Not to take away from Gryphon's excellent pictures, did anyone see 'The Birds' on ABC2 last night? I wonder if this is Alfred Hitchcock's worst film. Though the name was taken from a Daphne du Maurier novel, Hitch apparently told the screenplay bloke to throw away the book and do his own thing.

I liked Tippi Hedron's pre-007 Aston Marton and the FX were great for the time - but the script was un-American in that no one bothered to get his shotgun out. The crows, at least, would have got the message at that point.

2012 is a nstalgia year for yu Paul;
- ABC
- the birds

that movie scared the crap out of me as a young tacker when I first saw it.

any bird with black on it has been my avowed enemy ever since.

They looked somewhat like this...A Forest Raven.

Lovely pic

.........evil eyed bird tho...........

Interesting eye on the forest raven, all right. The blue 'iris' with white around is almost analogous with a human's, giving 'personality' clues critters don't show when no whites can be seen. We had ravens (?) in the Western District with black eyes and others with white eyes. Dad reckoned the black-eyed ones were the baddies where sheep were concerned.

On the matter of getting close to 'crows', many seem to know the range of a shotgun and keep out of it. An old bloke told me he had zeroed his fox rifle for a tree 300 yards from his house, though. The crows thought they were safe there but the .17 Remington got 'em every time.

One bit of that film that got me was every time someone opened a door and saw birds the other side, they had to go through it to get pecked. Why would you do that?

Why would the teacher take all the kids out into the open when the birds had not broken into the school? Calling the sheriff or fire brigade would have seemed a brighter idea to me.

As I'm sure you've noticed, Denis, the whole thing was probably prompted by the mood of 'Silent Spring', ie this is what happens when humans mess around with Nature, a common theme with greenies and San Francisco-type people.

Was 'The Birds' made before Rachael Carsons book SS?

Until you asked, John, I would have said definitely No. However, googling showed the book was only published the year before and Wikipedia's 'The Birds' entry includes this:

Development
On 18 August 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to a local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller".[3]

So, whether Hitch new about the book or not, his film seems to have come from the idea of poisoned birds.