Starring: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies

Killer animal movies can be pretty easy: tons of people are already afraid of sharks, loads of people can’t stand spiders, Indiana Jones hates snakes… but birds? Hitchcock manages to take some of natures most innocuous creatures and turn them into objects of relentless horror, setting an angry murder of them loose on a quiet California town. Hitch thrusts his stranded characters into the thick of mother nature’s wrath without pausing to explain the reason behind this bird-led insurrection. Besides, we all know why. (It’s because people are terrible).

Director Jordan Peele assigned actress Lupita Nyong’o a list of influential films in order to create “a shared language” for his new film Us. We’re honoring this fun homework assignment by screening the first on his list, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, on the opening weekend of Us, and we encourage you to watch the rest: The Shining (1980), Dead Again (1991), Funny Games (1997), The Sixth Sense (1999), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), Martyrs (2008), Let the Right One In (2008), The Babadook (2014) and It Follows (2014).