"THE BIRDS"

Taylor Spady

Mr. Armstrong

English 1

12^th, October 2010

MOVIE REVIEW

If you are looking for a movie produced in the 1970’s, that will rise the tension and make you weary when you look up at the sky when you see strange flying creatures above you, then I know the perfect movie.  In the last few days, I was given the opportunity to watch Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds”.   Alfred Hitchcock (the director of “The Birds”) does a great job with this movie.  He ties in his bazaar and creative ideas to raise suspense and horror of this film.

            Hitchcock did an outstanding job when it comes to picking the right characters to play the roles in this movie. It starts of with Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) at a pet store buying birds in her home town of San Francisco.  Then a young man walks in by the name of Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) walks into the store and starts giving Ms. Daniels a hard time. Mrs. Daniels being mighty clever and all decided to take a pair of love birds to his weekend home at Bodega Bay.

            When she arrives at Bodega Bay, she finds out that Mitch has a little sister named Cathy, so she address the envelope to her instead of Mitch.  Hitchcock does a great job at this part when he has Tippi Hedren portray how anxious Ms. Daniels  is to find the Brenner’s house.   

            After she drops off the love birds and is paddling back to the other side, she is struck by a gull and is bleeding.  The special effects of this movie were top of the line at the time, but watching it now after seeing the movies that were produced lately, you can tell that that the birds are fake. It appears as if someone off the set is throwing the birds at the people, and the blood is too red and looks as if it were sponged on. No matter what type of bird is attacking, they all make the same sounds, which does NOT make the film realistic. 

            Also, the movie “The Birds” was completely different from the book. Some of the differences would be were the movie is based, and the entire story line.  The only things that remained the same in both the movie and the book is that the birds attack in cycles, and they both boarded up the windows and doors.

              I also didn't agree about how Hitchcock ended the movie. Melanie was injured after being attacked by the birds in the attic, but the film suddenly ends when Mr. Brenner and his family are taking her to the hospital in San Francisco. But then again, the book had a terrible ending as well. Over all this is a very good movie and advise you to watch it.