Edward October Goes To The Birds
Edward October from Octoberpod is back! Today, he is taking a deep dive in the use of birds in horror flicks.
This month we invited back three time Rondo Award nominee Edward October to be a guest writer. Edward narrates true and true-ish classic tales of horror and the paranormal, and today he is doing a deep dive into horror movie’s use of birds to terrorize us. Be sure to take a look at their YouTube show (Octoberpod) and a listen to their podcast (Octoberpod AM) to get your spooky fix. You can find them both on his website:
https://www.octoberpodvhs.com.
…and now…here’s Edward!
I was recently listening to a movie podcast that lumped Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds into the "nature runs amok" genre ... and then proceeded to say the the birds' motive for attacking good citizens of Bodega Bay was because humans had encroached on their territory and abused the environment. I feel this is a gross misreading of the film ...a lazy one, too. If you actually watch the picture---and if you haven't you should, because from here on out I'm going to assume you have-- you'd know that the film makes no real mention of environmental issues. The Birds (and this is an even more frightening notion) strike for apparently no reason ... Or do they?
If you watch this film focusing on birds of the feathered persuasion and the their motivations, then you're simply watching the wrong picture. In cockney slang, a "bird" can refer a woman ... and so "The Birds" you REALLY should be paying attention to in this picture are the birds of the female persuasion ... namely Tippi Hendron (as spoiled rich girl Melanie Daniels), Jessica Tandy (as matriarch Lydia Brenner) and Suzanne Pleshette (as school teacher Annie Hayworth). Each of these women form the corners of a love triangle with Rod Taylor (as dashing San Francisco lawyer, Mitch Brenner).
The first triangle is Mitch, Annie (his old flame), and Lydia (the mother for whom he's acted as a de facto husband since the death of his father). Mitch must choose between his lover and his mother. Lydia wins this round. But after an elaborate "meet cute" at a pet shop, resulting in the purchase of two love birds (the only fowl in the picture who don't go bat shit), Melanie enters stage left & rocks the boat (quite literally, when a seagull dive bombs her perfectly coiffed noggin). Her arrival at Bodega Bay brings with it a new corner to the love triangle, and a challenge to Lydia's motherly affections, as well as all those pesky bird attacks!
This lover/mother conflict might ring a bell to anyone familiar with another Hitchcock thriller: Psycho. Norman Bates likes to watch birds ... he watches the female kind thru hidden peep holes. He also stuffs birds. The feathered birds he stuffs are displayed in his office, and the female bird he's stuffed--his mother--is hidden in the basement. Want more puns? Many Hitchcock scholars believe that Rod Taylor's character in The Birds, Mitch, is a stand-in for Hitchcock himself. Mitch ... Hitch. Get it? And the presence of Tippi Hedron (who plays Melanie) excited Hitchcock as much as it excited the bird population. (More on that later)
Indeed, bird attacks punctuate emotional beats in Melanie's character arc. A bird attacks her in a boat, just after she's rowed out to the home Mitch shares with his mother and his much younger sister, Kathy (played by an adolescent Veronica Cartwright) to deliver the love birds. While Annie Hayworth and Melanie discuss Annie's failed romance with Mitch...and the indomitable motherly influence of Lydia...a bird crashes into the front door, killing itself. Later, Melanie wanders away from Kathy's birthday party to have a conversation about Melanie's emotionally unavailable mother & the scars it left her. This discussion of emotional trauma, from when Melanie was a girl Kathy's age, is interrupted by the visceral trauma of the film's first truly violent bird attacks. Near the climax of the film, Lydia watches as Kathy turns to Melanie (not her own mother!) to be comforted. A look of understanding falls over Lydia's harsh gaze as tho she's realizing that Melanie might not be such a bad match for her son. This realization is soon followed by the vicious bird attack on Melanie in the attic.
Bird attacks seem to be linked to Kathy as much as to Melanie. After all, it's Kathy's birthday party that gets ruined by the birds...it's Kathy's school that's attacked ... Kathy's teacher who is killed & Kathy's home that's flooded with murderous birds. It's as tho Kathy represents Melanie's inner child....or the child Melanie could've been...and the bird attacks are a metaphor for the psychic rage and sadness brought on by Melanie's childhood trauma. It's likely the bird attacks were symbolic of more than just Melanie's psyche. Alfred Hitchcock was rumored to have been infatuated with actress Tippi Hedron and the attack in the attic plays almost like a sexual assault (its jagged editing also resembles Psycho's shower scene in its ferocity). A number of critics and film historians have theorized that this symbolic rape--a scene so gruelling that Hedron suffered a real life mental breakdown after filming it for five days straight, using live birds--was an extension of the director's unrequited lust for his leading lady. And I'll just leave that sitting ... right ... there... If you want to learn more about Hitchcock's fixation on & inappropriate behavior towards Tippi Hedron, or about the subtext behind The Birds and Psycho, that's all covered in great detail in The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock by Donald Spoto. It's an excellent book which examines the entirety of Hitchcock's long career, which (along with various documentaries and commentary tracks), served as a major source for this segment.
People who dislike The Birds often cite it's rom-com-like beginning and its slowly paced first half. But again I say, they're looking for a "nature attacks movie" while ignoring the nuanced psycho drama playing out right in front of their noses. Still not convinced? Still think The Birds is for the birds? Well then let me refer you to the short story upon which the film is based ... The Birds by Daphne DuMaurier. Hitchcock fans will recognize DuMaurier as the novelist who gave us the wonderfully haunting, gothic potboiler Rebecca. DuMaurier's version of The Birds bears zero similarity to the Hitchcock film ... aside from common birds one day deciding to go HAM on all of humanity ... or on coast of Cornwall, at the very least. Where Hitchcock's film is a psycho drama of childhood trauma and sexual frustration, DuMaurier's story is a meditation on England's collective "shell shock" following the second World War. The bird attacks are very much like a German air raid. One of the story's most haunting images is of gulls gathering and floating on the ocean waves ... waiting to pounce. It was adapted several times for old time radio. My favorite adaptation was broadcast on ESCAPE and starred Ben Wright (an English character whose voice can be heard in a number of Disney cartoons, and in countless radio plays). ESCAPE'S dramatization turns The Birds into a metaphor for Cold War paranoia ... and makes it clear that the attacking birds come in on cold winds from the northeast ... in the vacinity of Russia, for example. Lux Radio Theatre also did a version, this one starring Hitchcock regular (and one of my old time radio favorites) Herbert Marshall ... but it's pretty awful.
And there you have it. I've recommended something for you to watch (or rewatch more criticallly), something to read, and something to listen to. If you enjoy classic horror stories ... as well as the occasional deep dive into my retro horror pop culture obsessions, then check out Octoberpod AM. It's the retro horror podcast for bold individualists, hosted by yours truly ... Edward October. Every two weeks we present true, true-ish, and classic tales of horror and the paranormal with a retro-vintage aesthetic reminiscent of old time radio and spoken word horror on vinyl. Find Octoberpod AM wherever you get podcasts, or on YouTube at Octoberpod Home Video. Follow us on the app formerly known as Twitter @OctoberpodVHS or find all our links on the World Wide Web at:
https://www.octoberpodvhs.com