
For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 17 prompt is Alfred Hitchcock. We watched the movie, The Birds on Netflix.
Storyline
Melanie Daniels is the modern rich socialite, part of the jet-set who always gets what she wants. When lawyer Mitch Brenner sees her in a pet shop, he plays something of a practical joke on her, and she decides to return the favor. She drives about an hour north of San Francisco to Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends the weekends with his mother Lydia and younger sister Cathy. Soon after her arrival, however, the birds in the area begin to act strangely. A seagull attacks Melanie as she is crossing the bay in a small boat, and then, Lydia finds her neighbor dead, obviously the victim of a bird attack. Soon, birds in the hundreds and thousands are attacking anyone they find out of doors. There is no explanation as to why this might be happening, and as the birds continue their vicious attacks, survival becomes the priority.
Out Thoughts on The Birds (1963)
This is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. It is so well done and what is to be expected. It starts off setting the scene perfectly with a woman getting over her head and ending up paying for it in the end. As the old saying goes, you can’t do anything nice for anybody.
7 out of 10
Trivia
When audiences left the U.K. premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further.
Alfred Hitchcock revealed on The Dick Cavett Show (1968) that 3,200 birds were trained for the movie. He said the ravens were the cleverest, and the seagulls were the most vicious.
Rod Taylor claims that the seagulls were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.
Although there is no musical score for this movie, composer and Sir Alfred Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann is credited as a Sound Consultant.