The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Also Tippi Hedren’s glamorously falling-apart 1950s hair-do which, for some reason, isn’t covered in bird slops. Resonant imagery: The school jungle gym with all those ominous black birds perched on it. The film centres around Tippi Hedren’s character. WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FILMĪ wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people. (Avoid during magpie season.) Original British movie poster for The Birds film adaptation (1963)Īlfred Hitchcock adapted three of Daphne du Maurier’s work for film: Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940) and The Birds (1963). However, the film successfully put me off birds for a few months after watching. 54-year old Lydia has a 33 year old son and a 14-year old daughter.

Hitchcock’s 1963 film adaptation of “The Birds” is badly cast. Gripping Grief / With a nod to du Maurier, Stephen King haunts a house and a wealthy widower, reviewed by Yunah Kim and Elizabeth Judd (1998) The ugly small- town secret at the heart of King’s latest novel appeals primarily to the reader’s baser instincts for rubbernecking - hardly the denouement set up with jewel-like precision by du Maurier. But, looking up at the early dawn after a night of page-turning, one realizes that Sara Laughs doesn’t haunt like “Rebecca’s” Manderley. With “Bag of Bones,” King reins in the gore and spins a pretty good yarn about a house named Sara Laughs that’s overrun with restless spirits. Others see parallels between Rebecca and Bag of Bones. “The Birds” is a straight-line influence on “The Mist”. Sure enough, Stephen King has named Daphne du Maurier as an influence. (And also through chimneys in “The Birds”) The supernatural monster tries to penetrate man-made buildings, via the usual terrifying entry-points: doors and windows.The supernatural thing comes from the water into the town, killing humans for no obvious reason other than that’s its nature.He notices something strange happening out on the water but can’t quite make it out.He has a fractious relationship with another man who lives nearby.

A man lives near a body of water (in this cast the coast in The Mist it’s a lake).In fact, du Maurier’s short story shares more in common with Stephen King’s The Mist than with its own film adaptation: Reading the short story, I learn the two versions are so different we should consider them two different narratives. But that’s because of the Hitchcock film. Alongside Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, “The Birds” remains her best-known work. “The Birds” is a short story by British author Daphne du Maurier.

The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier