I've been listening to a podcast about Alfred Hitchcock in the past few weeks, so I decided to take a look and see which of his films I could watch with minimal fuss. "The Birds" was, of all things, on regular non streaming television (I know!) last week, so I set the recorder and watched it for the first time in a while. I have to say that, despite a couple of flaws, I really rather enjoyed it.
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) heads to a small coastal town on the west coast of America, to connect with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). The pairs awkward courtship is interrupted by moments of unusual and violent behaviour from the bird population of the town. The scale of the violence increases with each incident, causing the Daniels and Brenner to barricade themselves in Brenner's farmhouse.
Interestingly, watching it today what "The Birds" feels most like, particularly once you get to the farmhouse assault is a zombie film, with a mostly unseen force banging on the doors and desperate fortifications that have been hastily assembled. It does take quite a while to get to the bird attacks, but I did enjoy the slightly salacious romantic comedy drama that the film is, prior to the shift into becoming a horror film. Hedren and Taylor are a delightful pair, but there's intrigue afoot with his former girlfriend now the schoolteacher in town and his mother seemingly unhappy about any potential romance.
Admittedly, the composite work on mixing bird footage in with the filmed pieces hasn't aged well and, though I don't need my films to each be tied up in a nice bow, the ending remains one of the most ". . . Wait, what?. . ." moments in all of film. To describe it as anticlimactical doesn't do the term justice.
I still enjoyed it though and, with certain caveats, would recommend it.
