After revisiting Troma’s The Toxic Avenger (listen) and Katsuhiro Otomo’s iconic anime Akira (listen) – with a brief stopover to celebrate our 350th episode and From Dusk Till Dawn (listen) – Trace and I are turning our attention to a classic: Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1963 film, The Birds.
Starring Tippi Hedren as a rich prankster, the film follows Melanie as she embarks on an epic ruse to troll Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a man she meets in a pet store. Using her father’s connections to track the lawyer down, Melanie drives to the nearby town of Bodega Bay just as a series of unexpected bird attacks kick off.
After befriending local school teacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), winning over Mitch’s younger sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), and running afoul of Mitch’s mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), Melanie becomes trapped as the attacks escalate.
Will Melanie stay out of the attic? Can the isolated Brenner house sustain an all-out fowl attack? And will anyone survive to tell the outside world what is happening in the small seaside hamlet?
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Episode 352: The Birds (1963)
Alma! We’re covering another Alfred Hitchcock film with 1963’s The Birds.
It’s Hitch, so prepare to get technical with Trace’s production history and thanks to another essay from It Came From the Closet, Joe has a compulsory Melanie & Annie queer reading on deck.
Plus: the one scene that doesn’t work; our favorite pieces of editing; why bitchy Melanie is our fave; and this week’s game: sequel or remake!
Cross out The Birds!
Coming Up Next: In anticipation of Renny Harlin’s forthcoming sequel, The Strangers: Chapter 2, we’re opening up the Patreon vault to release our episode of the trilogy opener, The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 420 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Cry Wolf, The Long Walk, Him, The Conjuring: Last Rites and, to tie in with that last one, a brand new audio commentary on The Conjuring 2!
The post The Fowl Queerness of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
