Celebrate the Drive-In: Day of the Triffids

Celebrate the Drive-In is a tribute to a beloved venue of the past. During it's heyday, a trip to the drive-in was one of my favorite things, both on the rare occasions as a child, and in my early adulthood. This blog is going to celebrate Drive-In Day (Jun 6) with a series of movies that I was too young to see (or in a couple of cases, not even born yet) that I wish I could've experienced in a drive-in. Keep coming back for the entire week as there will be one per day for the duration.

Some days it just doesn't pay to get up and water the plants! Presenting the next Coming Attraction! Day of the Triffids! 

 

 

 

The theme of alien invaders is a trope that crops up time and again in science fiction. What would science fiction be without an alien or two? You would be limited to Back to the Future, The Terminator or some other time travel movie, or dystopian science fiction films like Blade Runner or Soylent Green or Logan's Run. None of which are even remotely bad films, but still, you would miss out on such classics as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you were to list your own favorite science fiction movies, I would be willing to bet that at least 50% of them had some sort of alien beings in them.

In my own list of the top science fiction films of all time (according to my account on FlickChart) no less than 7 of the top 10 have some sort of alien coming into play over the course of the film. Only Escape from New York and RoboCop (a dytsopian future film) and The Final Countdown (a time travel movie) have no aliens present. (Terminator 2:Judgement Day, which comes in at #11, also has no aliens). It's safe to say that the science fiction world would probably not exist if aliens had not been a factor in the beginning.

So, if aliens are one of the most predominant factors in science fiction, it makes it important that at least some of the aliens have something different to make them stand out against the crowd. One of the more interesting alien invasions, based on a novel by Jack Finney, had the aliens come to earth as seed pods and gradually replace the human race with exact duplicates. The Body Snatchers has been done at least 4 times in film, first in 1956, with remakes of the same story in 1978, 1993 and most recently in 2007.

In a similar vein, John Wyndham wrote The Day of the Triffids. The triffids were a new species of plant that had come to Earth via a previous meteorite storm. They were animated later, through the after effects of a another meteor shower. Although I guess you couldn't put any intelligence into those spores, quite possibly it could be inferred that was an "alien invasion", since the spores do come from outer space. But then, who is to say both of those events weren't engineered by an advanced race trying to prepare the way for an invasion... something to think about. (That idea is just my own thoughts, the movie doesn't expose any nefarious plans...)

   

 

 

Day of the Triffids (1962):

The film begins as our narrator (voiced by Peter Dynely, whose voice you may recognize from the TV cartoon Thunderbirds) intones sonorously:

"In nature's scheme of things, there are certain plants which are carnivorous, or eating plants. The Venus Fly Trap is one of the best known of these plants. A fly drawn to the plant by its sweet syrup, brushes against triggered bristles. Just how these plants digest their pray has yet to be explained. There is much still to learn about these fascinating eating plants. This is a newcomer: Triffidus Celestus, brought to earth on the meteorite during the Day of the Triffids!"

 

There is a freak occurrence of a meteorite storm of unprecedented proportions coming to Earth. But no big deal, at this point, as our narrator tells us:

"All reports confirm that the world is witnessing an unprecedented shower of meteorites. There is no record of a display such as this in recorded history. At observatories astronomers are noting this fantastic phenomenon, and are carefully calculating the effect on our solar system. The consensus of option is that the meteorites burn up from the intense heat before they reach the Earth."

(BTW, if you have ever witnessed one of those meteorite storms that occasionally streak across the night sky you may conclude that this one HELL of a "freak occurrence". Those things are really coming in close...) 

Apparently the only person in the whole world who is not able to see the meteorite storm is Bill Masen (Howard Keel), who has had the unfortunate timing of having had to go through a recent eye surgery, and his eyes are currently bandaged up. And the killjoy of a doctor insists that he wait until the full 10 days required for waiting go by before removing the bandages, which won't happen for another 8 hours. (Killjoy!)

 

In a remote lighthouse we also have a pair of married marine biologists, Tom and Karen Goodwin (Kieron Moore and Janette Scott). These two are also unable to watch the meteor storm, not because their eyes are bandaged up, however. They're too busy working. Or at least Karen is. Tom seems more interested in getting drunk. 

 

The first indication of something strange happening is when a night watchman at the Botanical Gardens is attacked and killed. (Why does the botanical Gardens need a night watchman? Hell, I don't know... Except SOMEBODY has to be the first victim...)

 

The next morning, at the hospital, Masen wakes up to find out it is an hour later than when he was promised to have his bandages removed, with no one around. So he removes the bandages himself. What he finds is a hospital in shambles and apparently no one on the premises. But eventually he finds his doctor, who is now blind. It is revealed that everyone who had watched the meteorite storm has been inflicted with blindness. 

Not only that but there is a strange plant that has figured out how to become mobile, uprooting itself from the ground, moving about and attacking humans. A radio announcer tells anyone "if you are blind it is urged that you stay indoors..." (Thanks for the warning). Masen gets out of the hospital and wanders the streets of London where everyone he sees is walking around blind. 

 

 

He rescues a little girl, Susan (Janina Faye), apparently one of the few people that can actually still see. She was accosted by a disreputable character against her will, but given the fact that he is one of the many who are blind, it is apparent he only wanted her to help him (but he could have asked first...) Masen takes Susan with him to his ship, where he was an officer on board. But no one is there. But via the radio they find that chaos is in effect nearly everywhere.

 

 

Between the pair stranded on the lighthouse island and the pair motoring around London trying to find a place where some semblance of normality may still exist, the sighted people find not much hope. Those triffids are on the move. (And, I realize there is a whole mess of them around, but those things are pretty slow, so it doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to stay out of their reach, since they can see where they are...)

 

Eventually Masen and Susan come across some others who can see.  These are a couple and another person who had (coincidentally, or conveniently, depending on your perspective) collided with each other in a car wreck and were under sedation when the meteorite storm hit. Everyone who can still see had the same set of circumstances happen; they were otherwise unable to see the meteors, which is why most of the rest of the world is now blind.  (Question... weren't at least some people in bed asleep as part of their normal routine? Where are THOSE people?)

 

The survivors that Masen and Susan find are running a sort of refuge and have a contingent of blind people they are helping. But the threat of the triffids threatens to overwhelm them. These things are plants, after all, and in the way it is with all plant life, it has ways of regenerating itself. Eventually, some of the survivors think that safety is only by making it's way to a naval base. (Of course, in the tradition of everything threatening life in the free world, the military is THE answer...)

 

Spoiler Alert! If you want to watch this movie stop now and come back to it after watching it.

 

Ultimately, however, the answer is much simpler, as is discovered by our two refugees on the lighthouse island. The key to defeating the triffids turns out to be something which the Earth has a very high concentration. Salt water, or sea water.

 

"A simple method had been found to destroy the triffids. Sea water, from which life on Earth had sprung, became the means of preserving life on Earth. Mankind survived and once again have reason to give thanks." 

 

One of the more interesting tidbits I read is: the entire subplot sequences involving the marine biologist couple was sort of an afterthought. After getting the film ready, the production crew found that the running time of the finished movie would only last about an hour. They needed more. (Credit is due to Bill Cram at Screenage Wasteland for this tidbit. I found his review after I wrote most of this review, and I found it  quite interesting.)  The solution that comes to the biologists seems to alter whatever the trajectory the film would have had without them. Which makes me wonder... if it hadn't been for them would the film had had a happy ending? The novel did end a bit differently, with only a hope for triumph, rather than an actual triumph.

The Day of the Triffids suffers from the same unbelievability that the mobile rocks did in The Monolith Monsters, if you ask me. But like that other film, the story that surrounds it, as well as the lead actors playing their roles, make the whole thing tons better than you would expect. The film suffers quite a bit on special effects, although not really for the triffids; they look pretty effective and gruesome. The real problem is that a lot of the matte paintings look just like what they are, matte paintings. And a plane crash that occurs early in the movie looks entirely like what is is, a model plane crashing into miniature buildings.

The Day of the Triffids currently holds a 79% Fresh rating, and I am not sure how well it did at the box office. It had a budget of a little over $1 million, and probably most of that went to making the mobile plants look decent. Only Howard Duff was a big name in the feature. I didn't find any contemporary reviews, but one I found on Variety website said "A simple method had been found to destroy the Triffids. Sea water, from which life on Earth had sprung, became the means of preserving life on Earth. Mankind survived and once again have reason to give thanks." (They also had a comment that I liked: "Basically, this is a vegetarian’s version of The Birds..." I wonder whether any vegetarians would be so quick as to advocate a plant-based diet after watching this film...😆)  

While I don't think The Day of the Triffids holds up as well for someone who has seen many other creature features that followed in it's footsteps, I think it is a very effective film. 

Until next time, drive safely folks. And maybe forgo that short cut through the woods... Come back tomorrow for Coffy!

Quiggy