THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS
** out of *****

Genres
Horror
Sci Fi

1962
Directed by
Steve Sekely
Written by
John Wyndham (novel)
Bernard Gordon
Philip Yordan    
Cast
Howard Keel    .... Bill Masen
Nicole Maurey .... Christine Durrant
Janette Scott    .... Karen Goodwin
Kieron Moore .... Tom Goodwin
Mervyn Johns .... Mr. Coker
Ewan Roberts .... Dr. Soames
Alison Leggatt .... Miss Coker
Geoffrey Matthews .... Luis de la Vega
Janina Faye .... Susan
Gilgi Hauser .... Teresa de la Vega
John Tate .... Captain, SS Midland
Carol Ann Ford .... Bettina

A spectacular meteor shower visible around the world has the down side of permanently blinding anyone who watched it. To mankind’s great disadvantage, this is almost everyone. The meteor shower also caused the triffid plant to grow giant, be able to uproot itself and move around, and acquire a taste for human flesh. This is also a problem, compounded by the first. Luckily for Bill Masen (Howard Keel) he had his eyes bandaged after an operation, and he wakes the day after the meteor shower one of the few people in London who can still see.

He goes out on the streets to find chaos. Slow chaos that needs a handhold, but chaos nonetheless. He also finds a young girl who can still see as well. They become travel companions and travel around meeting people, dodging triffids, doing good deeds, righting wrongs, etc. & c. & c.

Also, in a plot line that starts and remains completely unrelated, Tom and Kate Goodwin, married marine biologists, are stuck on an island doing research in a lighthouse/laboratory. Tom likes to drink and is sick of dissecting sting rays. Kate seems like she needs a break or a new husband. Will the threat of the triffids reach them? Will they use science to find a solution? Will Kate scream and scream and scream? Answers; Yes. I won't tell. Yes.

Apparently not much of this has a lot to do with the novel by John Wyndham that the film is based on. The novel is considered a sci fi classic (I haven’t read it since high school), so this film is considered a real disappointment. There was a BBC production in 1981 which has a better reputation.

A big impediment to the film’s success is the triffids. A convincingly menacing giant carnivorous plant is difficult to pull off. While the triffids don’t look comical, despite their similarity to the carpet monster in The Creeping Terror,they are too immobile to be scary. They're most effective, for obvious reasons, in a scene set in fog-shrouded woods. But that doesn't last long, and without the threat of the triffids the tension in the film is very patchy. It becomes more a travelogue through a Europe that’s 99% blind. This is kind of like the plot of a Jose Saramago book, yet I imagine nothing like it.

Your ability to sit through of the film may be largely dictated by how you handle overly loud soundtracks. The music isn’t terrible, it’s a typical British over-the-top orchestral horror score of the era, but it rarely matches the action and often blares while people do rather mundane things. Old men cautiously walk while holding onto fence railing for balance, yet we get music for a light sabre battle. It makes parts of the film seem like clips from The Amazing Race.

The Day of the Triffids is good source material done poorly. There are occasional flashes of quality, and the story is a nice change from seeing the apocalypse caused by zombies, but overall the film is pretty rubbish. I would quite like to see a full blown CGI version, and then maybe the triffids could be the great movie monsters they deserve to be.

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