Alfred Hitchcock took three long, expensive years to make The Birds, his successor to the gleefully nasty Psycho, and you can see why - it’s Hitchcock’s version of the ultimate disaster movie: the end of the world.

Turner Classic Movies will be showing The Birds at local theaters on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Among the theaters showing the film are the Royal Palm Stadium 18, Cinemark Boynton Beach 14, Downtown at the Gardens Cinemas, Delray Beach 18, Shadowood 18 and the Cobb Jupiter 18.

Here’s why you should go:

1. Because Tippi Hedren is quite good in one of those totally reactive performances that Hitchcock had such a liking for, and which generally required a very experienced pro, such as Cary Grant or James Stewart. What he saved on star salaries, he lavished on the production.

2. Because Hitchcock jettisons a conventional music score and uses unnerving electronic tonalities to suggest the screams of the birds.

3. Because the special effects were state of the art great in 1963. And the actors had to endure hundreds of birds being blown into their faces by huge fans. It looks every bit as unpleasant as it undoubtedly was.

4. Because it contains one of Hitchcock’s most chilling endings, a look into an open grave that happens to contain all of mankind. There’s no reason offered for why nature turns on man. Some blamed the film’s ambiguity for its underperformance at the box office. Nearly 50 years later, it makes a lot more sense than it did to the comparatively well-ordered world of 1963, when people had never heard the expression “tipping point.”

5. And finally: It’s the last full-tilt Hitchcock masterpiece, a lot better than Marnie or any other of the films he would make in the future. And like any great movie, it was made to be seen on a big screen.