Schoolhouse from The Birds. From here.
The Tides Restaurant as it looks today.
The Catholic Church with the schoolhouse to the left. From Leon Turnbull.
Hitch and Hedren just outside the schoolhouse. The church is easily visible on the right. From the Bodega Bay International Short Film Festival page, with plenty more great pictures.
The famous Ansel Adams portrait of the Bodega church.
This film still gives me the heebie jeebies. But that’s probably from seeing it at a young, impressionable age. To this day, seeing a bunch of crows congregating on telephone wire or a tree still creeps me out.
Oh, I feel the chills just looking at it…
Thanks for posting these photos- they bring back memories of a great film. Clearly one of Hitchcock’s most unnerving works.
Tom Hyland
It didn’t scare me as a kid and now I find the film quite silly. I’ve only seen it on TV.
Maybe it helps to see it in a theatre?
Panavia, I actually think a lot of Hitch’s films have an element of silliness about them. I personally think it’s because he relies so much on bluescreen, treadmills, bird puppets, and things of that sort. Occasionally things can look kind of cartoony because of that. A lot of it is Hitch’s evil wit, though, where he intends things to be funny in a very wry manner.
In “The Birds” though I think it works. The “cartooniest” scene is when Tippi is watching the fire spread on the street below, and her facial expressions are intercut with brief glimpses of the fire spreading. Hysterical and horrifying at the same time.
Where is this school?
The address is apparently 17110 Bodega Lane in Bodega, CA. I think that’s the schoolhouse address, it might be the church address though. They’re right next to each other.
I was just at the schoolhouse yesterday showing a friend from out of town around. Its currently a residence, but the area since the birds was filmed has not changed much at all. I love the film, and growing up here seemed to increase the sense of terror it bestowed.