La révolte des triffides

When I got my driver's license, I headed off to a nearby town to see a movie. This was it. I loved it. It has really received a bad rap. The story begins with a city full of blind people--Stricken by a meteor shower which has also brought spores to earth--the spawn of Triffids--flesh eating plants. While the plants are not sighted or masterfully created, the quest by Howard Kiel and his young counterpart, and the horror they encounter, is quite good. I found it anything but boring. It speaks to the realities of the created situation, and the acting is good. There is a nice subplot of a depressed lighthouse keeper and marine biologist and his wife/associate who seek an answer. It was quite suspenseful and well paced. Some real questions are asked and answered. It's not a masterpiece, but it holds up very well after all these years.

When a meteor shower leaves most of the world's population blind, a US Navy officer (Howard Keel) has to discover a way to fight the Triffids, dangerous plants that are capable of movement and killing humans.

This low-budget 1962 version of John Wyndham's famous novel pales in comparison with the much better 1981 BBC miniseries.

The main benefit of the film is Howard Keel. He acquits himself surprisingly well in the dramatic part, but I wonder what would have happened if he started singing a duet with a Triffid!

The special effects are passable, but there's a silly sub-plot about two marine biologists that seems shoehorned in. Veteran British character actor Mervyn Johns appears briefly, and it was fun seeing a pre-Doctor Who Carole Ann Ford as a French girl (her accent is terrible).

Overall, cheesy fun.

A intensely colourful and bright meteor shower covered the sky one night blinding most of the world's population and making people defenseless to man eating plants called "Triffidus Celestus'' that were grown from meteor-borne spores. Though, there are some people that can see. An American seaman whose eyes were bandaged during the meteor shower is battling his way through triffids and helping out people. While, a couple in a lighthouse are fending off Triffids and trying to find a way to stop them.

John Wyndham's novel was brought to the big screen in this classic Sci-Fi with an A-grade story with b-grade effects, but it holds up fairly well. This is incredibly engaging kitsch with a nice idea that's very imaginative and it gives us a thrilling enough adventure. The film might be rough around the edges, but still it's rather effective because of a riveting story that we don't know what to expect and a solid lead performance by Howard Keel.

It's a film of two halves making it fairly uneven. The opening half creates such a grand apocalyptic feel, becoming quite unsettling at times with good location photography of an eerie London that captures such a mysterious vibe. It's indeed very atmospheric. While the second half slows down a bit and kinda goes berserk with its stars "The Triffids". It's rather amusing when they're moving about and springing out of nowhere, but because of that it drifts away from the edginess of the opening half and becomes rather padded.

Throughout the story we follow an American seaman trying to get to safety and helping blind people on his way and then there's a couple stranded in a lighthouse. While the first of the two is definitely the most interesting, but after a while it starts to fizzle out and leads to anticlimax. While the sequences with the couple (there weren't many) were mostly dull because of the bland dialogue and her constantly screaming and him constantly yelling, but the set-up for them was interesting enough. However, the climax involving the lighthouse couple is tense and exciting.

The special effects were rather ordinary, cheap and shoddy. Visually wise it was quite stunning and vibrant, with the lights in the sky as the meteor shower were fairly hypnotizing. There was good composition with colour and lighting. Though, the plants don't look terribly great and will cause a chuckle, but still they are a sight to see, as they look wicked and rather horrendous in nature or maybe just plain ridiculous. Most of the violence happened off screen/implied. The music score was rather enforcing and good in keeping such downbeat mood. There are some incredibly well staged sequences and there are scenarios in the story that lacked logic and cohesion, but it didn't bother me too much.

Howard Keel was fairly spirited and witty in his role. There are some fair if mundane support roles from Nicole Maurey, Alison Leggatt, Mervyn Jones and Janina Faye. While Kieron Moore and Janette Scott as the couple were rather shallow in their portrayals and that's mostly because they aren't given much screen time.

The mysterious opening 45-minutes is engrossing and builds tension and uneasiness nicely. The pretty routine mid-section gets bogged down and is far less involving. Some interesting sub-plots add some life and another dimension in the slow mid-section. While leading up to the ending it has some bizarre visuals of the triffids and some entertaining moments. Though, when it came to the ending for me it just came across forced and hard to swallow.

It's really nothing fancy, but overall it's an entertaining effort with ordinary special effects and cheesy dialogue that seem to add a lot of charm too it all.

The film opens with a marvellously atmospheric sequence of a night security guard being stalked by an aggressive man-size killer plant in a huge greenhouse. Illuminated by a night sky full of falling comets, the use of darkness with splashes of technicolor makes this visually very rich and introduces the triffid as a terrifying menace. For a British-made sci-fi story, this is an ambitious attempt to follow action across three countries, show society in ruins and portray (not quite as successfully) a rampaging army of killer plants! The grim early scenes of blinded populous are quite upsetting, a plane falls out of the sky because the pilot cannot see but he knows he is running out of fuel, a train crashes into a terminus and its blinded passengers can't help themselves amongst the wreckage... The film follows an American sailor, who has not been blinded by the comets, as he tries to reach safety. This story is intercut with a couple stranded in a lighthouse surrounded by Triffids - these scenes were all added by the (uncredited) director Freddie Francis after the original cut of the movie came in way under its correct running time. The woman in the lighthouse scenes is played by Janette Scott, who has been immortalised in the lyrics of the title song of "THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW". If possible watch a widescreen version of this movie - it makes a lot more sense.

This is a well-told film that lacks post-1994 incredible special effects expenditures and massive overspending. What it has is a very solid story line, a number of memorable scenes and a feel of realism about it that adds a great deal I suggest to its eerie sci-fi atmosphere. Its central character, Bill, a career seaman played expertly by Howard Keel, is a man facing an nightmare. The film begins in a small typical and beautifully-presented small London hospital where he has to wait one more day before removing bandages to ensure that his vision will return to normal. Banter with a lovely nurse and his doctor turn into a prescient strangeness the next morning--when Keel awakes to find the hospital abandoned, all floors silent amid signs of damage and swift departure...Telephones are not working either. He removes his bandages to find a world without people. We learn, through his adventures and those of a couple in an isolated lighthouse off the coast, where the husband does scientific experiments and drinks too much, that a shower of meteors watched by billions, have destroyed their optic nerves and thus rendered nearly everyone blind. We soon learn that this is a worldwide phenomenon. In addition, a species of plants called triffids have developed from being small insect eating plants into towering and motile monstrosities that can sting and paralyze then absorb human beings as food. They spray small spores to propagate, are reproducing in millions and thus threaten all remaining human life. Keel picks up a young girl who can also see; and after escaping a crowd of the desperate in London and witnessing an attempt at an airliner landing turning into a massive explosion, they escapes from the city. Thereafter, their adventures deal with the plants' attacks, attempts to reach the continent and a rendezvous in Paris and then one in Spain; but the bulk of the film involves the couples' lonely battle with the triffids on their isolated island, and Keel's final escape from a doomed French haven with Nicole Maurey and the young girls as they make for a submarine pickup, the last scheduled for Europe's remaining sighted persons. The great task that everyone faces during the film is striving against all odds to find some way of defeating the plants as well simply escaping. The piece's screenplay by veteran Philip Yordan, adapted from a good John Wyndham novel, I find to be rather satisfying. Steve Sekely directed in swift-paced and intelligent style. The competent cast besides Keel, a most underrated leading man, include strong Kieron More and Janette Scott as the couple in the lighthouse, Mervyn Johns, Alison Leggatt, Geoffrey Mathews, Ewan Roberts, Janina Faye as the young girl picked up by Keel, Gilgi Hauser, pretty Carol Ann Ford, Colette Wild as the lovely nurse and Victor Brooks, among others. This estimable film was produced by Yordan, with George Pitcher as line producer assisted by Bernard Glasser. Rod Goodwin's musical score is powerful and well-above-average at all points. the cinematography by Ted Moore and Cedric Dawe's gritty art direction are also noteworthy. The film looks back I suggest to previous 1950s color sci-fi efforts; but its plants also became the model for the Star Trek "This Side of Paradise" spore-producing vegetation.. And its generally serious feel was copied many times thereafter, both the lighthouse sequence and the cross-country adventures of keep and his companions. But these achievements have seldom been approached let alone bettered. Anyone viewing the film today I assert should respond to its unusual realism; complaints about a lack of multi-million dollar graphics are undoubtedly more than misplaced. The storyline was a difficult one to capture in a brief film even in the 1960s. I suggest that the makers have done this exacting task rather admirably. Scenes such as the surrounding of an electrified yard by the carnivorous plants, the airliner's approach and crash, and the escape of Keel, Faye and Maurey from her house when it is taken over by convicts deserve critical acclaim. I judge this effort to be one of the most underrated of sci-fi films of all time.