The Birds (1963) Facts
| Director(s) | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Producer(s) | Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited) |
| Featured Cast | Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Veronica Cartwright |
| Total Facts | 55 |
Voted seventh-scariest movie of all time by a poll carried out on the British public by Channel 5 and "The Times" in 2006.
When audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further.
When Lydia discovers Dan Fawcett, on the wall behind her is a drawing of the gas station explosion by Albert Whitlock.
When the children are running down the street from the schoolhouse, extra footage was shot back on the Universal sound stages to make the scene more terrifying. A few of the children were brought back and put in front of a process screen on a treadmill. They would run in front of the screen on the treadmill with the Bodega Bay footage behind them while a combination of real and fake crows were attacking them. There were three rows of children and when the treadmill was brought up to speed it ran very fast. On a couple of occasions during the shoot, a number of the children in the front fell and caused the children in back to fall as well. It was a very difficult scene to shoot and took a number of days to get it right. The birds used were hand puppets, mechanical and a couple were trained live birds.
When the film was aired on NBC-TV in the USA on 6 January 1968, it became the highest rated film shown on television up to that time. The record held until Love Story overtook it on 1 October 1972.