Day of the Triffids (1962)

A meteor shower blankets the Earth, and with it comes a new plant, the Triffid.  While the plants are certainly ugly as sin, they also have the added benefit of being lumbering maneaters.  Bill Mason (Howard Keel) wakes after eye surgery to a world in chaos, as everyone who witnessed the celestial event is now blind.  Desperate to find a sanctuary, he crosses Europe, picking up travel mates like young Susan (Janina Faye) and French well-to-do Christine (Nicole Maurey).  Meanwhile, in a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, marine Biologist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his long-suffering wife Karen (Janette Scott) race to find a way to stop the vicious plants from destroying all life on the planet (seeing as they’re carnivorous, this wouldn’t really benefit them).

Steve Sekely’s (with an assist from an uncredited Freddie Francis, who directed the lighthouse scenes, making the film feel like two films but still working despite this) The Day of the Triffids is an adaptation of the John Wyndham novel of the same name.  Of the novels he wrote, I would suggest that this one is only edged out in popularity by The Midwich Cuckoos (which was adapted for films under the title Village of the Damned).  Wyndham dealt in a style he called “logical fantasy,” one in which the descriptions and functioning of the normal world are integral to how the fantastic elements play.  This certainly is the case in this film.  Bill is a sailor and all-around handy man.  He is the Common Man hero that was the norm for many decades in genre cinema.  These are people who work for a living.  They are resourceful and pragmatic, and they care about their fellow man as much as is humanly possible to do without getting themselves killed.  For example, Bill knows how to get a car moving when it’s bogged in the mud.  He knows how to get the generator working at Christine’s chateau.  He knows how to repair a radio.  He knows how to electrify a fence.  He knows how to turn a gas truck into a makeshift flamethrower.  But he knows these things because he has a working knowledge of the world.  Necessity insists that he be able to do these sorts of things, so they are second nature to him, even if he doesn’t necessarily know a transistor from a transformer (in other words, general knowledge, not specific).  Tom is a specialist, and he and his wife are cut off from society (but not from the threat).  Tom is also an alcoholic, a condition that gives tension to the situation they are in and humanizes him.  He is further normalized by his inability to find a weakness in the Triffids.  As a scientist, he cannot succeed in this turmoil, but as a Common Man, working with his hands and wits, he discovers the ultimate weapon against the plants totally by accident.  In the modern film world, where every protagonist is either super-powered or super-sophisticated to the point of ennui, I always return to characters like the ones here as a respite.

Society in the film breaks down literally overnight.  It goes from business as usual to complete disarray in a matter of hours.  This is heralded by a fantastic sequence in the Royal Botanic Gardens.  A night watchman (Ian Wilson) sits alone at his desk as a Triffid sneaks up on him.  The man knows that there’s something wrong but doesn’t act, and the tension builds until the creature is upon him.  He is a representative of the world, its inability to prepare, and its fate for its inaction.  This is reinforced by several sequences of mass transit systems (a ship, a plane, a train) as they traipse over the proverbial cliff, the people in charge of them lying to the passengers in their last moments, trying to salvage some normalcy in the face of death.  But it doesn’t avert the inevitable, salvation being a wish that shall never be granted.  As Bill explores the hospital the next morning, the place looks like it was ransacked by Cossacks, trays strewn, glass scattered all over, and the building is like a ghost town, bereft of souls.  Only Dr. Soames (Ewan Roberts) remains, now blind, and his prognosis for the world is grim.  Discovering that Bill’s surgery was successful, he states, “I don’t envy you.”  Soames knows what comes next, knows that it won’t be pretty, and knows that Bill’s options for survival are limited (but not as limited as his own).  Throughout the major cities like London and Paris, the streets are littered with cars and blind people stumbling and pawing around like zombies in search of some fresh brains.  Bill learns that sight has become not only an asset but also a weakness.  At a train station, people hear that Bill can see, and they swarm over him with pleas for assistance.  After a train derails coming into the station, young Susan is almost kidnapped for her eyesight (there is a slight pedophilic air to this moment, as well).  People have become pathetic, desperate, and callous, yet maybe they were always that way.  

The bleak tone of the film is perhaps best displayed in the sequence at Christine’s chateau.  She is taking care of her friends who have gone blind, including the young Bettina (Carole Ann Ford, likely best known as Susan on the first few seasons of Dr. Who).  Bettina takes to Susan, and in a scene that’s positively heartbreaking, she guesses multiple things about the younger girl (hair and eye color, etcetera), all of which are wrong, and all of which Susan lies about to keep up Bettina’s spirits.  Bill suggests that Christine and those who can see should abandon the manse, as it makes them sitting ducks, but Christine can’t bear to leave her friends to die (which is most certainly what it would be).  This decision is taken away from her when a gang of convicts overrun the chateau and force the blind women to “dance” with them.  Bettina, stumbling outside after escaping being raped, is surrounded by Triffids and killed.  There is no mercy here, if there ever was before, and even that was illusory.  It if isn’t plant monsters, it’s human monsters.

Nevertheless, The Day of the Triffids contains elements of birth and rebirth.  Bill is reborn with his eyesight.  Susan is a sighted youth that must be protected and allowed to carry on the human race.  Tom and Karen are surrounded by water, the giver of life, and Bill and his companions spend a lot of time racing to sea ports in search of rescue (it doesn’t hurt that he’s a seaman).  Tom is forced to give up booze, and he finds a new purpose in dissecting a Triffid, looking for flaws.  His marriage is renewed in a way by this.  Bill comes upon a blind pregnant woman, and Christine assists in the birth.  Life will go on, just drastically changed.  Though the world is in apocalypse mode, the human will to survive remains, bloodied but unbowed.  The film tacks on a quasi-happy ending that speaks a little too bluntly of hope, but it also acknowledges that the world has a long way to go before it recovers from this situation.  As End of the World fictions go, that’s pretty much the best we can hope for, right?

MVT:  The foreboding wasteland that the world has become is effectively presented both visually and attitudinally.

Make or Break:  The greenhouse sequence is a standout in the horror genre, in my opinion.

Score:  7/10