldn't have done if there was a musical accompaniment.

There is a rather amusing French dub (at least I found it amusing, French people who don't speak English will probably find it essential!) and optional English HoH subtitles

Final Thoughts
As with most of Hitchcock's films, The Birds is a timeless masterpiece with pitch perfect performances, an intelligent script based on a remarkable book and quite stunning direction by one of cinema's greatest practitioners. The film is brilliant, the DVD is pretty good and the overall package is a 'must own' for any self-respecting horror fan.