Alfred Hitchcock was clearly fond of Daphne du Maurier’s writing, having previously filmed back-to-back versions of her novels – awkwardly exiting from the U.K. with the compromised Jamaica Inn (1939) and splashily debuting in the U.S. with the haunting, Oscar-winning Rebecca (1940). The Birds, his third pass at du Maurier, loosely adapts her same-named short story. To the writer’s annoyance, Hitchcock changed most of her particulars – transferring the action from rural England to the picturesque town of Bodega Bay in Northern California – but the chillingly apocalyptic premise remained the same: For unfathomable reasons, masses of birds are gathering, attacking, and killing human beings. In a canny bit of indirection, Hitchcock begins the film in a screwball-comedy register, with a meet-cute over lovebirds in a San Francisco pet shop between indolent socialite Melanie (Tippi Hendren) and attorney Mitch (Rod Taylor). When Melanie impulsively follows Mitch to his family’s home in Bodega Bay, the story begins its steady descent into darkness – first with the cold-shoulder reception she receives from Mitch’s possessive mother (Jessica Tandy) and then with the ever-escalating frequency and severity of the bird strikes. Although Hitchcock’s turn to horror in the early ’60s surprised some moviegoers, the use of birds as an unsettling element actually surfaced throughout his filmography (e.g., Blackmail, Young and Innocent, Sabotage, Psycho) before reaching its terrifying apogee in The Birds. With Suzanne Pleshette as Mitch’s former girlfriend and Veronica Cartwright (who later appeared in another horror classic, Alien) as Mitch’s traumatized younger sister.