The Birds

I read her short story before I saw the film. The short story really scared me - I could imagine the hopelessness of trying to avoid the attacks. Personally I've never found the film anywhere near as scary as everyone tells me it is. I agree with Deeda, her short stories are ones that shouldn't be read in the dark on your own

The film was superb. but I felt that its setting in California and not Cornwall, as per the book, removed the elemental factors which helped to create the original bleakness.

Her scary short stories are really chilling. I remember one called The Blue Lenses - the heroine had had an eye operation and was fitted with lenses that distorted her world. And there was The Victorian Chaise Longue where a modern woman travelled back in time and found she'd changed places with a victorian woman who was dying of Tuberculosis.They were stories I only read once!

I live quite near what was previously Gainsborough Studios, now converted to flats, alongside Regents Canal in London. There is a fantastic sculpture of Hitchcock within the complex, as the original power station subsequently became the birth place of Alfred Hitchcock as a film director.

We went for a walk on St. Abb's Head just after we had seen the film. Hundreds of gulls wheeling round. Terrifying!

I think it was just a short story originally - and set in Cornwall from what I remember.

The Hitchcock version was brilliant. I love Hitchcock films anyway.

I taught it for years, it never failed to unnerve the students, especially after a break when the seagulls descended on the playground to eat up the discarded bits of food!

I loved the Hitchcock version, with Tippi Hedron rowing a boat in high heels and a perfect hairdo!