Do you happen to have a pair of birds that are just friendly?

[sovay]

I don't care that it may have eventually paved the way for Piranha 3D, The Birds (1963) is actually quite an effective piece of apocalyptic fiction/survival horror—it has a lot more in common with Night of the Living Dead (1968) than Jaws (1975)—but I wish large portions of the audience had not felt compelled to treat it like Mystery Science Theater 3000. I had come to see a big-screen showing of a Hitchcock film I had only seen in pieces, on television. I can only conclude they had come for a classic of high camp; there were waves of laughter at each bird attack, at each death, at moments of tension or chaos. The couple sitting next to me were particular offenders, miming voices for the characters, interjecting mock-warnings Rocky Horror-style. Several times I thought of yelling for everyone to just shut up and watch the movie; I hate people when they cannot take art on its own terms and decide that it's more fun to snicker at the old-fashioned special effects than pay attention to the story. Yes, those are trained crows. Yes, that's fake blood. Yes, the sodium vapor process is not as seamless as CGI, yes, rear projection doesn't look like location shooting and never did, yes, that's a cloud of starlings pouring down the chimney and Tippi Hedren turning her face back and forth in silent-movie anguish—but if you find the premise and the execution of a film inherently amusing, how about you rent and mock it on your own time and stop interfering with the atmosphere it might create for someone else? Thank God, the audience became more subdued in the last third of the movie, which is increasingly claustrophobic and more about suggestion than action until all of a sudden it's not (affording, I suppose, fewer opportunities for the cheaply risible), and I was in fact able to filter out the earlier noise, but I would prefer not to have needed to. I don't understand. Maybe I'm jaded, but not every movie is a post-ironic parody of itself; it shouldn't be treated as such.

Comments

[spatch]

Showing humor at a horror film is typically a defense mechanism. It's how I got through slasher movies as a kid when watching with other kids (boys' sleepovers involved lots of candy and all the R-rated films the host could persuade his dad to rent, if memory serves.) In fact, I wouldn't go see The Birds on the big screen because I nervously crack wise throughout just to keep from freaking out over the entire concept. It's the only Hitchcock film that gets such a reaction from me. (He was very good at pushing all kinds of buttons for suspense; those particular buttons happen to be mine.) What you've described is not borne from that mechanism, though, and is sad to hear.

I had a very similar disheartening experience at the Brattle (of all places!) when they were showing The Dark Crystal a week or two back. Yes, some of the special effects are outdated and Jen is a truly frustrating protagonist (All the "What do I do? Where do I go? Who is this Augrah? Which shard should I take?" voiceovers were dubbed in after a bad preview, apparently) but this young hipper-than-thou crowd talked constantly and laughed ironically at every effect and Muppet movement and every time the Skesis Chamberlain did that simpering whine of his. It doesn't help that he does it so many times that it does grow funny through repetition, but they laughed at it from the very first. I guess I should just be thankful they didn't echo it back at him.

But the art direction is gorgeous, the puppeteering is incredible, some of the large character movements are amazing when you consider how many people it took working simultaneously to pull off what looks so damn natural, and it was all lost on them.

(An example of the high wit on display: "My name is Jen." "THAT'S A GIRL'S NAME, HURR HURR")

I was annoyed and very much felt Get Off My Lawnish about it all (I saw the film first-run in 1982; this film was older than these moviegoers by a third fer crying out loud.) However, I chalked it up to going to the second half of a double feature on a Saturday night at a movie theater that serves booze in a college town. The crowd had just seen Labyrinth and were on quite a few drinks already, so they were well socially-lubricated and in top ironic form in their minds.

Happiness at seeing local movie theatres do good business at war with annoyance at local movie audiences who just don't know how to behave. I'm very sorry it had to happen to you at a Hitchcock film.

[sovay]

In fact, I wouldn't go see The Birds on the big screen because I nervously crack wise throughout just to keep from freaking out over the entire concept.

Which I understand! And there are moments of deliberate humor in The Birds, often in that nervy way—the famous scene where the crows settle silently behind Tippi Hedren as she smokes and glances edgily around, never in the right direction until it's too late and the playground is a bristling, black-feathered mass, is the malicious inverse of her first few scenes in Bodega Bay, where she's the one stealthily observing Mitch, waiting for him to realize only too late about her. The know-it-all drunk in the diner who keeps cheerily singing out, "End of the world!" is classic comic relief, although he's also (like so many fools) the character who tells you what kind of film you're really watching. The suddenness with which the gas station attendant drops is funny, it's so marionette-limbed and unexpected, until you realize it's because a bird has essentially icepicked him on flyby. But the people who not only laughed, but started to applaud when the crows mobbed the children, I don't know what the hell. Next time I am yelling for everyone to shut up.

I had a very similar disheartening experience at the Brattle (of all places!) when they were showing The Dark Crystal a week or two back.

I'm so sorry! I saw Labyrinth there in 2007, I think, and the audience noise was mostly in appreciation of David Bowie.

(An example of the high wit on display: "My name is Jen." "THAT'S A GIRL'S NAME, HURR HURR")

*somebody else's head desk*

I was annoyed and very much felt Get Off My Lawnish about it all (I saw the film first-run in 1982; this film was older than these moviegoers by a third fer crying out loud.

Next time, maybe you should bring a cane just in case.

(My introduction to The Dark Crystal was actually the illustrated book, which they had at the Cambridge Library; I didn't see the film until I was in college. Jim Henson properly warped my childhood, though.)

Happiness at seeing local movie theatres do good business at war with annoyance at local movie audiences who just don't know how to behave. I'm very sorry it had to happen to you at a Hitchcock film.

Thank you. I just keep thinking that people who come to arthouse theaters must not come there explicitly to be dicks . . .