The Day of the Triffids
       
Director: Steve Sekely, Freddie Francis
Year: 1962
Rating: 6.5
I remember this terrifying me as a child and it still has some very good moments. It fits well into the genre of 1950's and 60's apocalypse films with its special effects, dour outlook and useless screaming women. There are a lot of similarities to the 1953 War of the Worlds, even giving it a religious ending. I just finished reading the book the other day and so wanted to re-visit this. It follows the basic premise of the book - some bright celestial activity going close to earth blinds everyone who stares at it - and so 95% of the planet cannot see and chaos ensues in an attempt to survive. And then of course there are the Triffids - plants woken up seemingly that can walk and develop a taste for human flesh. Beyond this and the main character who wakes up from an eye operation to find the world has gone to hell (I think the Walking Dead show has a similar set-up), it then goes way off the narrative of the book. Wyndham's book spends a lot more time describing the crumbling society and how people react to this turn of events. And it remains downbeat pretty much to the end. The book is great. To judge the film properly you really have to take into account the period in which it was made.

 

There was not a big budget for this English production and so they have to keep much of it very localized with a narrow lens. It follows two groups of people to its happy ending. Bill (Howard Keel) has had an eye operation and when he wakes up no one is around. He takes the bandages off and finds the hospital nearly deserted except for his doctor who has gone blind. A meteor shower the previous night has blinded him and nearly everyone in London who stared at it. With a bigger budget, the filmmakers could have portrayed a city gone mad but they do give us some empty streets and a train crash. Bill finds a young girl (Janina Faye – appeared in a few Hammer films as a child) who can see and the two of them go on a journey that takes them to France and then Spain. The other story focuses on a married couple who have been doing research on a tiny rocky island with a lighthouse. They had not bothered to look at the shower but are stuck on the island. The wife (Janette Scott) should have been paid by the scream. She would be rich.

 

Then the Triffids wake up. And they can walk. They are everywhere – their spores floating through the air - looking like ghastly giant locusts with an appetite. There are some money shots – when the first one unearths itself, when an army of them attack a chalet full of people, when one looks dead and comes alive, a plane full of passengers are all blind. In theory there is a happy ending – yay – humanity survives – but they totally ignore the fact that the earth is mainly blind and that millions must be starving to death everywhere.  The lesson here is don’t stare at meteor showers. This still held a few chills for me.

 

The Day of the Triffids (1981) – 6.0

 

This BBC TV series is in 6 parts at 30 minutes each. It very faithfully follows the plot of the book by John Wyndham even borrowing a lot of the dialogue. It has that 1980's cheap BBC flat look to it but it is fairly decent if not a revelation. Very talkie yet it somehow misses the social complexities of the book that delves into a myriad of subjects about mankind.

 

The Day of the Triffids (2009) – 7.0

 


Then in 2009 BBC did another version with two-parts and though it again keeps the basic gist of the book, it goes off course considerably – adds plots, subtracts plots - with more violence, an action hero and much nastier deadlier Triffids that feel truly alien and have tentacles and are voracious. It is a two-parter (90 minutes each) and fairly enjoyable but in ramping up the action and pushing the many themes of corporate greed, eco-terrorists, religious fanaticism, genetic modification and the rise of fascism, it is much too busy and loses its thoughtfulness. It becomes a horror film but one without any lessons.