The Birds at Prince Charles Cinema

After watching seagulls wheeling around a Cornish farmer ploughing a field, author Daphne du Maurier set about writing a chillingly brutal short story in which ‘our feathered friends’ turn suddenly nasty - but only when the wind is easterly (a parable of Cold War paranoia?). Hitchcock took this tale, conflated it with a 1961 incident in which the residents of Capitola, California awoke to find thousands of dead sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and fashioned it into a deliciously rich cinematic paean to the primal power of female sexuality - and, by extension, nature itself - all played out in the sunny, seeming-calm of Bodega Bay. So ripe for discussion is the film, that social critic Camille Paglia wrote a book about it, analyzing the picture scene-by-scene. The whole is enhanced by Oscar-nominated special effects by Ub Iwerks and a terrifying electronic ‘score’ of cawing birds by Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann (there is little actual music in the film, though the sound of children singing ‘Risseldy Rosseldy’ as a school climbing frame gradually fills up with sinister black birds is one of the most nerve-shredding scenes). But much credit must be given to screenwriter Evan Hunter - best known as crime novelist Ed McBain. Tales of Hitchcock’s sadistic cruelty to female lead Tippi Hedren abound, in particular the five solid days of shooting when prop men flung live gulls, ravens and crows at her face. But the fear in her eyes is electrifying. As the bloated, cartoonish figure of Hitchcock himself declares on the original poster: ‘And remember, the last scream you hear may be your own.’