Day of the Triffids (1962)

Day of the Triffids (1962), directed by Steve Sekely.

First review

Earth is hit with a double whammy after a spectacular nighttime meteor shower: just about everyone is permanently blind and (one damned thing after another) giant carnivorous walking plants have appeared.

This was one of my favorite "cozy" SF thrillers as a kid. Cozy in that it was an exciting, thought-provoking survival story with scary moments that weren't more than I could take. I suppose young people feel the same about brain-eating zombies and torture porn these days. It has nothing very fine apart from the scenario.

The first catastrophe is handled as well as the second: world-wide blindness means a global collapse of civilization. We see detailed examples in the crash of a passenger train into the station, an ocean liner drifting at sea, and an airliner running out of fuel and unable to land. Some incidents of survival savagery. It's a pretty dark treatment: we get to know characters who can't be saved.

The triffids take the place of the dead in a zombie apocalypse story: they're like slow zombies, and we have the traditional siege against overwhelming numbers. The effects are pretty minimal puppetry but still creepy: they hump along on thick roots like muscular genitalia and when aroused spew green venom.

It's almost a Quatermass plot, with an unhappy scientist couple at an isolated lighthouse who figure out a defense in the nick of time. American baritone Howard Keel is the brave but wooden main hero.

Favorite bit right at the beginning: a night watchman, hearing noises in the greenhouse, has been all through it and knows nothing is there. When he senses something awful creeping up behind, he is too terrified to turn around.

It's been done a couple of times as TV mini-series since. From a book by John Wyndham, always good at intelligent global catastrophe stories.

I found a used copy of the "Cheezy Flicks" DVD version and this is the first time I have seen the movie in widescreen. It's 4:3 letterboxed and the quality is dismal, too rough to bother with screencaps. All the various DVD versions are said to be bad. We've had rumors of a pristine restored version for years, but it never appears. Probably an urban legend.

Second review

Fourteen years later and we're still stuck with a poor bootleg DVD. Mike Hyatt was doing a hand restoration for years. Forum chatter says he left his wishes known but after his death we have had no news.

Notes from another viewing:

• We have an opening voice over narration, common in earlier 1950s creature features. The voice returns for the close, cribbing from The War of the Worlds.

• It is much like a zombie apocalypse. In Night Of The Living Dead (1968) it was radiation from a Venus space probe, here it is an intense meteor shower.

• Waking up in a deserted hospital is also done in later films: 28 Days Later... (2002), Resident Evil (2002), The Walking Dead.

• Bill and Susan cross the same London bridge as does Cillian Murphy in 28 Days Later... (2002). Is that Westminster Bridge?

• Horrific: the runaway train coming into the station, the passenger plane running out of fuel and crashing, convicts terrorizing the home for the blind. In general: the helplessness of being unable to do any good.

• The triffids are like slow zombies. They grow tall and woody overnight. Bullets won't stop them. They reassemble after dissection. Their fatal flaw: must be no saltwater on their planet.

• Like a zombie film (or The Birds (1963)) we must have a siege, with triffids as far as the eye can see. It's unlikely a single strand of electrified wire will hold them.

• Delivering a baby at the moment of crisis in like A Quiet Place (2018).

• Neither Howard Keel nor Kieron Moore are very strong actors. Moore's character is an unlikeable drunk who yells at his wife too much. In the end the noise draws the tirffids to them.

• Janette Scott screams freely.

• Moore and Scott would reunite in Crack in the World (1965).

• Janina Faye (Susan) looks like young Veronica Cartwright or **Janet Munro".

• Mervyn Johns was a familiar face in British films. I remember him best from another horror film, Dead of Night (1945).