Historical Events  Movies
Hitchcocks The Birds

'The Birds' from 1963 was filmed in black and white

'The Birds' from 1963 was filmed in color

The whites of their eyes

Here's another Mandela Effect, like The Fly, which is concerned with whether a movie was originally filmed in color or black and white. This time it's Hitchcock's 1963 thriller "The Birds".

Based on the 1952 Daphne Due Marier story of the same name, the movie shows a series of unexplained attacks by birds on a small, ordinary American town over a few days.

Many of the special effects were actually firsts, including a precursor to the green-screen technique used throughout the video and movie industries today.


The popular feeling is that somehow the movie had been colorized later. The lead actress claims she's often asked when this happened in interviews.

The main obvious argument that most people only had black and white TV's back then is countered by the number of younger people who have seen the movie but still claim it was black and white.


When it premiered, the movie recieved mixed reviews. It wasn't particularly clear if it was a regular thriller or a horror movie, even though it had elements of both.

A sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, certainly bombed even though Tippi Hedren, who was in the original, briefly appeared in it. It was released directly to TV.