10 MORE Horror Movie Monsters That Shouldn’t Have Worked… But Did
3. The Birds - The Birds
It's logical for a nature-based horror to revolve around a predator, like a shark, lion, or bear. However, one of the last animals on Earth you'd imagine taking centre-stage in such a film is a bird.
Nevertheless, Alfred Hitchcock decided to follow up his acclaimed slasher, Psycho, with The Birds, adapted from Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name.
The story focuses on socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), who heads to a small town in California to woo a potential partner. Unfortunately, her plans fall apart when the town is besieged by hostile birds.
Anybody who's worried that The Birds is going to be a campy B-movie gets their concerns squashed very quickly. In one of the earliest scenes, the characters discover a corpse on the beach and are horrified to find its eyes have been pecked out by crows.
It's also worth mentioning Hitchcock allowed the birds to terrorise Tippi Hedren throughout production, which left her with various injuries. For this reason, the fear in Hedren's face during the attack scenes is sincere, making The Birds as a whole even more bone-chilling.
Even though the premise sounds far-fetched, the final shot of thousands of birds leering at the survivors is hair-raising, since it demonstrates how helpless people would be if these seemingly innocent creatures turned on us.