10 Clever Tricks You Didn’t Realise Movies Played On You
5. They Were Actually REAL Birds...
This entry is somewhat different to the other movie tricks mentioned on this list.
In Alfred Hitchock's The Birds, one would be forgiven for thinking that the actual birds used in the film's key moments - particularly the movie's brutal finale - were some sort of fake, maybe even plastic creatures. While's that what you would presume, the trick played in The Birds is that what we're seeing really is lead actress Tippi Hedren being attacked by very real birds.
So the story goes, the plan originally was of course to use fake, mechanical birds for the final act attack by countless winged warriors on Hedren's Melanie. After the star reportedly turned down the repeated advances of Hitchcock through the film's production, the director allegedly replaced the faux birds with real ones for this sequence - all without informing Hedren about this change.
Tippi's autobiography - titled simply A Memoir - details these advances, and the Minnesota native would state how Hitchcock sexually assaulted her during their time working together on Marnie a year later. At this point, Hedren was tied to a seven-year contract to work solely on Hitchcock pictures.