THE MAKING OF THE BIRDS

One thing readers could always count on in each issue of CINEMAFANTASTIQUE was the in-depth coverage of the making of at least one film. The Fall 1980 issue took a deep dive into the making of Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, released by Universal Pictures on March 28, 1963.

BONUS!

Radio drama of Daphne du Maurier's story broadcast on July 10, 1954 on the program, ESCAPE.

THE SOUND OF THE BIRDS

This movie scared the stuffing out of me when I saw it as a youngster and it remains one of my favorite horror movies. After many years, I decided to sit down and read Daphne du Maurier's incredible novella again.

First published in 1952 by Victor Gollancz as "The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories", du Maurier's idea for "The Birds" came to her when she observed a farmer being attacked by a flock of seagulls as he was ploughing his field (how's that for real-life horror?).

The tale is set on the post-WWII Cornwall coast in England, where a sudden cold weather snap appears to have turned all the coastal birds into a single-minded murderous frenzy set on killing the local human population. The plot centers on a farmer and his family who are forced to barricade their farmhouse in hopes of keeping the birds at bay. Mysteriously, the attacks only come at each turn of the tide. The creep factor is further turned up when they listen to a BBC radio station (which later eerily goes dead) that announces the birds are invading the entire country.

Intrigued with its cinematic possibilities, Hitchcock secured the rights for the story initially for television, but decided it would make a better movie. He seemed to be a fan of du Maurier's work as he had also filmed her novels "Rebecca" and "Jamaica Inn".

One of the most terrifying elements is the flesh-crawling sounds of the hordes of birds each time they attack. The sound design for this and the entire catalog of the film's sound effects was created by, of all things, an early experimental synthesizer called a Trautonium, as explained in the following article.

How the Bird Sound Effects in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Were Created with a Pioneering Electronic Instrument, the Trautonium

By Colin Marshall | August 10th, 2026 | openculture.com

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, though viewers raised on more recent Hollywood spectacles would hardly find its mechanized and optically printed avian attackers convincing. Still, the picture as a whole has retained its eerie, ominous power over the last six decades, and a decent amount of the credit for that goes to an aspect that hasn’t dated at all: its non-musical “score” by the early electronic composer Oskar Sala. Many of the threatening bird calls on the soundtrack were actually played by Sala on a device called the Mixtur-Trautonium, a pre-synthesizer orchestral electronic instrument of which he wasn’t just the undisputed master, but the only player in existence.

The Mixtur Trautonium ca. 1952.

After his acceptance into the Berlin Conservatory in 1929, Sala came into contact with the Trautonium, which had recently been invented by one Dr. Friedrich Trautwein. Inspired to more deeply understand the principles behind the nascent technology of electronic music, and to further it, he went on to study physics at the University of Berlin in the mid-nineteen-thirties.

This positioned him well to develop new models of Trautonium, a series that culminated in 1948 with the Mixtur-Trautonium, which, unlike Trautwein’s monophonic original, could sound multiple voices at once. The instrument proved versatile, and indeed commercial: any German who grew up in the nineteen-fifties will remember its sounds from television advertisements.

A Trautonium model built by Robert Moog, 1966-1968.

The chance to work on The Birds, by far Sala’s most widely heard soundtrack work, “presented itself when a former classmate of Sala who worked at Universal Studios in Hollywood heard that Hitchcock wanted synthetically produced bird sounds for his next movie,” says Google Arts & Culture. “Hitchcock, who deliberately wanted to avoid creating traditional movie music, even flew to Sala’s recording studio in Berlin where he was impressed by the sounds made by the Trautonium, which ultimately produced all the movie’s sound effects.” In collaboration with fellow pioneering electronic composer Remi Gassmann, Sala produced a veritable storm of not just avian shrieks and cackles, but also the harsh swirl of the elements and the creaks and groans of failing man-made infrastructure. Or at least that’s what moviegoers may imagine hearing in a soundtrack that often verges on the otherworldly, even the abstract — and Hitchcock knew that the imagination is the place from which real fear arises.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY ATTACK

THE SCHOOLHOUSE ATTACK

THE CHIMNEY ATTACK

ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS

You've probably noticed Alfred Hitchcock's name on the cover of The Three Investigators books. Hitchcock lent his familiar name and image to many varied books, games and other products, much of it in the 1960s. Robert Arthur came up with the idea to use Hitchcock's name for the series, as well as using him as a character in the stories. The intention, of course, was to boost sales.

A problem arose when Hitchcock passed away in 1980 and a legal entanglement forced the publisher, Random House, to discontinue using his name.

This article from Screen Rant provides some of the details.

HOW ALFRED HITCHCOCK BECAME THE STAR OF A YA BOOK SERIES (& THEN WASN'T)

By Megan Hemenway | July 23, 2023 | Screenrant.com

For approximately 60 years, Alfred Hitchcock dominated the movie scene with his suspenseful and thrilling films, however, one lesser known fact about the British director is that he was also the star of a long-running book series for young adults entitled "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators." Alfred Hitchcock began his film career in the early 1920s and, over many decades, proved himself a cinema legend up until the release of his final film, 1976's The Family Plot. Hitchcock is best known for movies such as Psycho, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds, and Rear Window.

From 1964 to 1987, Random House published a series of juvenile detective books, originally called "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators." The books followed a trio of young boys who form a junior detective team in their fictional town of Rocky Beach, California. Bound by their motto, "We Investigate Anything," the boys take on a variety of mysteries in their area, amounting to a total of 43 finished novels in the span of over two decades. The most interesting fact about these books though is that the real-life, transformative movie director Alfred Hitchcock, is not only named in the series, but also makes appearances in the books as the boys' advisor and mystery mentor.

Alfred Hitchcock Lent His Name To The Three Investigators Books

Ultimately, the reason why Alfred Hitchcock's name is attached to "The Three Investigators" is because the author, Robert Arthur Jr., believed that using the director's name would bring attention to the series. Surprisingly, this wasn't completely out of the blue for the author either. Prior to his work on "The Three Investigators," Arthur worked on a variety of mystery writings, including several "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" short story collections and one or two episodes of the television series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." This gave him supreme knowledge of the director and the type of stories he created.

In the end though, Alfred Hitchcock's involvement with the series came down to nothing more than just the use of his name and his likeness within the series. Along with having his name in the title, Hitchcock also appeared as a supporting character in the books, who would often offer the trio of boys advice or watch their exploits from afar. Furthermore, Hitchcock's character would also introduce each book, though the words were written by Arthur and later authors, not Hitchcock himself. When Robert Arthur passed away in 1969, Alfred Hitchcock's connection to the series remained.

The Three Investigators Books No Longer Mention Hitchcock's Name

A surprising twist that comes with Alfred Hitchcock's attachment to "The Three Investigators" is that he has essentially been erased from the series. Although it's not entirely clear what occurred, Hitchcock's death in 1980 caused a copyright change that meant either Hitchcock's estate requested more royalties from the book series, or the publisher stopped paying the royalties altogether. Either way, Hitchcock's name was removed from every book and his character was changed into a fictional film director named Hector Sebastian. Nowadays, much of "The Three Investigators" is owned by a German publisher, and Hitchcock has been completely removed from the property.

Though it's a strange connection, Alfred Hitchcock did play a vital role in "The Three Investigators" books, though he did essentially nothing for it. In fact, Hitchcock's name alone was enough for Robert Arthur to believe that his series would succeed, due to the director's immense fame. Although "The Three Investigators" no longer have Alfred Hitchcock to their name, the series is still an artifact of the importance of mysteries, thrillers, and detective stories at that time.

EXTRA!

"The Haunted Trailer" by Robert Arthur from ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOSTLY GALLERY (Random House, 1962):

Illustration by Fred Banberry.