The Birds
Starring: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
The film: Alfred Hitchcock's follow-up to Psycho, after a three-year break from the big screen, The Birds was one of the less critically acclaimed but more commercially popular of his later films. It was, some would argue, his final masterpiece, coming ahead of such disappointments as Torn Curtain, Topaz and Family Plot. It was also quite unlike anything he had made before, with a non-human menace and plenty of special effects.
The story begins in a posh pet shop in San Francisco, where socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren in her first film) meets lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor, above right with Hedren) by chance. He has stopped in to find a pair of lovebirds for his sister and she a mynah bird for a relative. After some flirting between the two, Taylor leaves for a weekend up the coast in the small town where his mother and sister live, without his lovebirds.
Hedren follows later, having found a pair for him. She plans to leave them at his doorstep and then disappear. He sees her, however, and the couple begins a courtship of sorts, which takes up the film's first hour.