This Hitchcock thriller is guaranteed to make you want to stop bird-watching and put the old bird feeder to the axe--at least for a while. The whole thing starts when Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is crossing a lake and is nipped by a gull. Gradually, incidence of bird damage to humans by pecking increases. Glass windows splinter before diving birds, children are sent home from school to safety, townspeople take refuge in a lunchroom, Miss Hedren in a phone booth, and finally everyone hides in homes tightly boarded up against repeated attacks by the birds. It's enough to make you kick the next pigeon you come across.
Summary written by filmfactsman
Date Added to CMC
11/13/2005
Original Released
3/28/1963
Cast
Rod Taylor
Jessica Tandy
Suzanne Pleshette
Tippi Hedren
Veronica Cartwright
Charles McGraw
Director(s)
Alfred Hitchcock
Writer(s)
Evan Hunter
Producer(s)
Alfred Hitchcock
Plot Description
A young socialite (Tippi Hedren) visits a downtown San Francisco pet shop on a Friday afternoon. Outside, seagulls gather menacingly in nearby Union Square. She meets Mitch (Rod Taylor), a lawyer who is looking for a pair of lovebirds to give to his little sister for her birthday. The young lady pretends to be the shopkeeper, showing him various types of birds (and mostly misidentifying them), until she accidentally releases a canary into the store. When Mitch reveals after the incident that he knows her as Melanie Daniels, the daughter of a newspaper magnate, and tells her off for being a spoiled prankster, she decides to get back at him by buying him the lovebirds he couldn't obtain and delivering them to his apartment the next morning. It turns out that Mitch spends his weekends in Bodega Bay, a small coastal down to the north of the city.
Arriving in Bodega Bay, she seeks out Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), the local teacher, in order to learn the name of Mitch's sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). Then she travels across the bay by boat and stealthily enters Mitch's house, placing the present in the living room. On her way back, a seagull inexplicably swoops down and gashes her forehead.
Cleaning up her wounds, Melanie gives Mitch the alibi that Annie was an old friend of hers and she wanted to pay a visit, which he immediately recognizes as a lie. She then returns to Annie's house, rents a room for the weekend, and later heads over to Mitch's house for dinner. There, his mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), argues with someone over the phone that the chicken feed she bought was defective—her chickens wouldn't eat a bite—only to learn that a local farmer's own fowl, who had been fed a different brand, have the same problem. After dinner, Melanie returns to Annie's house and the two are chatting about Mitch and his mother over a brandy when a thud is heard against the front door. Answering the door, Melanie discovers a dead seagull sprawled on the porch.
The next day, Cathy has a birthday party. A peaceful flock of birds makes its way across the clear blue sky as Melanie and Mitch walk along a bluff above the coast. Melanie reveals that her mother left their family when she was Cathy's age. Suddenly a bird swoops down and switches Cathy on the ear, and an attack on the party commences. Terrified children rush into the house as birds scratch, peck, and bite at them ravenously and without any apparent motive.
From then on things go from bad to worse as bird attacks increase both in scope and severity. On Monday morning Lydia drives to the farm whose owner's chickens are also refusing to eat and discovers a gory corpse with its eyes gouged out. After fleeing the scene in hysteria, Lydia takes to her bed, but can't rest because she's worried about Cathy at school. Melanie offers to go pick the child up. A large flock of crows gathers in the playground, and when Melanie helps evacuate the school, they viciously tear at the children, nearly killing one of them.
At the Tides Restaurant, an elderly birdwatcher (Ethel Griffies) opines that humanity doesn't stand a chance against the hundred billion or more birds on earth, whom she smugly regards as harmless -- until another attack begins outside. After a gull swoops down onto a gas station attendant, a trail of gasoline makes its way into the restaurant's parking lot, where a man is lighting a cigarette. The garbled warning cries of bystanders are misunderstood, and a shattering explosion soon alerts scores of birds, who attack everyone who can't manage get indoors. Melanie runs to assist, but quickly retreats to a phone booth after she too is assailed by the birds. From that vantage point, she bears witness to a horrific spectacle as birds rush at her from all angles. The local fire department soon arrives to fight the fire and ends up fighting the birds instead. A dying man stumbles toward the phone booth, but quickly collapses and leaves a streak of blood on the glass, which the birds quickly shatter by flying directly into it. Finally, Mitch ventures into the storm and brings her back into the restaurant, where a hysterical mother (Doreen Lang) accuses her of being the cause of the attacks.
At last the screeching of the birds comes to an end. Melanie sets out in search of Annie and Cathy. Annie lies dead on her porch, while a terrified Cathy uncontrollably sobs inside. Melanie comforts Cathy and Mitch takes the body into the house as dusk approaches.
Cathy, Melanie, Mitch, and Lydia hole up in their house, boarding up all the windows, doors, and openings, with the exception of a single fireplace in which a fire is kept burning all night long. In this claustrophobic setting, the four spend hours wondering when the next attack will come. Finally, a clamor erupts, and Mitch quickly checks and repairs breaches while the others scurry from one corner of living room to another, acting like caged birds terrified out of their wits. The power goes out, and Mitch gets a flashlight.
The attack subsides. Before dawn, Melanie wakes up with the intuition that something is terribly wrong. She grabs Mitch's flashlight and carefully examines the rooms, then cautiously treads the stairs, opens the door to Cathy's bedroom, and goes inside. Birds attack her from all sides as she gazes at a gigantic hole in the ceiling. Unable to fight, she collapses onto the floor, nearly dying before Mitch and Lydia rescue her. Realizing that she is in shock and needs to get to a hospital, Mitch tells the others that they have to leave, and daringly ventures outside to get the car. Here, Hitchcock offers one of the most surreal and apocalyptic scenes to appear in the film, as a sea of birds ripples unrelentingly under a cloudy morning twilight. Mitch quietly enters the garage and turns on the car radio, which reports that bird attacks have occurred further inland, mentioning the town of Santa Rosa, California about thirty miles away. He brings the car around front and helps Cathy, Melanie, and Lydia inside, then drives away, parting waves of birds that seem to lie in anticipation of something.
The ending to this movie is abrupt; some surmise that this was to allow the audience to make their own minds as to why these birds attacked, or what the characters' fate will be. The caged lovebirds brought along throughout the movie are thought by some to serve as a subtle justification for the bird attacks. [top]
Awards
1964 Academy Award: Best Effects, Special Visual Effects (notimated)
1964 Golden Globe: Most Promising Newcomer - Female
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