The Day of the Triffids
by Freddie Francis, Steve Sekely
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Howard Keel, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Mervyn Johns, Nicole MaureyDirector: Freddie Francis, Steve Sekely
Producer: Bernard Glasser
Producer: George Pitcher
Producer: Philip Yordan
Writer: Philip Yordan
Writer: Bernard Gordon
Writer: John Wyndham
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Westlake
Movie Reviews of The Day of the Triffids
Movie Review: The Triffids Fall Short
Summary: 3 Stars
Fete of Death
Not one of Freddie Francis's better directorial efforts, "Day of the Triffids," an adaptation of a John Wyndham novel, is a leisurely paced sci-fi thriller that is based on an interesting idea--that a meteor shower afflicts the world's populace with blindness, paving the way for an invasion of plantlike "triffids."
However, unlike the film's idea, the man-eating triffids themselves are silly. They look more stupid than scary. Like the movie, they move so sluggishly that it is difficult to believe they could instill fear even in a three-year-old tot.
The scene with the blind passengers panicking on the commercial jet in flight is engrossing, but the rest of the chills are few and far between. This movie doesn't hold a candle to other British sci-fi movies produced at this time, such as, "Five Million Years to Earth," aka "Quatermass and the Pit." The grainy print on the "Day of the Triffids" DVD doesn't help the film's cause, either.
Another film based on a Wyndham novel, "Villlage of the Damned," starring George Sanders, offers better suspense and more frequent thrills than does "Day of the Triffids." Still, "Triffids" is an entertaining, if not compelling, movie, and I would recommend viewing it.
--Bryan Cassiday, author of "Fete of Death"
Summary of The Day of the Triffids
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
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