The Birds (story) The Birds (story) "The Birds" is a horror story by British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection "The Apple Tree". It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community that are attacked by flocks of birds and seabirds in "kamikaze" fashion. The story is set in du Maurier's native Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the end of the story it becomes clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault. The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds", released in 1963, the same year
The Haunting (1963 film) magazine, critic Pauline Kael called the film "moderately elegant and literate and expensive", but criticised Russ Tamblyn for being "feeble [and] cowardly-comic". She considered the film to be superior to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", also released in 1963, yet didn't consider it to be a great film. Kael said of it, "It wasn't a great movie but I certainly wouldn't have thought that it could offend anyone. Yet part of the audience at "The Haunting" wasn't merely bored, it was hostile—as if the movie, by assuming interests they didn't have, made them feel resentful or inferior. I've never felt this