This film was directed by Steve (REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES) Sekely and stars Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette (PARANOIAC) Scott and Kieron (DOCTOR BLOOD’S COFFIN) Moore.
Though it is not very faithful to the John Wyndham novel, I do like this movie, with its perambulating killer plants and scenes of a world where almost everyone has gone blind after watching a dazzling meteor shower. These type of apocalyptic survival tales are always of interest, I think, as they offer us the opportunity to see what the few ‘lucky’ survivors choose to do in a situation devoid of the old rules and certainties.
I love all the shots of a desolate London filled with wrecked double decker buses and abandoned cars, etc, which definitely influenced the beginning of 28 DAYS LATER, and I also enjoy watching the creepy sequence set in one of the large glasshouses in Kew Gardens (which is not far from where I live!)
The triffids themselves are often criticised for being pretty sub-par, but I think they work well individually, and their mobile, stubby roots and clicking stalk-heads look fine in close-up. The triffids work less well when required to be seen in larger numbers, where it’s obvious many of them are guys in plant costumes. Even then, there are some good moments, such as when Howard Keel turns a fuel truck into a DIY flamethrower to torch rows of triffids.
There wasn’t enough footage of the main story to make a full length film, so extra scenes were shot, by an uncredited Freddie Francis, of Kieron Moore and Janette Scott in a lighthouse, which provides the movie with the memorable sequence of a dismembered triffid piecing itself back together. These scenes in the lighthouse definitely have more tension than some of the other portions of the movie.
THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS doesn’t effectively deal with the catastrophe-induced collapse of law and order like the novel, but it is a colourful, watchable, relatively big-scale killer plant flick!
Some newspaper ads…
Here are some great posters for the movie…
Finally, here’s the luridly wonderful art for THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS American posters, by illustrator Joseph Smith, who also painted posters for GORGO, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and THE GIANT BEHEMOTH…
Monster Zone 