When socialite Melanie meets a playful lawyer in a pet shop, she decides to play a joke on him and deliver a pair of love birds to his home on the California coast. However, the town soon finds itself under savage attack by wild birds, and Melanie plays a central role in the town’s bid for survival.

As years pass, Hitchcock’s environmental horror film doesn’t date—it only gets stranger and more terrifying. The master’s perfect oscillation of location and studio, dark humour and dark visions, and above all of Tippi Hedren’s sublimely ambivalent heroine make for an unrivaled cinematic experience.