The Birds

Residents of a northern California coastal town find themselves the targets of increasingly vicious attacks by an ever-growing number of birds.

The Birds shouldn’t work. The premise—a small town attacked by birds—is laughable, and the lead actress had little more than a diet-cola commercial to her credit, yet director Alfred Hitchcock pulls it off, delivering what’s essentially a zombie movie with birds instead of undead.

Granted, The Birds isn’t perfect. Despite receiving only fourth billing, Tippi Hedren is the real lead and while she’s good during the film’s early goings, which call for a rather limited range, she’s frustrating and inadvertently laughable during her big dramatic moment toward the film’s finale. Some of this is due to the script, which has her suddenly acting like a helpless idiot, but a large part of the problem is that Hedren simply doesn’t have the range.

Further, the special effects are hit and miss. Some shots, like the one involving dozens and dozens of birds atop a school jungle gym, are classic and hold up well to this day, while others, such as the animated shots of the birds attacking the school children, don’t age as well.

Perhaps the best thing The Birds does is something it doesn’t do. In a lesson Hitchcock likely learned from his previous film, Psycho, we’re not subjected to a complicated explanation of the film’s strange events. In fact, we’re given no explanation at all, and that, perhaps more than anything else, is why The Birds works.