In the US: 60th Anniversary Screening of The Birds on October 22 and 23, 2023, Nationwide

Well, its 2023 and yes, that's 60 years since the debut of Hitchcock's The Birds and a US theater chain(Cinemark) is showing The Birds on October 22 and 23 (Sunday and Monday.) There might also be a Wednesday screening.

Actually The Birds opened in March of 1963, not the fall (and not summer as Psycho had.)

Indeed if it is the 60th Anniversary of The Birds, it has now been three years since the 60th Anniversary of Psycho and...time flies on the one hand, but three years(back to 2020 now) seems like a long time between Hitchocck classics, yes?

Hitchcock had been putting out one movie a year -- sometimes two -- before Psycho hit so big ion 1960 and shook Hitch hard: how to follow up?

Well, The Birds was certainly "bigger" with more set-pieces and historic special effects AND live bird stunts. But Psycho still had that certain something more -- 1963 critics called it: "Not as scary as Psycho...Hitchcock seems to be pulling his punches this time."

An odd thing to say. In The Birds we get a dead farmer with his eyes pecked out ...blood pouring out of the sockets; we get an attack on Tippi Hedren by birds that matches the savagery and cinematic dazzle of Janet Leigh's shower death(but Tippi is rescued in time and survives) and we even have a guy running up at Tippi from outside the phone booth in which she is trapped -- birds have grabbed him and pecked him and blood streaks pour down his face...ala Arbogast's slashed face in Psycho.

But maybe that was the problem..Psycho was about a terrifying and monstrous HUMAN psychopath...The Birds is about...birds. It was a little harder to "sell" them as scary.

That said, in Psycho, the psycho is captured and put away at the end. In The Birds, things aren't so neat and clean and ended. Millions of birds seem to have taken over the world...maybe forever?

It seems anymore that only Psycho and The Birds get these 40/50/60 year anniversaries. Though I vaguely remember North by Northwest getting one. Vertigo, too. "The usual suspects."

I do not anticipate 60 year anniversary screenings of Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz or even Frenzy, nor of Hitchcock's final film Family Plot.

Rather after The Birds screens this month, we shall all have to wait for the 70th Anniversary of Psycho and The Birds.

Let's all be there...

PS. It is my dubious honor to say that I actually saw The Birds, first run in March of 1963. I was in single digits and I recall the film not particularly scaring me at all -- I was told to cover my eyes at the farmer with the pecked out eyes, and I did. The rest -- rather as anticipated by my mother who took us to The Birds -- was more like a Godzilla movie, and that's why she took us. Took us to Jason and the Argonauts(a great Ray Harryhausen fantasy) the same year, for roughly the same reason.