The Birds

3.70
    The Birds
    1963

    Synopsis

    Thousands of birds flock into a seaside town and terrorize the residents in a series of deadly attacks.

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    Cast

    • Tippi HedrenMelanie Daniels
    • Rod TaylorMitch Brenner
    • Jessica TandyLydia Brenner
    • Suzanne PleshetteAnnie Hayworth
    • Veronica CartwrightCathy Brenner
    • Ethel GriffiesMrs. Bundy
    • Charles McGrawSebastian Sholes
    • Ruth McDevittMrs. MacGruder
    • Lonny ChapmanDeke Carter
    • Joe MantellTraveling Salesman at Diner's Bar

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Empire

      Genuinely disturbing thriller classic from the master of suspense.
    • 100

      The Guardian

      The essential Hitchcock movie, the purest and most confident, a brilliant distillation of the themes that had fueled him ever since he sent the lodger creeping to his upstairs room.
    • 100

      The Telegraph

      The true genius of the film, based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, is the way Hitchcock makes the malevolent birds seem like manifestations of his characters' mental unease.
    • 100

      Time Out London

      This is Hitchcock at his best. Full of subterranean hints as to the ways in which people cage each other, it's fierce and Freudian as well as great cinematic fun.
    • 100

      Chicago Reader

      As emblems of sexual tension, divine retribution, meaningless chaos, metaphysical inversion, and aching human guilt, his attacking birds acquire a metaphorical complexity and slipperiness worthy of Melville. Tippi Hedren's lead performance is still open to controversy, but her evident stage fright is put to sublimely Hitchcockian uses.
    • 100

      TV Guide Magazine

      Hailed as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces by some and despised by others, The Birds is certainly among the director's more complex and fascinating works.
    • 90

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Alfred Hitchcock has concocted an elaborate tease in The Birds, as if to prove that suspense and thrills can be induced as much by the expectation of horror as by horror itself.
    • 90

      The New York Times

      Making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature's most innocent creatures and one of man's most melodious friends, Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles on the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.

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