Ah! I only just spotted on the IMDb that this actually came from a novel by Anthony Schaffer which explains a lot … had I known this I might’ve watched it even sooner than I have knowing it features Hayley Mills, albeit in a role so small her opening credit bizarrely reads, “Guest starring …” lol. But hers is one of those roles that, though small in screentime, is felt overwhelmingly at all times. She’s as beautiful a presence here as she has been anywhere – I think for me it all really clicks when it cuts back to her in Forbush’s last monologue, about all living creatures relying in some way or other on others, even (and there it cuts to Mills back at home) humans. It’s such a great moment, her face just sells what could easily be quite a corny message.

Much of the film is footage of the penguins themselves and there’s a sense in which it’s almost part-documentary, the story being fairly thin on the ground and really just being this portrait of man, and quelle man in John Hurt’s performance – Forbush being the kind of guy who won’t go to Antarctica without a few cases of Krug champagne and other fineries, declaring in a radio call that the electric blanket is the last thing he’s missing in the bed department, lol. It’s an amazing performance that goes from surprisingly young and feisty for Hurt through to something bordering on madness and finally despair only to come back full circle, completely changed; the last shot of Hurt returning to Mills is so simple but at the same time absolutely beautiful. It’s definitely a movie I’ll come back to.

It must be a good while since I last saw this one ‘cos it kind of felt like watching it for the first time, different things jumping out to a different me than before. The lovebirds swaying in the passenger seat of Melanie’s car; the scene with the postmaster, “You ever handled a boat before … want me to order one?” and the whole procedure of getting her to Bodega Bay. Was Hitchcock ever cheekier than he was here?

Is it still scary at all? I think certainly that final shot is one of the more chilling images in cinema. I’m always unsettled by the colour scheme too – a gorgeous mix of sickly greens and yellows, with blood-red spots of nail polish and lipstick on the women, ornaments in the background, Annie’s mailbox, a child’s cardigan at the school, a plush seat at the diner … and of course, ultimately, limited quantities of actual blood (in one scene, of course, actual blood). And somewhere in the last third, something switches, and the visceral terror of it all does take over – even as you’re still laughing at the sheer B-movie-ness of it all, the assault on the senses is undeniably effective, and Bernard Herrmann’s extraordinary sound design impacts above everything. Combined with the way the characters almost begin to sound like birds themselves towards the end (Hedren most of all – “Cathy! Where’s Cathy?” and that final “Nooooo!” as they attempt to get her out the door to escape), the whole combo is astoundingly primal, and there are psychological levels running through this movie that would take pages to address.

It starts as another of Hitch’s elaborate, playful “Boo!”s … but he really knows how to throw that switch, and on this occasion in particular, it really worked as a scary movie to a shocking extent.