Bingowings said:

NeverarGreat said:

Absolutely agree about Vertigo being far better than The Birds. I actually didn't think much of Hitchcock until I saw Vertigo.

The Birds, isn't a patch on the source material and the awful special effects really spoil it for me.

Vertigo is a masterpiece.

Frenzy has all the looks of of Sweeney The Movie (1977) but lacks the quality.

'Vertigo' is good but I was always more into 'Rear Window', 'Rope', 'North By Northwest' and a few others. It might not even be in my top 5 Hitchcock.

'Birds' never really grabbed me because I didn't care about the characters. But I thought the Birds were scary because of the sound rather than the visuals. The fictionalised drama about the filming of it, is better than the actual film IMO.

On the subject of violece in films...

'Frenzy' is very disturbing but it seemed intentionally so to me. A POV shot halfway through where you see through the eyes of the murderer as he's strangling a woman is really horrible. Not a film to be enjoyed, but not a badly made film if you can stomach it.

But I wouldn't recommend 2010's 'The Killer Inside Me' to anyone, as it left me shocked and upset. Seriously the violence in that has stayed with me, burned on my retina. I'm generally against censorship so I've no problem with the film existing, but I wouldn't watch it again if you paid me.

However the film that reviled me the most in my life was 2002's 'The Magdalene Sisters'. I actually felt physically sick watching it but it's a superbly made film based on true history. Again I wouldn't really want to see that again but I would recommend it to others because of the social and historical lessons.