Hitchcock's 'Birds' still greatest of horror cinema

When I think of "The Birds," I automatically think of chicken pox.

And when I think of Halloween, I automatically think of "The Birds."

"The Birds," of course, is Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller in which Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor and the rest of a remote coastal town suddenly find themselves besieged by nature, as sparrows, seagulls and - shudder - crows inexplicably turn on all of humanity.

Sure, we've seen it all before - as a jaded movie going audience. Nature has always attacked our species, at least on film, using everything from insects to bats to tomatoes.

But "The Birds" stands out in my mind as the scariest movie of all time, and not just because it came from the mind of the man behind "Psycho."

It's because it so perfectly embodies my image of the perfect movie to watch on Halloween - scary and intense but not unnecessarily gory or grotesque. It's a classy tale of terror put on by a classy guy.

My parents saw it years before, and referenced it whenever we happened to be surrounded by hungry seagulls or saw an unnervingly large flock of feathered friends on a wire.

Then came the year when both I and my brother came down with raging cases of chicken pox. My brother was in the third grade, whereas I had apparently got off scot-free until the eighth grade.

We missed the chance to attend our respective Halloween parties and even to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood.

Our parents, however, decided to quash our itchy disappointment with a new tradition: The first annual showing of "The Birds," complete with doughnuts and apple cider.

After the scene in which Tippi Hedren sits outside a schoolhouse waiting for friend Suzanne Pleshette to finish her class, with only the eerie singing of schoolchildren providing the soundtrack as more and more crows gather on the playground equipment, it's a safe bet audiences will never again see a great many birds together in one spot without suppressing a shiver.

It still stands out as one of the best Halloweens ever, a holiday against which all following holidays have been measured, and still been found wanting.

We've since owned "The Birds" in its various formats on videotape and DVD and looked into some of the trivia behind the man and the movie - Hitchcock's goal for a finale which included large birds of prey like eagles, for example, or his lifelong fear of eggs - and have yet to find a similarly terrifying movie which at the same time signifies such a comfort and creates such a sense of security.

The "Saw" movies? Ick.

"The Exorcist"? Nightmare-inducing.

"Bats"? Jawdroppingly, mindnumbingly awful.

But with "The Birds," while Hedren and Taylor have to deal with their world gone mad, we sit and chew our popcorn contentedly, knowing all is right in ours.

Matthew Weaver is the senior staff writer for the Columbia Basin Herald. He is glad glass phone booths are not so readily available anymore, after watching a key scene from "The Birds."