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| The Birds (Collector's Edition) |
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List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $13.86
You Save: $6.12 (31%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $9.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 265 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3632
Category: DVD
Actors: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor
Publisher: Universal Studios
Studio: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Label: Universal Studios
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 119 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0783240236
UPC: 025192027529
EAN: 0025192027529
ASIN: 0783240236
Release Date: March 28, 2000
Theatrical Release Date: March 28, 1963
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential video
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
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Customer Reviews: Read 260 more reviews...
 Bye, Bye Birdies June 29, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After watching "The Birds" as a schoolboy over thirty years ago, I daydreamed of feathered friends amassing stealthily on rooftops and telephone lines (when they were still above ground), as well as on playground apparatus, praying they would swoop down, suddenly and unexpectedly, through the windows and peck apart disfavored teachers and classmates so that I could flee the damnable day in satisfying glee. Very cool!
Today, I hold a doctorate, perhaps am a little wiser, definitely a little nicer and, although I still have foul acquaintances and colleagues that I wouldn't mind seeing pecked apart, I have never been more impressed, or awed, by the Master's, Alfred Hitchcock's, unqualified brilliance in filmmaking. He is truly missed.
The cheeky, intelligent dialog between wealthy publication heiress, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), and jaded criminal defense attorney, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), in this psychological adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's short story, establishes the sophisticated tone of the film. The protagonists meet at the counter of a tony San Francisco pet store. Melanie, the socialite prankster, presumes, rather transparently, to be a sales associate. A poor substitute for the attendant she sent away on a real task, Melanie endeavors to assist Mitch's quest to find a suitable gift for his young sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). Mitch, who reads the tabloids, recognizes his stealthy "sales associate" and her clandestine ploys, and decides to play along--just long enough to embarrass the knockout blond in her furtive manhunt. No question, Mitch is mighty sharp--perhaps a little too sharp for a guy. He is aware that Melanie's father has rivals who have been trying to humiliate the family by mercilessly over-spinning tales of his daughter's "sordid" past, including her naked jump into Italy's Trevi Fountain. Determined not to be out-done, Melanie plots to turn the tables on the prey she so badly underestimated, scheming to personally deliver Mitch's lovebirds for his sister at their Bodega Bay retreat.
For any man, this scenario qualifies, unequivocally, as his worst possible nightmare--infinitely scarier than the lunging gull that bloodies Melanie's scalp while motor-boating to Mitch's haunts. Who, on earth, said women are the weaker sex?
Many believe The Birds portends the growing fear of civil unrest, encroaching socialism, and unbridled communism abroad that charged public perceptions during the cold war of the `50s and `60s. Scripts for deleted scenes and alternate endings, along with photos, supposedly support this view on the superb DVD transfer. If true, it only does so in part. More likely, the "birds of the world" that are "uniting," as referenced in the "discarded" materials, address deeply personal, social, psychological, and esoteric matters, which Hitchcock weaves into the film.
The Birds showcases isolated and tormented souls. It exposes their personal dilemmas, fears, shortcomings, and tragic histories. Alternating cycles of volatile psychic confrontation, symbolized by the bird attacks, ingeniously frame the film's characters in sundry combinations of intense interaction. The disquietude between escalating sorties is a metaphor of the smoldering instability prowling their lives.
Despite their material wealth and comfort, Melanie and Mitch are lonely hearts. Their lives ring hollow. Melanie has suffered unfathomable heartbreak over her mother's abandonment of the family. She inveighs on this matter with Mitch when she paradoxically asks, testily, whether the absence of a relationship is not worse than a brutal and dysfunctional one, which she knows he has endured with his widowed mother (Jessica Tandy). In a particularly provocative scene, Melanie confronts Lydia, Mitch's mother, who assails her son as an unsuitable replacement for his father to head the family. She reproaches his choice of female companions who fuel her fear of abandonment. Agonizing over her loss, she admits she envied her husband's innate ability to relate with children, contrasting it against her own failure as a mother. Despite Tandy's spectacularly introspective performance, it is Hedren, with her empathic eyes misting over, who registers the full brunt of her counterpart's anguish, concomitantly communicating her character's own emotional emptiness, while barely uttering a word. This is brilliance, pure and simple. In this face-off, Hitchcock cunningly shreds the painted veil of antagonism between the characters. We witness the void-filling birth pangs of a remarkably mature, mother-daughter relationship. All this occurs, no less, between vicious bird attacks!
Melanie incites passive--and, at times, overt--aggression in the residents of Bodega Bay. Her encounters often are accompanied by bird attacks. She is a living psychopomp, a herald, obliquely tolerated by some, and openly reviled by others. Ironically, those who "judge" her also beg forgiveness--Hitchcock's nod to Frank Capra. Ensconced in stultifying complacency and self-absorption, two local merchants, in a memorable scene, profess to know the Brenners, yet cannot correctly name Mitch's sister. Another scene ramps-up tension between Melanie and Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), a comely schoolteacher who once harbored designs for Mitch, and is unable to leave Bodega Bay.
No confrontation is more brutal than Melanie's sole encounter with the birds in Mitch's attic. This is an unparalleled battle of the "self," one that Melanie barely survives, and not without Mitch's intervention. Almost unnoticeably, the superficiality that once characterized their relationship has deepened into a trusting and loving dynamic. Melanie's initial indifference towards Cathy, who's wistful yearning for attention she rebuffed, gives way to an eye-opening revelation. Something devastatingly familiar urges her to fill the void in the young girl's life as a more youthful, female role model.
Like the proverbial Phoenix rising from the ashes, The Birds, in the end, is not about inextinguishable conflict and devastation. Nor is it about dysfunctional families and terminal relationships--though there are tragic losses from the feathered assaults. The Birds is not a political statement. Foremost, The Birds is a film about struggled, new beginnings. Look carefully for the dove-like cloud that frames the sunbeam that pierces the twilight skies of Bodega Bay. This is a powerful metaphor of the sacred feminine pouring her spirit from the unseen heavenly realm to earth as projected light. New beginnings beget new consciousnesses, which beget new realities. Melanie's gift of the sedate, cooing lovebirds provides her with excellent therapy to recover from her own physical and psychic shock. Cathy, insisting they should not be abandoned, runs back to the house to retrieve their cage, which she jams into Melanie's roadster, now filled with the others. For the first time, the four smile at each other as they depart their decaying homestead and the carrion of Bodega Bay, as self-improved, functional travelers.
Do you happen to have a pair of birds that are... just friendly? June 27, 2006
While this movie builds up nicely to the scenes where there are birds everyone, I have only one complaint. I thought the movie ends kind of abruptly and without really any explanation as to WHY there were so many birds around and attacking. But with that being said, the cinematography and acting in this movie are outstanding! The scenes where the birds are "hanging out" is pretty creepy and the scene where they're attacking the children is actually kind of funny (some kids are getting bombarded and get knocked over!). What's interesting with "The Birds" is that the actors aren't the usual "A" actors. There is no Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, or anybody like that. But it doesn't matter because the birds are the real stars! I guess maybe the point of the movie is that we shouldn't find out why the birds are attacking and that's why it's scarier because the birds have just gone crazy for no reason. Don't know. Anyway, this movie is still worth seeing, although I liked Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo, and Rebecca better.
I was expecting more... May 27, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is only my third Hitchcock movie, but I have to say that it isn't my favorite thus far. (although the other two I have seen, Vertigo and Rear Window, both deserve five stars with no questions asked)
Rear Window is brilliant in the way it can make the viewer delight in voyeurism (you may find yourself wondering what's going on in Miss Torso's window very often...) and the brilliant level of suspense it can wring out of something as simple as a phone call.
Vertigo is the kind of movie that should have changed the entire mystery genre, instead of becoming admired, yet ignored, by Hollywood as they churn out endless remakes and cookie-cutter movies. It can keep you watching with your eyes glued to the screen as the plot is masterfully, compellingly, and chillingly laid out only to take a sudden twist just as surprising, not to mention its technical mastery.
The Birds, however, is just too short. That's the only flaw I'll really hold against it, because just as the movie is building up to what feels like the middle of the movie, it ends. Even more disconcerting is the fact that there was a much better ending planned which was never shot. Luckily, the storyboard and script are shown on the DVD, so we have the benefit of imagining them.
However, if there is one contribution this film has made, which to me at least is above all others, it is this: it laid the groundwork of the zombie genre. Think about this as you watch it, and you'll realize that the famous Night of the Living Dead owes everything to it, from its sudden, mysterious onset of zombiesm, its confined environment, and even its closing scene.
Overall, the movie is quite enjoyable, its only flaw being that it is too short. I reccommend it not only for its originality and technical mastery, but as brain food as well.
you'll think twice about that chicken sandwitch May 20, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is hitchcock at his best and it's also his one true out and out horror movie.you know the story,birds start attacking people for no reason and before long the little seaside village of bodega bay is under attack by our fine feathered friends.the attacks are quite jarring and come when least expected. hitchcock spent 3 years getting this one made and it still chills the blood even today.
I'd buy it May 11, 2006
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a true Classic!!!!!!!!!!!I'd buy it. Where is the DVD for Lands End????????????
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Copyright Runningonkarma.com 2006
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