Category: Classics - Horror - Horror / Sci-Fi / Fantasy - Movie
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Our Price: $15.27YOU SAVE $4.71!
Buy it
DVD The Birds (Collector's Edition)
Vacationing in northern California, Alfred Hitchcock was struck by a story in a Santa Cruz newspaper: "Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes." From this peculiar incident, and his memory of a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the master of suspense created one of his strangest and most terrifying films. The Birds follows a chic blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as she travels to the coastal town of Bodega Bay to hook up with a rugged fellow (Rod Taylor) she's only just met. Before long the town is attacked by marauding birds, and Hitchcock's skill at staging action is brought to the fore. Beyond the superb effects, however, The Birds is also one of Hitchcock's most psychologically complicated scenarios, a tense study of violence, loneliness, and complacency. What really gets under your skin are not the bird skirmishes but the anxiety and the eerie quiet between attacks. The director elevated an unknown model, Tippi Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith), to being his latest cool, blond leading lady, an experience that was not always easy on the much-pecked Ms. Hedren. Still, she returned for the next Hitchcock picture, the underrated Marnie. Treated with scant attention by serious critics in 1963, The Birds has grown into a classic and--despite the sci-fi trappings--one of Hitchcock's most serious films. --Robert Horton
"The Birds" (1963) is a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and that fact alone should be enough to make you want to read the rest of this review :)
The plot is simple, but effective. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a beautiful woman with a lot of time on her hands, decides to follow Mitch (Rod Taylor), a man she just met, when he visits his hometown for the weekend. Melanie doesn't know Mitch very well, but she believes that they could begin a relationship, as they are quite attracted to each other. However, once Melanie arrives to Mitch's small town, something strange happens: a gull attacks her without any kind of provocation. That kind of behaviour is extremely unusual in gulls, according to local people. But will that be the last weird thing to happen? Well, just wait and see.
From my point of view, "The birds" is one of Hitchcock's best films, even though my personal favorite is "Vertigo". I would like to highlight the fact that this film manages to mix suspense, action and terror, throwing in a developing love story and some characters that you cannot help but care about. In a nutshell, the kind of movie you should watch, unless you are already really (really) afraid of birds. Recommended!
Belen Alcat
Was there ever a scarier movie?
I saw this movie again a few years ago and found that I could not view the scenes of the birds attacking the house or the telephone booth. And the scene with the birds occupying just about every available space near the school yard once again gave me the heebie-jeebies!
I did not give it 5 stars simply because it is starting to show its age. It would be interesting to discover what someone thought who was seeing it for the first time (an older person, since kids today have been inundated with quick cuts and plenty of action. This film is not about action.)
The Birds is Still A Great Film
I've seen The Birds many times, and still love it everytime. It is probably my favorite Hitchcock film.
The scenes where the birds fly out from behind the school to attack the children, and when Melanie is trapped in the phone booth while the birds launch a huge attack on Bodega Bay, are two of the best scenes ever filmed in my opinion.
It still bothers me that there is no explanation as to why the birds are doing this,and that many of the townspeople seem to blame Melanie for what is going on. But she is just an unfortunate victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The movie still stands up against movies of today for the great story, cast, and special effects of it's time.
At last--a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters--then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Janet Leigh - Anthony Perkins DVD Release Date: Released the 27 May 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $13.99YOU SAVE $5.99!
Buy it
A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation to "open up" the material from the home of the unhappy couple. The result may not be one of Hitchcock's deepest films, but it's a thoroughly engaging chamber movie. It also features Grace Kelly at her loveliest, the same year she made Rear Window with Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder was filmed in the briefly trendy 3-D process, and Hitchcock shot some scenes to bring out the depth of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ray Milland - Grace Kelly Director(s): Alfred Hitchcock DVD Release Date: Released the 07 September 2004 Usually ships in 6 to 7 days
List Price: $19.96 Your Price: $15.97YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kim Novak - James Stewart DVD Release Date: Released the 31 March 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $15.27YOU SAVE $4.71!
Buy it
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.
Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Grace Kelly - James Stewart DVD Release Date: Released the 06 March 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $15.39YOU SAVE $4.59!
Buy it
A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Cary Grant - Eva Marie Saint DVD Release Date: Released the 07 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $12.99YOU SAVE $6.99!
Buy it
