Evan Hunter

But we did not have it, and I don't think he realized when he made that promise to me how difficult it was going to be to deal with birds and to deal with animation and to deal with puppetry and all the other little gimmicks he used to create the illusion of reality.

It was interesting because the most real thing in the movie, to me anyway, were the birds, not the people.

The people, in a way, were the puppets, and the hand puppets that were biting the people seemed real.

It was a strange irony.

I can't assign percentages to it.

I can only give you absolute examples.

The scene where the birds are attacking the town, where the gas station catches on fire, and we cut to way above the gas station.

We see the birds flying in formation like a flight of fighter planes.

Those were animated.

One of the most frightening scenes in the film is where Rod Taylor is trying to pull the shutter closed and tie it with a cord, and a bird is pecking at his hand.

That was a puppet.

Some of the birds in the scene where the children are running away from the school.

and the birds are on the children's backs and they're trying to get them off and they're going at them.

Those were mechanical birds that the children were operating from little buzzers and things inside their clothing.

The scene where the swifts come down the chimney,

that was all double exposure.

We shot the people running around the room, flapping their hands in the air, and then the birds were added onto that later on.

Yeah, he was very good.

He was very good on suspense and he was very good on...

Detail, it was amazing.