"The most striking image of all is a from high above the town, including a pair of s who drop into the shot from each side of the frame. As one critic noted, 'the town as seen in the overhead shot does not actually exist. It was an , into which a fire was inserted, filmed from a hill overlooking the car park. The gulls were filmed from a clifftop on the , west of Los Angeles, and into the shot. ...'"

"Mr. Hitchcock ... begins, innocently, with a haughty San Francisco girl having a testy encounter in a bird shop with a man on whom she plays a practical joke. Then, mischievously, he leads her to the fellow's family home in a fishing village north of San Francisco to deliver an impudent present of two s. ... Then, sneakily, Mr. Hitchcock tweaks us with a tentative touch of the bizarre. The plausible is interrupted by a peculiar avian caprice. A attacks a young woman. Flocks of angry gulls whirl in the air. A swarm of s swoops down a chimney and whirrs madly through the living room. And, then, before we know it, he is flying in shock waves of birds and the wild, mad, fantastic encounter with a phenomenon of nature is on. There may be no explanation for it (except that symbolic one, perhaps), but the fierceness and frightfulness of it are sufficient to cause shocks and chills. And that is, no doubt, what Mr. Hitchcock primarily intends. ... The cast is appropriate and sufficient to this tic intent. is pretty, bland and wholesome as the disruptive girl. is stolid and sturdy as the mother-smothered son. is querulous as the mother, and pretty is pleasant but vaguely sinister as the old girl friend."

"Ruth McDevitt - Mrs. MacGruder, pet store clerk"

"Doreen Lang - Mother in diner"

"Karl Swenson - Drunk doomsayer in diner"

"Joe Mantell - Traveling salesman at diner's bar"

"Lonny Chapman - Deke Carter, cook in diner"

"Charles McGraw - Sebastian Sholes, fisherman in diner"

"Ethel Griffies - Mrs. Bundy, elderly ornithologist"