Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

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"

As I read the Amazon reviews on "The Day of the Triffids," I was surprised to find that the film have received considerably low ratings. At the time of writing, it is below 3 stars, which is not very impressive. However, I soon found that most reviewers who gave negative reviews complain about the quality of DVD, not the film itself, so I decided to buy a VHS anyway and found that as old-fashioned sci-fi thriller, "The Day of the Triffids" is fine and fairly enjoyable, though not outstandingly so.

Original writer John Wyndham's unique concept itself is still interesting. What if almost all the people on earth suddenly become blind? The situation is intriguing and horrifying and it becomes even more so as the Triffids, flesh-eating walking plants, are now the fittest spices for survival on earth.

The 1963 film adaptation, however, unfolds its story too fast, missing every chance to make it a more exciting thriller or thought-provoking drama. Post-apocalyptic scenes like the deserted streets of London (later seen in such films as "28 Days Later") could have given us more impact with longer time and more events, but the film keeps moving on, following the story of the protagonist Bill Masen (Howard Keel). Three sighted characters Bill and Susan, a little girl who ran away from school, and Christine struggle to survive, but the Triffids are not scary at all, and compared with the novel's counterparts, what they have to go through is much less shocking. Sometimes it looks as if the characters are wandering aimlessly, going from England to France, then to Spain.

To lengthen the running time of the original version that was too short for release, they concocted a subplot about a married couple stranded in a remote lighthouse, fighting back the horde of triffids. The subplot just doesn't work and its conclusion is a huge disappointment.

In addition to the lighthouse scenes, several sequences are added for the adaptation. Some of the scenes are effective, still disturbing even now, such as the one set on a flying airplane of which crew and passengers are all blind. Here is an idea that could have been developed into something really gripping, but the sequences abruptly ends, as if the director abandoned the idea because of the lack of budget.

This is a kind of shocker you fondly remember watching on TV as a child and being truly scared of; a film that you now find dated and a bit cheesy, but you still cannot help loving it. This is a film that is waiting to be remade with today's visual technology.