helterskelter.ca

The Birds.
way more Helter Skelter.

March 28, 1963 - 2023: 60 years of: The Birds.

Don't look up !

The master of suspense is flying high again. Based on the 1952 Daphnee Du Maurier novelette The Birds, the Alfred Hitchcock treatment sends this vague possibility into terror in the American blue skies. The quiet remote Bodega Bay community would never, ever be the same again.

Full moon, one beautiful summer weekend, all seems normal, until one and then two suspicious incidents. And then the unthinkable: the school is assaulted ...and then the village is on fire. From dozens to hundreds to thousands, sparrows, gulls and crows gather for unknown reasons and strike anyone and anything in their sights.

Sophisticated and perfectly paced, the tension is palpable and the fright is real. Kids and adults cover for shelter from the bloody carnage from above. Red hot following the iconic trendsetting 1960 Psycho, Hitchcock once again sparred no details in turning these seemingly innocent ornithurae ...into serial Kamikaze killers.

The Birds is a very important movie in the horror-timeline of growing fantasy cinema. Far away from the kitsch 1950s science-fiction, 60s living dead and before the hell on Earth incarnation of 1973's Exorcist, The Birds would bring everyday common lovelys into the possible chaos of the end of the civilized world. A tour-de-force only Hitchcock could exhibit.

"Cover your faces ! cover your eyes !"

RIP Alfred Hitchcock KBE (1899-1980)
RIP Jessica Tandy AKA Lydia (1909-1994)
RIP Suzanne Pleshette AKA Annie (1937-2008)
RIP Rod Taylor AKA Mitch (1930-2015)

*
The Birds = movie-trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-L6pOcybkY
The Birds = documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7d029UR0k