OK, everyone must've seen this classic by now and i've surely seen it 25-30 times by now, first
in the 1980's on a VHS copy from a Japanese laserdisc and on a US VHS and then on an Italian
VHS without english subtitles in the 1990's (see pic below right).
My first DVD watch was the US VCI one early 2000's and a slightly better edition was released
by US Blue Underground around 2005 or so. This German release was the 1st time i've seen this
Masterpiece on a Blu-ray, and there are a whole lot of Blu-ray releases from an array of companies
around the world. Now also to be found in 4K UHD editions

I will not speak much about the story below as i'm sure almost everyone visiting this site has
already seen the film. Instead, here's some loosely connected ramblings about the film.

Old US VCI Home Video edition and an even older Italian VHS

This film is NOT the first Giallo movie as Mario Bava made that one in 1962 but it's probably the most
famous and influental as the Italian-Spanish film industries went into a Gialli film making overdrive for
5-6 years after The Bird, until the world wide audiences got tired of black gloved murderers, and jumped
on another psycho killer train - The much beloved Slasher film.
For 10 years or so we only wanted to see teenagers get slaughtered at summer camps, in a college or
at a university.
Then there were almost no horror at all for some decade or so, besides in Japan, until the found
footage craze struck and the Retro horror film wave exploded with retro- just about anything really,
retro-slasher, retro-grindhouse, retro-gialli, cabin in the woods horror, home invasion horror, WW2
nazi zombies horror, all types of creature horror including mermaids etc etc.

It's Argento's first directed film and also the first in his Animal trilogy and it was a joint Italian and
West German production.
In the promo material and in the trailer the German producers boldly stated the following lie:

Nach einem roman von Bryan Edgar Wallace ... Wallace spannung based on a Bryan Edgar Wallace
novel ... No, Noooo, it's NOT, it's based on a 1949 novel by the great pulp fiction, crime and sci fi
writer Fredric Brown - The Screaming Mimi

A 1955 Bantam pocket book edition (Cover art by Charles Binger)

In the German Koch Media booklet a Hans Langsteiner also states this. Dario Argento had read the
1949 novel but hadn't obtained the rights to film it, so he changed some things, as the settings from
Chicago to Rome, and our protagonist from the bummed up alcoholic Sweeney to a young and good
looking writer, Sam Dalmas, and the clue to this Murder Mystery from a macabre figurine/statyette to
a macabre naivist painting (painted by the great Mario Adorf as the artist.

Why did the Germans call this giallo Wallace spannung/suspense then? Answer: The Krimi

That's the German (or West German) crime movies that preceded the Gialli movies with a couple of years.
Very popular in West Germany and with only some of them released in english versions abroad.
I'm no expert in the Krimi genre though but they were made from approx. 1960 and some decade on.
The krimi films i've seen has been somewhat macabre but not as brutal and stylish as the italian gialli
films and often with annoying comedy elements in them, and with that comedy relief guy we all hate.
Krimi films, you could see them as early gialli films maybe, so the German producers weren't totally
wrong when marketing the film this way in West Germany.
And, then maybe the Swedish "Mannekäng i rött", the stylish 1958 crime movie from Arne Mattsson
could be called a precursor to the krimi ?
The Krimi movies were based mostly on the writing of Edgar Wallace, and then on his son Bryan
Edgar Wallace's.

The old US Blue Underground DVD

The Screaming Mimi was filmed "the first time" in 1958 in a late Film Noir B version directed by
Gerd Oswald and with Anita Ekberg in the main role as a burlesque stripper/dancer with some
serious problems, yes, and changed in Argento's version to the art gallery women played by Eva
Renzi. US Columbia Pictures DVD has released a bare bones but fine DVD of this early
adaption and you can read more about it on my Film Noir & Pulp Fiction page.

There's another connection between the 2 films besides the novel, Gerd Oswald - Mario Adorf .
German born US director Oswald returned to Germany (West-Germany) and made the 1959 noirish
teenage delinquency drama "Am tag als der regen kam" where Swiss actor Mario Adorf played a
main role (Adorf playing the weird artist in The Bird).
As usual these old German films are released on DVD or Blu-ray in Germany but without english
subs. Very frustrating, as i would love to see many of them, especially the Krimi one's.
Note 2026: There has finally been massive releases of english subtitled Krimi, read more
elsewhere on my Gialli and Eurocrime page 2.

The Gallery with modern (and spikey) art owned by the Ranieri's

Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante .... he was so full of himself says co-actor Eva Renzi in the extras)
an american writer in Rome walks by an art gallery at night and witnesses an assault on a woman
by a figure dressed in black. The woman, co-owner of the gallery Monica (Eva Renzi) survives
the knife attack, but there has been 3 murders of women in Rome thelast month and the police
thinks the perp is the same. As this is a giallo Sam sleuths around by himself and puts himself
and his gorgeous girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) in peril.
Here are Enrico Maria Salerno playing the crime inspector Morocino, and he's fine, Umberto
Raho as Mr. Ranieri, Renato Romano as Sam's friend, Mario Adorf as an eccentric artist,
Reggie Nalder as a yellow jacketed ex-boxer assassin,
Werner Peters as a homosexual antique shop owner and The Grey Crowned Crane as
Hornitus Nevalis.

The Bird ? Yes, the supposedly North Siberian bird is a fake one. It didn't look very arctic to
me but very Crane-ish so i googled a bit and found out it was an african bird, a Grey Crowned
Crane, (but we've cranes here in Sweden breeding up and above the polar circle in the summer,
so i may be wrong).
Yeah, great work, huh? I felt very smart BUT, when looking at IMDB someone had already
wrote that. Probably some thousand other film nerds have already checked that up?

Some other Trivia that i noticed:

1. The Chase scene with Musante and Nalder in the Bus garage: The bus headlights are turned
on lighting up Sam and we can clearly see a yellow jacketed man sitting in the bus driver's
seat. Sam runs away and 3-4 seconds later max. Nalder has used some unknown quantum
physics to travel in space from the seat to stand in front of Sam shooting at him.
If not, there were 2 ex-boxers with yellow jackets in the bus garage ?

2. The Mercedes attack: The Giallo killer dressed in black drives a dark Mercedes and runs
over a policeman and then try to hit Sam and Julia who look at the car and then tries to run
away from it. Strangely the Police show NO interest at all what sort of car the black figure drove
OR if they saw some or the whole of the registration number. Bad police work.

Suzy "Bird-Torso" Kendall

As usual everyone seems to prefer their favourite gialli whiskey - J & B and the 4th
murder victim has an J & B ashtray at her bedside.When the 5th victim played by Karen
Valenti looks up the staircase in her apartment house there seems to be a face at the top
looking down at her, is it Dario Argento ? It's very vague so it's hard to say, maybe it's
the murderer looking down? The following elevator murder was copied by Brian De Palma
in his great "Dressed to Kill" in 1980.

Everything clicked in the making of this film, with the crisp and beautiful cinematography
from the accomplished Vittorio Storaro and the fantastic soundtrack from Ennio Morricone.
That La-La-La-La childish but somewhat unpleasant chant, macabre and foreboding of evil,
and maybe Goblin was inspired by this when doing the ST to Deep Red. La-La-La-La.
The Mario Adorf scene was cool, he's always great, with Sam visiting the naivist artist,
and the paintings used was very interesting and it's a pity the real artist of these strange
but fascinating naivistic paintings hasn't been mentioned anywhere as i can remember.
Not in texts or in audio commentary tracks ... but i could be wrong (maybe Alan Jones
and Kim Newman mentioned it in the old Blue Underground commentary track?

The 4K UHD Arrow Video edition presents the film in 2.35:1 ratio and in an English or
an Italian version mono audio soundtrack - region all

Extras:

Audio commentary by Troy Howarth
Black Gloves and Screaming Mimis: Interview with Kat Ellinger exploring the films themes
and it's relationship to both the Giallo and Fredric Brown's novel "The Screaming Mimi"
The Power of Perception (21 minutes)
Crystal Nightmare: Interview with Dario Argento (31 minutes, 2017)
Interview with actor Guido Di Marco (22 minutes)
Eva's talking: Archival interview with Maria Renzi (11 minutes, 2005)
Trailers and Image Gallery