The Day of the Triffids [1963 film]

Classic, old-school science fiction shocker. After an unexplained and spectacular meteorite shower blinds everyone who looks at it, naval officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel) finds himself amongst the very few people who retain their sight. He struggles through a chaotic London in search of sanctuary and to make things worse giant, mobile carnivorous plants are hunting down and preying on survivors. "The Day of the Triffids" is an interestingly constructed film with the first third playing out as a straight ahead disaster movie, with London falling into fiery chaos, a train smashing at speed into a station and a plane, its crew blinded, crashing into the docks. The film thereafter turns into a standard survival story with Masen and the show more various stragglers he picks up along the way fleeing across Europe. The triffid attacks are few and far between but are good when they do arrive. The creature effects are primitive, but quaintly effective although the shambling plants look as if they could be easy enough to outrun. Director Steve Sekely (and an uncredited Freddie Francis) provides a well developed air of mystery and some effectively eerie sequences in between some dialogue heavy exposition and travelogue vignettes. Howard Keel is good as the macho man at the centre of the action with Janette Scott and Kieron Moore provide excellent support in a subplot as an alcoholic husband and wife conducting scientific experiments in a remote lighthouse island. "The Day of the Triffids" is enjoyable throughout and has become a hugely influential SF classic - for its influence you need look no further than Danny Boyle's 2002 horror shocker "28 Days Later" which is a straight-forward remake (at times almost a shot-for-shot remake) with "zombies" substituted for triffids. show less

A film starring Howard Keel (Rank, 1963).

Man-eating plants from space!

C- (Meh).

I don't know how they managed to turn such a compelling story into such a boring movie.

(Apr. 2023)