The Birds (1963) - 121 mistakes

Continuity: When Tippi Hedren is having her head wound cleaned in the restaurant, Rod Taylor is wiping her blood off with a tissue but it does not actually come off; in the next shot, however, there is clearly no blood on her head.

Continuity: After Melanie has been bandaged up after her attack, she sits up on the sofa, and you can see two large bloody scratches on her left cheek. These scratches disappear when Mitch and Lydia walk Melanie outside to the car.

Continuity: When Lydia brings out Cathy's birthday cake, in a wide shot the icing is white, then in a closeup the icing is a pink colour.

Revealing: The birds that attack the schoolchildren have no shadows.

Continuity: The tall structure on the hill behind the swing set has a lot of clouds around it. When we see it seconds later the sky is clear.

Continuity: Early in the movie Melanie makes a right turn as she goes up to Annie's house and we see a white post on the school side of the street and a stop sign on the opposite side. Now as she drives up to the school to check on Cathy we see the exact same spot and there's no stop sign.

Continuity: Before Lydia walks into Mr. Faucet's room she looks to her left and her face is entirely illuminated by the light coming from his room. In the next shot as she walks in only the left side of her face is illuminated.

Visible crew/equipment: In a scene where Melanie, Mitch and Cathy are walking to the building on the hill along side Melanie's car, you can see the camera move in the reflection on the side of the car.

Continuity: As Melanie opens the door to the bedroom there is no light except her flashlight but you can see two distinct reflections in the door knob, one of the flashlight and one of the studio light behind her.

Continuity: As Annie opens the door and finds the dead bird on the floor, the background across the street changes from of a very dark house with two lights on to a moonlit road between shots.

Audio problem: When Annie says, "Did you drive up from San Francisco by the coast road?" her lips are mouthing something different.

Continuity: As the school children are running down the hill a white fence appears between shots in the background on the right of the screen.

Continuity: When Melanie gets up and looks at the birds massed on the monkey bars the area behind her is a tree and a field. This background changes entirely when she and Mitch walk up to find Annie's body and there is what looks like a junk yard with a valley behind it.

Continuity: As everyone runs out of the restaurant, the bushes on the left of the building that were there before are gone.

Continuity: Melanie walks out from behind the desk and goes into the hallway to get the nightgown to show Annie. No one ever flicked a light switch, but the hallway is now very well lit up.

Continuity: After finding Mr. Faucet's body, Lydia gets back in her truck through the passenger side door. Notice that the window is rolled up and the side vent window is shut tight. Seconds later we see her inside the truck with the window rolled down and the vent window tilted open.

Continuity: A blond boy in a light brown shirt is attacked by a crow and goes from having no blood on his neck to having a lot of blood smeared on his neck between shots.

Continuity: As Mitch walks up to the garage door all the birds on the ground that are near him run away and there's nothing to his right except a garbage pail. Then just before he walks through the door two birds appear pecking at his feet.

Continuity: When Lydia says to Melanie, "Do you think Cathy's alright at the school?" the two pictures hanging above her head disappear the next time we see her.

Audio problem: As Annie says to the students, "All right children now quiet," her lips do not match what she says. This continues before she says, "Miss Daniels" and her lips move and nothing comes out.

Continuity: After Melanie signs the card to Cathy she never puts her left glove back on. We're able to see her drive down uninterrupted to the boat and she never puts it on, but when she walks out of the car to the boat it's back on.

Continuity: Melanie's car changes positions from the time she parks near the front steps of the school. As Melanie walks out of the school to sit by the monkey bars to when she runs back to the school, and then when the children run out of the school.

Continuity: As they all run into the house to get away from the birds the redheaded boy in the grey-blue suit disappears. He runs across the lawn at the same time as Annie and the two little girls with her and should arrive at exactly the same time but we never see him again. Mitch even looks around in his direction to see if there are any children still outside before he enters the house. The boy just disappears from this scene and is not in the last shot of everyone inside the house either.

Continuity: When we saw the phone booth earlier in the movie it was sitting on rock now as Melanie runs inside it for protection from the bird attack it's sitting on asphalt.

Continuity: The blonde girl in the red with the red bows in her hair has a crow on her head that suddenly jumps to her right shoulder between shots.

Continuity: As they get to the restaurant door, Melanie is to the right of Mitch, but in the next shot inside the restaurant she walks around him again to get on his right side.

Continuity: As they look across the bay at Mitch's house, the store manager changes position between shots. He moves closer to Melanie as he asks her if she wants him to order a boat for her.

Continuity: As Melanie drives up the main street of Bodega Bay a kid on a bike appears riding behind her between shots. He wasn't there in the previous shot when they show her behind the steering wheel and we can see back behind her car.

Continuity: As Lydia runs into the house after arriving back home from the scene at Mr. Faucets house there's a brown shade at the top on the window to her right. Earlier after the party as she opens the curtain and looks outside from the dining room, the window has a drape and a curtain and no brown shade.

Revealing: In two of the shots inside the cream colored car right after Melanie blows the horn either wires or a visual artifact from the superimposing process distinctly appear outside of the rear right window.

Continuity: As Melanie is inside of the phone booth a man with birds attacking him runs up to her and there is a clear shot of the road extending past the restaurant. When this spot is seen earlier as Mitch and Melanie walk into the restaurant it's entirely different with a bunch of telephone poles on the left.

Visible crew/equipment: In the close-up of the orange car there's a perfect shot of the cameraman in the bumper as the gas hits the tire.

Continuity: At Mr. Faucet's house, both doors that Lydia walks through are blue but after she walks in the door is white.

Continuity: As Melanie talks about renting the apartment Annie's hair changes slightly between shots. Two little pieces of hair stick out right by her left ear that weren't there in the previous shot when she opens the door. Annie's hair changes in other consecutive shots throughout the film.

Continuity: As they go up to the restaurant to get help Melanie says, "I had a booster before I went abroad last May" and the background changes abruptly between shots.

Continuity: After Melanie hangs up the phone she sits and ponders whether to go to Cathy's party, on the desk to the left of the phone is the cigarette lighter that Annie left there before after she lit her cigarette. Next to it is a pack of cigarettes that she didn't leave there before. If you look closely earlier as she takes the cigarette out of the pack in the left pocket of her nightgown the lighter is in her right hand, the cigarette in her left and the pack stays in her pocket.

Continuity: As Melanie approaches Mitch's dock, a yellow pole extends from the far left side of the dock to the brown pail in the front of the dock. In the next shot, as she walks on the dock, the pole is gone.

Continuity: At the party Melanie grabs a girl from the birds, but when they all run into the house Mitch is now carrying the same girl.

Deliberate "mistake": Mitch carries Annie's body into her house through the front door, which he doesn't close behind him. In the next shot as he leaves the house it's been closed and he has to open it before he walks out.

Continuity: The signature on the card that Melanie signs to Cathy in the close-up on the hood of the car is different when she leaves it leaning on the birdcage at Mitch's house. The "Y" at the end of her name is different on the two envelopes.

Continuity: The windshield of a blue and white car that crashes into a stop sign gets broken on the left side. In the next shot as Melanie looks at it up close from the phone booth it's not broken.

Continuity: As Mitch and Melanie walk down the hill he's behind her and they're not touching. In the next shot he has his left hand behind her.

Visible crew/equipment: As Melanie drives up to have dinner at Mitch's the reflection of the cameraman on the inside of the window can be seen moving in the upper left hand portion of the screen.

Continuity: As Melanie opens Mitch's front door, her pocketbook is strapped around her wrist. In the next shot, as she comes through the door, the pocketbook is up around her forearm.

Continuity: As Melanie gets back into the boat she places her pocketbook in the back with the latch facing her. In the next shot as she watches Mitch on the shore the pocketbook is reversed and it stays that way until she gets out of the boat after being hit by the gull.

Continuity: The aerial shot of the fire is wrong. The two cars parked across from the exploding orange car are green on the left and white on the right. In the aerial shot they're both black.

Continuity: As Melanie, Mitch and Cathy get into her car to leave the school, Annie's red mailbox can be seen out on the road behind them. In the next shot of them inside the car driving away the post is there but the red mailbox is not on it.

Continuity: After Melanie walks into Mitch's house and puts the cage down we see that there are no birds either on the perches or in the bottom of the cage.

Continuity: Lydia puts her plate of food on the table in front of her as she gets up. She never touches it again, but later on in the bird attack the plate of food has been moved onto the couch near Melanie's plate in front of the red pillow.

Continuity: As Melanie holds out her right hand to shield the boy in the white jacket we get a really good close-up of his neck. It was bleeding three shots ago as a crow was attacking him but now it's not.

Visible crew/equipment: When Melanie walks out the door carrying the tray with the tea pot on it you can see a reflection of the stage lighting for the entire shot.

Continuity: The lamp over the dining room table, when Melanie brings Cathy back from the bathroom, is not this same lamp that was there as they were listening to the television report. Before it had a glass bottom and now the entire bottom is made of metal.

Continuity: As Lydia carries the birthday cake out from the house the position of the vine growing on the pole on the right jumps from right to left between shots.

Continuity: As Melanie runs to Annie in the classroom and says, "Close that door quickly," all the children's jackets and sweaters and everything on the bench below changes between shots.

Continuity: As Melanie walks into Annie's apartment we see the front door behind here to the left. Before the door had a shade on top of it, this door is different and doesn't have a shade or a space for it between the curtain and the window.

Continuity: When we first see the table with the food on it the sandwiches in the middle are piled up in interlocking stacks of three with one more pile of three or four sandwiches rising in the center. When we see the sandwiches again up close as Mitch brings the little girl into the house, they are neatly stacked above each other though not interlocking as before and the middle pile is not there.

Audio problem: Before Melanie starts off across the bay we hear the boat keeper start the boat's engine. But this is only an over-dub, the engine's not really running as there's no turbulence behind the boat like in the next two shots.

Visible crew/equipment: As they talk Annie walks over to sit behind her desk and we see a quick shot of her hallway. Look closely at the mirror hanging on the far wall and you can see the quick reflection of the studio equipment in it.

Plot hole: When Jessica Tandy walks into Mr. Faucet's house everything is in perfect shape except a couple of broken cups, and there's not a dead bird in sight.

Continuity: When Melanie is walking up to the counter in the bird shop she has a black purse in her hands. In one shot she is walking to the counter with her purse in her hands, but in the following shot, her purse is laying on the counter and is now taking off her gloves.

Continuity: At the children's party, when the birds attack, you can see a child roll under the table with the cake and other party snacks on it. The birthday cake swaps ends with the bowl of drink a few shots later, with nobody re-arranging it.

Continuity: After Mitch runs to Annie and Cathy there's a fake movable bird behind the real bird to the right of the swing. It's gone when we see Mitch carry the little girl into the house.

Continuity: In the long shot as Lydia drives up to Mr. Faucet's farm the small structure in front of the building on the far right has four windows. As she parks the truck, we see that structure only has two windows.

Continuity: In the scene with the policeman, Melanie suggests that she should stay for the night. Look closely at the mantle above the fireplace to in the right of the picture there is a jar with something sticking out of it. In the previous shot this jar is empty.

Continuity: As Mitch throws logs onto the fire we see the couch behind him and no one is there. In the next shot Melanie appears sitting on the pillows on the edge of the couch.

Continuity: When Mitch unwraps the cotton to put peroxide on Melanie's cut, the ashtray on the table is empty. Mitch never lets the piece of cotton out of his fingers until he has Melanie hold it on her head, and no one else touches the cotton on the table, yet near the end of the scene another used piece of cotton appears in the ashtray.

Audio problem: After the gull hits her in the head, Melanie says to Mitch, "Yes, I think so," but her mouth does not go along with what she's saying.

Audio problem: They use a different overdubbed tone for the bell on the door of the general store when the manager opens it. Before as Melanie walked into the store we heard the real sound.

Continuity: When Melanie shows Annie the nightgown she bought, there's a box directly behind Melanie's brandy glass. Now it's silver, but before it was turquoise.

Continuity: As Melanie and Mitch walk down the hill Annie and Cathy are standing in the middle of the yard with two other children between them and the lounge chair. In the next shot as we see Lydia carrying the cake, the two children disappear and Annie and Cathy have moved to the left closer to the door.

Continuity: As Mitch runs to get the hammer and nails for the front door notice the top leaf of the fern plant to his left. It gets rearranged in the next shot, as Melanie watches him, with one fern sticking out from the middle that wasn't there before.

Continuity: The top of the bird cage that Melanie brings to Mitch's apartment has 24 rungs but when we see it again on the floorboard of Melanie's car it has only 12 rungs.

Continuity: The book on the table to the left of Melanie's brandy glass has been made to look as though someone has been reading it. When we first see it the cover is closed now the cover looks as though it's been thumbed through even though no one touched it.

Continuity: As Melanie starts off across the Bay, we see two boats and a red building to the left of the matte drawing that weren't there when she approached the boat keeper.

Visible crew/equipment: When Melanie pulls up to the school to check on Cathy we hear voices of the children singing inside and a crew member's reflection is seen moving in the car door as she opens it.

Deliberate "mistake": When Melanie first walks into the classroom she sees five rows of students. Later when the students are about to leave there are only four rows of students, now ending with the boy in the plaid shirt (closest to the camera), in the front. The row on the left has been removed so the camera can pan from left to right in the side shot.

Continuity: As Melanie runs into the phone booth from the restaurant the four poles that were around it when Mitch walks her to the restaurant after the gull attack have disappeared.

Continuity: After Mitch ties the shutter closed both sides of the window look identical with each shudder being seen through the window, but as he walks back into the living room just before the lights go out the left shutter is the same and the right shutter is black.

Continuity: As Lydia looks through the window of Mr. Faucet's kitchen there is a distinct pattern on the wall to her left. As she comes through the door the pattern on the wall is different and she's in a different room.

Continuity: When Mitch picks up the mirror his right hand grabs one of the umbrellas hanging on the right of the mirror. It in the next shot the umbrella has disappeared.

Continuity: As Melanie approaches Doodles Weaver to get her boat there are no lobster traps where he is standing. Two shots later she climbs down the ladder and there are two traps to the right of the ladder.

Continuity: As Melanie signs the card to Cathy there's a guy in the phone booth to the left of the Bodega Bay bar who's not there in the next shot.

Continuity: After Mitch rescues Melanie from the phone booth he places her to the left of the front door of the restaurant as he reaches to open it. In the next shot their positions change and she is in front of the door going into restaurant.

Audio problem: The overdub of Melanie playing piano in the living room is the same volume when the scene changes to a different room as Mitch and Lydia talk inside the kitchen.

Continuity: When going along the water in her hired boat, Melanie passes a pole bobbing about in the water. In the next wide shot the pole has vanished.

Continuity: A guy in the blue and white car that comes crashing towards Melanie in the phone booth throws a bird out of his driver side window. In the next shot as he fends off several other birds the window is shut. Then when he crashes into the orange car, it's open again.

Continuity: Earlier when the birds come out of the fireplace Mitch puts his plate of food down on the table in front of him. Later when he turns the table over, the plate of food is not there.

Deliberate "mistake": Some of the children that are running in front of the superimposed background were never in the classroom. For example the blonde girl in the blue and white sweater in the middle of the second shot and the girl in the green sweater in the center of the third shot were not there.

Continuity: As Annie goes across the room to get an ashtray, you can see that the next room is pitch black. In a previous shot when she went to get the brandy it was lit up and she never touched a light switch.

Continuity: The flashlight is aiming right at the doorknob before Melanie walks into the room. In the next shot, as she walks through the door (before they turn the spotlight on) there's no light because the flashlight is off and isn't pointing at the doorknob.

Continuity: As Melanie approaches the cashier, there are several birds up high in the cage directly behind the cash register that aren't there in the next shot.

Visible crew/equipment: When Melanie asks Annie if she can use her phone the reflection of a crew member behind her can be seen moving in the window of the house across the street.

Continuity: As Annie and Melanie speak about how they met Mitch, watch the shadow move down the front door. A considerable amount of time has gone by between shots.

Continuity: Just before the lights blowout Mitch comes back into living room and there is a red ottoman to the right of the green chair that Lydia and Cathy are sitting in. A few moments before, all three of them just walked through that spot when they were hiding by the bookcase and it wasn't there.

Revealing: Melanie has no problem taking the letter for Mitch out of her pocketbook as she places it on top of the bird cage. The crew put adhesive tape on the back of it, so she can push on the letter with her thumb to keep it in place for the close-up.

Continuity: When Annie gets up and says, " I think I'll have some of that" her cigarette is half gone with a long ash on it. In the next shot as she fiddles with the brandy bottle her cigarette is brand new.

Visible crew/equipment: A large equipment shadow can be seen on Melanie and Mitch as they stop to look at the people in the restaurant hiding in the corner.

Visible crew/equipment: As Melanie parks in front of the general store stage lighting and the reflection of a crew member can be seen in her car door as she opens it.

Continuity: Melanie is only in Mitch's house for one minute, but the tide has already gone out enough to beach the other boat tied to the dock.

Audio problem: As the birds sit on the monkey bars outside the school we hear the sound of many birds flapping their wings for several seconds before any take off.

Continuity: As Melanie stands in front of the pet shop and watches the birds flying, more time passes than the two seconds implied. The kittens in the right window go from playing to sleeping between shots and a grey kitten appears in the window that wasn't there before.

Visible crew/equipment: When Cathy brings a pot of coffee into the dining room, you can see several bright studio lights reflected in it throughout this scene, and you can also briefly see the reflection of someone's arm moving about on it.

Continuity: When everyone begins running down the hill Melanie is in the middle and Annie is in the back. We're watching continuous action but several seconds later Melanie jumps to the rear without ever being passed by Annie.

Continuity: In a close-up of Melanie in the phone booth after a blue and white car crashes into the orange car look at the left side of the screen. You'll see the stop sign that the blue and white car just knocked over back up where it was seconds before.

Continuity: As Melanie speaks to the pet shop cashier she holds her head to the left. In the next shot she's looking straight at the cashier.

Continuity: As Melanie places the card for Cathy on the bird cage one bird appears on the lower perch that wasn't there before. In the next shot it disappears again.

Continuity: As Lydia looks at Melanie and Mitch walking down the hill, the large piece of molding in the corner between the door and window disappears between shots.

Continuity: As Melanie and Mitch walk up the hill behind his house Bodega Bay is at very low tide with a lot of sand bars showing. When they get to the top of the hill it's high tide.

Continuity: As she sits and listens to Melanie talk to Mitch on the phone Annie's right hand changes positions between shots. She starts to move it up, then in the next shot it's already leaning on her left hand.

Visible crew/equipment: After finding Mr. Faucets body Lydia gets back in her truck and you can see the reflection of a crewmember wearing headphones in the lower right part of the windshield.

Continuity: As Melanie starts off across the bay we see the boat keeper watching her from the ladder. A few seconds ago there were lobster traps piled all around and above the fence behind him.

Continuity: As Melanie and Mitch look at Annie's body more time elapses then we are led to believe. There's a car parked on the road directly behind them and there are no cuts in the time line of the movie, but ten seconds later we see that spot again and the car is gone.

Continuity: In her room as Melanie walks past the mirror the first time there is nothing on the upper wooden ledge in front of the glass. As she walks back from the window there's plenty of stuff there.

Audio problem: At the end of the movie when they're walking out of the house you hear a door open, but the doorway is empty - it's just an open space, with no door.

Continuity: When Mitch is closing the shutter after the birds have started to fly into the window you can visibly see blood on the shutter, yet when they switch cameras and he shuts the shutter the blood is gone.

Visible crew/equipment: Mitch puts the glass of brandy up to Melanie's lips and we see the brandy touch her upper lip and slosh around but then as he pulls it back there's not a trace of liquid on her lips.

Revealing: When they show the perspective of being in Melanie's driver's seat looking out the windshield we don't see Melanie's legs as you would expect, but a mechanism that allows someone to steer from the passenger seat so the camera has an unobstructed view of the driver's seat.

Audio problem: As Mitch hammers the mirrored cabinet to the front door they overdub a second hammer sound over the actual sound to make it more intense. If you listen closely they don't get them all right and they miss the very first swing.

Continuity: During the bird attack Melanie crushes the shade on the lamp in the corner. Several shots later it looks almost like new.

Revealing: The crew rigged the explosion to start from under the car and not from the lit match which isn't thrown anywhere near where the explosion originates.

Visible crew/equipment: As Lydia gets into her truck you see a reflection of the stage lights in the steering wheel.