The Birds

Considered Hitchcock's last great film The Birds tells a troubling story of all the birds going crazy, flocking together, and attacking humans.

As the movie begins Melanie Davis played by Tippi Hendren enters a pet store to pick up a bird she has ordered. As she waits a man mistakes her for a store employee and she plays along. Eventually it is determined she is not telling the truth and he and she both leave without their birds.

On a lark she determines to deliver his birds to him, and when a neighbor informs he has gone to Bodega Bay for the weekend she decides to deliver them there. We see her take a set of lovebirds to him, even crossing the bay in a rented skiff to surprise him. When he discovers her gift he races on the coast road and is there waiting for Melanie as she passes back across the lake. As she pulls up to the dock a gull attacks her leaving a cut on her head.

This is just the beginning of some very scary events.

The cast is strong. Jessica Tandy plays Lydia Brenner, the young man Mitch's mother, for much of the movie we see a remnant from Psycho, a domineering mother but by movie's end she is a more sympathetic character.

Hendren is strong in her role but certainly not as captivating as her forebears Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Janet Leigh. Susanne Pleshette plays Annie, the schoolteacher in the village who as a former flame of Mitch offers friendship to Melanie as she decides if she is attracted to Mitch or not.

This is a good movie but it certainly suffers in comparison to many of the Hitchcock movies I have seen and enjoyed, the plot is less about the suspense between human relationships and more about the supernatural. For me that makes the movie solid but certainly not as successful as some of the earlier movies.