Amazon.com: This 1962 version of The Day of the Triffids has been a TV staple for many years, more probably because of a lasting affection for John Wyndham's original novel than any high regard for the film itself. The premise--a meteor shower blinds almost all of humanity, just as a space-borne strain of ambulatory killer plants begins to proliferate--is so strong that it's easy to overlook the frankly messy realization of it. The film opens well, sticking close to the book, as Howard Keel awakens in a London hospital after an eye operation and takes off the bandages to discover that he can see but most of the rest of the population can't. There are unsettling, effective bits with a plane literally flying blind and the beginnings of panic among the fumbling survivors, and one good Triffid encounter in a fog.
Then the film is strangely compelled to stray all over the map, with trips to France and Spain that have no discernible purpose. Director Steve Sekely's original cut was adjudged so disastrous that an uncredited Freddie Francis was brought in to shoot a whole new subplot, featuring Keiron Moore and Janette Scott in a vine-besieged lighthouse, to thread through the old footage. The results are less satisfying than the later BBC serial adaptation, but it still has some irresistible end-of-the-world and killer-plant material. --Kim Newman
Don't Waste Your Money This movie isn't QUITE the bottom of the barrel, but it's close! The premise is interesting and the acting isn't bad, but production quality is often embarrassing (mangy looking "triffids" obviously mounted on carts), the transfer to DVD is worse, and the added footage of the couple trapped in the lighthouse is just incongruous. I'd give it 1.5 stars if that were possible on Amazon. Do yourself a favor and buy the novel (by John Wyndham) instead of this stinker!
THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS?---WELL, SORT OF. I'm a HUGE fan of John Wyndham's books LIKE The Day of the Triffids (20th Century Rediscoveries),The Midwich Cuckoos: Fast Track Classics (Fast Track Classics Series), and The Kraken Wakes so movie versions of ANY of these have to be pretty faithful to satisfy me. So far, I have been made happiest by The Day of the Triffids which was a six part mini-series that ran on the BBC back in 1981 and stuck rather closer to the book than this movie managed to do.
Still and all...we have Janette Scott (forever immortalized in the opening song (along with the Triffids) "Science Fiction Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Widescreen Edition) who was married to Kieron Moore at the time she made this and my other favorite of her films CRACK IN THE WORLD which co-starred Dana Andrews (of LAURA fame).
But the other thrill is seeing Carol (Carole) Ann Ford as "Bettina" a blind French girl. I'm thrilled because, of course, she played "Susan" the grand-daughter of William Hartnell's character on the first season of DOCTOR WHO waaay back in 1963.
No...this isn't a great movie---but it has some hidden treasures.
Good story, but movie needs some help As much as I liked the book, and the whole idea of triffids, it could have been done a lot better. Also, this movie has some of the absolute worst movie music I have ever heard. I watched with the sound muted a good part of the time. Let's hope somebody remakes it soon.
This version from Cheezy.... missing audio ? Note: I really liked this movie as a kid ..and i still love it now...but I bought the Day of the Triffids, the version put out by a company called cheezy or something....Hey the movie looks great compared to other version, but the last 20 minutes there is no audio, i dont know if its only my copy that has the problem, but i was really dissapointed. If anybody else had that audio problem, please leave me a comment.
crude, but this is the stuff of memories I saw this as a memento to childhood delight, as I vividly recall seeing it with my best pal when it came out. There are wonderful images in it, of the greasy, mysteriously menacing plants striking blind beauties while society falls apart around them.
Of course, if your standard is not to re-live a wonderful time as a child in a cinema of screaming and laughing children, this film will probably do very little for you. Viewed more cooly from my vantage as a middle-aged film buff, it is pretty weak as sci-fi. Little is explained - the meteors somehow cause both blindness and a bizarre transformation in the triffids - and after the chaos of a society falling apart, the plot takes weird twists. One group that the narrative follows forms a kind of family and inexplicably heads to southern europe, where after much danger they escape. The other actors are a troubled couple of scientists, who miraculously discover that salt water dissolves the triffids after much failed study, again inexplicably. And the effects! Very bad compared to what is available today.
Recommended for purposes of nostalgia only, unless you are a connoisseur of clunky monster flicks over lots of beer.
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