On a brisk November morning in the small town of Bodega, just over an hour north of San Francisco, Rick Madsen hoists a mannequin of a familiar celebrity through the front door of his antique shop, placing it outside on a sunlit stretch of pavement.
“This is my routine,” he says, pulling a sugar-free Red Bull out of a plastic grocery bag and setting it on the cash register. “I have the movie playing every single day.”“The Birds” follows Melanie Daniels, a wealthy San Francisco socialite with a knack for practical jokes . She meets an attorney at a Union Square pet shop — where Hitchock makes his own cameo — and they share a flirty exchange.
Tippi Hedren and a group of children run away from the attacking crows in a still from the film"The Birds," directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Disguising themselves in dark clothing, he and his assistants snuck up on crows at night and threw nets over them, including one flock of roughly 20,000 birds in Arizona.
Just a few appeared in the finished film. None of them were utilized in one of the film's most frightening moments, when Melanie is ambushed by hundreds of crows in Mitch’s attic. Instead, live birds were tethered to Hedren’s clothes, while crew members tossed more at her from offscreen for a scene that required five days to shoot and lasted about a minute in the movie.
The movie premiered at New York City’s Palace Theater on Mar. 28, 1963 to a mixed reception, though it’s now recognized as one of the most iconic horror movies of all time, paving the way for creature classics such as “Jaws” and inspiring the likes of Guillermo del Toro and John Carpenter. It won a Horror Hall of Fame award in 1991, and was
led to the eviction of then-owner Michael Fahmie. With the exception of a few rare posters he kept, most of the movie relics — stuffed crows, Alfred Hitchcock bobbleheads, Tippi Hedren dolls, a painting from the schoolhouse scene — were sold.Back at Seagull Antiques, Madsen admits he sometimes turns on his radio to drown out the bird calls because he’s seen and heard the movie so many times.
Madsen also took it upon himself to rescue the mannequins when the museum shuttered, placing them next to the phone booth.