"The Birds" Review

 

by Daniel White

San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) shows up in Bodega Bay, with a pair of lovebirds in tow. An exotic creature herself, she elicits her fair share of ogling from the local residents. But is the bewitching Miss Daniels more than just a stylish woman with impeccable taste? Could she also be a sorceress, responsible for the bird attacks that began upon her arrival? Some of the townsfolk seem to think so... Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is a chatty, end-of-the-world thriller. In between scenes of avian assaults, the main characters talk ad nauseum. From overbearing mamas to thwarted love affairs, they hash and rehash these troubling topics. Troubling for them perhaps, but tiresome for us, the viewer.

In pursuit of lantern-jawed lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), Melanie soon finds herself being pursued - by the same feathery fiends she brought with her. Now that's a fascinating angle to zero in on. Leave the rest of the mumbo jumbo Hitch and his screenwriter Evan Hunter cooked up where it belongs - on a psychiatrist's couch.

The flick is still disturbing, containing several unsettling moments. This, despite the dated quality of the special effects. It looks gorgeous too, but it doesn't hold up, not as well as some of Hitchcock's other movies. Well-acted, with exemplary production values, its main failing is its uninteresting, verbose screenplay. The Birds takes flight but it never truly soars.

With Suzanne Pleshette as a school teacher still nursing a torch for ex-lover Rod, and Jessica Tandy as his mother, the torch extinguisher, The Birds is currently available on Netflix.