The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Such a frustrating disappointment

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

After a worldwide meteor shower, giant plants attack and the majority of the population becomes blind. It's up to the survivors to ward off giant triffids in their fight of survival.Adapted from John Wyndham's book of the same name, this is a decent low budget post-apocalyptic movie that is rather enjoyable. The film is a British production directed by Steve Sekely. After filming the filmmakers realised that they only shot 57 minutes of usable footage. So, in order to extend the run time, they decided to add in an extra subplot involving a couple living at a lighthouse and this was directed by Freddie Francis. Francis ended up being an Oscar winning cinematographer known for Sons and Lovers, The Elephant Man, Glory and Cape Fear.The film stars Howard Keel who's best known for musicals and television, and he is decent in the lead role. The other actors also do well for what they are given and overall the acting is good for what is essentially a b-movie. The Day of the Triffids has gathered a cult following over the years and has inspired many films. It acts similarly to a zombie movie in that people are surrounded by what they perceive as an unstoppable threat and they eventually find a weakness. This was a few years ahead of the pioneering zombie films so the post-apocalyptic survival story was interesting at the time. While not necessarily smart, it's a fun creature feature that's worth a watch.

The Day of the Triffids is a dull yet ludicrous creature/feature film.The triffids are so silly that it's impossible to take it seriously. They look terrible and move so slow and then somehow disappear quickly out of sight. I also could not get past the husband Tom in the lighthouse wanting to drink away the rest of his life, when he has the lovely Janette Scott by his side. That is an absurd notion, drinking is suppose to be a substitute, why drink when he has everything? Aargh! ... None of the acting really stood out, the dialogue weak, blind people stumbling around and slow silly moving plants, all in all a pretty dull film.

Day of the Triffids was an excellent John Wyndham novel that, in the grand tradition, had been adapted for the screen here with many changes. The result is a story that has been simplified into an alien invasion movie. There is nothing particularly strange about this process though as even today screen adaptions of novels take substantial liberties in the transition. But my advice would nevertheless be to seek out the book as it is one of the great sci-fi novels of its era. The story here has a spectacular meteor shower blinding the population of Earth, except those who did not view it. At the same time, giant carnivorous alien plants called Triffids begin to dominate this world where the blind make easy prey. The story sort of makes me think of the later sub-genre of film, the zombie apocalypse movie. Both share aggressors who are multitudinous, murderous, unrelenting and with one-track minds; while those films also share the survivalist story lines where small groups of people must work out a way to successfully navigate the pandemic that sweeps their world.The Triffids do make for good monsters in what is essentially a creature-feature. The effects are a bit clunky at times but for its era this is still okay and shot in colour which wasn't exactly a given for this type of fayre in the early 60's. Like the original story it is set in Britain, although in the action does relocate to France and Spain latterly. But like a number of British genre films of the time such as the Quatermass films, this one features an American in the lead role as a means to no doubt make the product more marketable in the United States, in this case we have Howard Keel as the most pro-active survivor. It's a film that does work best in its earlier section where we witness the devastation of the meteor incident with hordes of blind milling around London helplessly in various locations, while we also see the early indicators of the dangers the Triffids present, they themselves are introduced in an atmospheric opening attack in a large indoor botanical garden. There is also a separate plot strand with a couple of scientists stranded in a lighthouse on a rock in the sea, needless to say our plant monsters make it out there, causing all manner of terrors. There is some decent suspense generated in this one at times and the production values are good enough overall. It's really quite an entertaining low-brow adaption of an ambitious book; taken for what it is, it's kind of fun.

The first screen adaptation of John Wyndham's The Day Of The Triffids is a reliable British sci-fi horror offering from 1962, with token Yank Howard Keel as sailor Bill Masen.The story is well adapted and Keel, as always, is a pleasing screen presence. Production values are, for a UK movie of the period, excellent - the film is widescreen and attractively colourful. Even the effects hold up relatively well: given that giant lurching plants are never going to be easy to make convincing, these aren't bad.The Janette Scott/lighthouse sections are rather obviously shoehorned in after the fact, and the ending is glib and unconvincing. Otherwise, this is an entertaining movie.