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.

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.

Another film-role immortalised in the line above, from the soundtrack of The Rocky Horror Show! Bit of a misnomer actually, SHE didn't fight the triffid, Kieron Moore did! All poor Janette did was to stand there shoving her hand in her mouth and screaming!

Well here's another sci-fi flick seems to have struck a sour note with many viewers. Yeah, there HAVE been many liberties taken with John Wyndham's original tale, doesn't mean though "Hey, three strikes you're out! Derided and laughed-at, much like RAISE THE TITANIC, many aspects of this film are clearly socially responsible and relevant today. How would YOU handle yourself in the situation Howard Keel finds himself in after the majority of the world's population is blinded by the light emanated from a meteor shower? The film was made for a 1960's outlook and acceptance, not new millennium desensitised and pseudo-enlightened audiences. Maybe the triffids WERE men in suits, they were damn good ones though. The fx where the triffids were seeking to gain entry to the lighthouse I thought were exceptionally good for their age. OK, so the film DOES also offer what is probably the WORST train pile up ever filmed (you never actually see it!) but give the makers a break. What did you EXPECT them to do? close Charing Cross station and have an eight coach steam train from Watford ram the buffers at 100 mph?

Many wonderful images from this film stick in the mind. That great scene where Mervyn Johns and Howard Keel stand on the edge of the quarry, watching the triffid spores becoming airborne. The triffid, as it lashes the back window of the Humber as Keel shepherds the little girl to safety. The stock-standard British stiff upper lip when the blinded crew of the airplane know they are doomed. The panorama of burning triffids when Keel rigs up the elctric fence then has to torch them before they break through. Even now so many years since I saw it, I can still hear that ice-cream truck as the triffids are led in pied-piper fashion away to their ultimate fate.

I can forgive 'Tommythek' his less than relevant comments. He at least admits to being "illiterate" and functioning at the lowest level. Others though are stupefyingly brittle and short-sighted. THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is top sci-fi entertainment, not quite a fully-fledged classic I agree, but I'll watch it anyday before I ever sit through CAST AWAY again!

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.

Day of the Triffids is a delightful sci-fi horror movie from the sixties, and it will be a sure-fire hit with fans of this sort of cinema. The film stands halfway between a serious disaster movie (although it's definitely one that is much more ingenious than most actual disaster movies) and a silly B-movie complete with absolutely ridiculous monsters. Some viewers will most probably be deterred by the second side of the movie - but not me! I found the ridiculous monsters to be an absolute treat, and although the film is certainly messy; on the whole I think it came together rather well. Certainly no worse than you'd expect from this sort of movie. The film follows the story of a meteorite shower that beings down a new species of plant - the man-eating triffid! And, not only that, but the glare of the shower has blinded almost the entire population of the world; which is bound to lead only to trouble. Right from the word go, you know that you're in for a cool piece of kitsch as the voice-over introduces the new species of plant and the film keeps this atmosphere going throughout.

While many viewers will be put off by the silly special effects, the only thing that annoyed me about this is the pacing of the plot. The first fifty minutes at least are highly inventive and very involving so the running time just slips by as you lose yourself in the camp classic that you're watching. However, as we approach the hour mark, the plot slows down to walking pace, and although the inventiveness is still there; it never reaches the highs of the first half of the movie, which featured excellent flashes of brilliance as we see panic on an aeroplane as the pilot is blinded, trains crashing and the hapless, now blind, population of the UK trying to make their way through London station. Howard Keel makes a fine leading man, especially for a film like this. He has an almost cheesy aura surrounding him, and this helps the unintentional humour side of the movie when it's mixed with the rather awful and very corny script that the film works on. On the whole, while this movie won't do anything for fans of artistic and serious cinema, if you like to have fun with your film viewings; this one is recommended.