Day of the Triffids (1963)

Posted on Apr 13, 2005 under Sci-fi |

Directed by Steve Sekely (and Freddie Francis, uncredited)
Written by Bernard Gordon, based on the novel by John Wyndham
Starring
- Howard Keel
- Nicole Maurey
- Janette Scott
- Kieron Moore
- Mervyn Johns

Eventually, everything that frightens us or irritates us will become the subject of a horror movie. In this case, I think the inspiration may have been those damned dandelions you just can’t get rid of.

A slight opening narration tries (mostly in vain) to convince us that the movie to follow will be educational, by citing venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants as justification for the speculation to follow. I suppose the story is educational, after a fashion, in that the characters in movies like The Quiet Earth or Night of the Comet or 28 Days Later would have been well-served to pay attention.

There’s nothing like starting a movie proper with fireworks, so that’s what we do. The fireworks in questions are from a colossal meteor shower, which is astounding the entire planet with a showcase of bright, colorful flashes. Harmless, of course; at least, nothing is making it through the atmosphere to touch down on earth. And because they didn’t have cable in 1963, almost everyone in the world is entranced by the site. There are some odd men out, of course, like Bill Mason (Howard Keel), a U.S. naval officer in London whose eyes are bandaged from an operation. Or like Tom and Karen Goodwin (Janette Scott and Kieron Moore) an American husband/British wife marine biologist team who instead stay in the basement of their lonely lighthouse research facility, having an awkward discussion about their marriage, Tom’s drinking, and the fact that Tom has really, really grown to hate poking fish for a living. (In his behalf, though, I have to commend any man who habitually dresses in jacket and tie and maintains a cleanshaven chin while doing research in an isolated lighthouse.)

Ooh. Pritty.

Among those watching with half an eye is the man with the most boring job in the world: Night watchman at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Talk about “watching the plants grow…” Said botanical gardens house one of the lone speciments of a triffid, a plant discovered several years ago as having come from a meteor strike. In reaction to the meteor glow, the plant grows immensely, uproots itself, and kills the night watchman.

Sure, a killer plant is cool, but even a mobile dandelion isn’t much of a threat in normal circumstances. So the meteors even the odds further: In the morning, when Bill’s finally supposed to have his bandages removed, he can’t contact raise any of the hospital staff. He finally unwraps his eyes himself (raising the question, “How could he keep his hair so neatly combed under those layers of gauze?”) and ventures out to find… well, the hospital from 28 Days Later: gurneys and carts smashed, empty rooms, and general untidiness. He eventually runs into his doctor (Ewan Roberts), who is now the blind one — apparently, the radiation from the meteors has stricken blind all of last night’s eager spectators. The doctor takes it all fairly calmly, even declaring, “I don’t envy you; I don’t think I’d care to see the things that you’re likely to see.” He then proves that he was lying when he jumps from the window to his death; apparently, he was a little more envious of Bill’s retained sight than he let on.

As Bill decides whether he needs to bother to zip up his fly before venturing outside, we cut back to the lighthouse for one of the bigger missteps in the movie. Tom and Karen, consternated that their supply boat hasn’t shown up, are treated to a heaping helping of exposition over the radio: Not only is just about everybody blind, but there are huge mobile plants running around everywhere, stinging and killing people. This, I submit to you, was a dumb fact to establish so early on. Not that the triffids are really a secret to the moviegoer, mind you; aside from the first example in the botanical gardens, one can assume that most of the audience had seen the poster and heard the premise (”Killer plants, dude!”) before venturing into the theater. But it saps the dramatic potential when our main characters are simply told about the leafy buggers before encountering them.

“Hey — the drunker I get, the cuter you are!”

Bill, for example, knows nothing about the plants; he wanders through London, avoiding the recently-blinded people too stupid to sit down and stop bumping into things. At the train station, he is gently mobbed as the lone sighted person; he also meets Susan (Janina Faye), a runaway preteen orphan who had hidden in the baggage compartment of a train and so avoided seeing the meteors. When Susan is mobbed by desperate people fleeing a train wreck, Bill rescues her and soon they’re travelling together. Their first encounter with a triffid comes when they see a curious dog meet its end at the hands (so to speak) of a triffid’s sting; they don’t encounter one themselves until later, as they drive toward the dockyards where Bill’s ship is waiting. And really, the triffids look like overgrown vegetable versions of Daleks.

The ship isn’t much help, but they do overhear on the radio that there’s supposed to be some kind of emergency counsel in Paris, so they find a small boat to flee the now-burning remains of London. But by the time they get to France, the meeting has been cancelled; nobody can figure out how to get there blind. (Probably just as well, as I doubt they would have done much more than officially surrender.)

Thus begins their overland trek. Eventually, Bill and Susan find a small manor house in the French countryside, where a few sighted people have taken in a few dozen of the blind in a makeshift hospital to guard and care for them until “things return to normal.” But the hospital is too close to a major triffid breeding ground; not only that, but then the hospital is invaded by a horde of escaped and sighted convicts, who are just about to have their way with the blind when the triffids burst in. The only ones who get away are Bill, Susan, and Ms. Durrant (Nicole Maurey), one of the sighted samaritans.

“So, what kind of liquor goes best with a dish like you?”

And thus their trip southward across Europe continues, into Spain, where they meet up with a blind couple, Luis and Teresa (Geoffrey Matthews and Gilgi Hauser) in their villa (she was blind anyway, and has been able to teach him how to survive). They get mobbed by triffids, Bill uses a makeshift flamethrower on them, and Susan finally makes the startlingly obvious connection that the triffids are attracted by sound. Oh, and Theresa picks that night to give birth. Because that’s what women do in times of stress, you know. Just look at any movie (except Fargo); if there’s a pregnant woman, when’s she going to have her baby? Right when the tension is at its highest, right before the resolution of the plot. It’s self-evidently true, really.

When the radio (which comes to life only in times of plot necessity) lets them know that the last survivor pickup in Spain is coming the next day, Bill uses the ice cream truck they drove into town (convenient, that) to distract the triffids while everyone else drives the other direction, and they all meet up at the rendez-vous, blah blah blah. Really, there’s very little dramatic tension here; they’ve been leaving that up to the other plotline.

HAH! I bet you forgot about the other plotline, didn’t you? Remember, our science-minded marine biologists on their island hideaway? I felt entirely justified in leaving them out of my plot description, since their story runs entirely in parallel; nothing that Tom and Karen do ever intersects with the actions of Bill and his increasing number of hitchhikers. But for completeness’ sake, I oughtta catch you up.

Triffids hitchhiking.

Naturally the windblown triffid spores alight on their island, so they have their own troubles to deal with. Karen amply demonstrates that, for all her scientific training, she’s most certainly a woman of mid-twentieth century cinema: When confronted with a triffid, she shrieks, covers, and covers her face with her hands, waiting for Tom to take the lead and beat off the aggressive dandelion. Because that’s what women do in times of stress. When not giving birth.

Some unintentional humor comes when Tom “kills” the triffid by lopping off its “head.” In the next scene, while dissecting it, he declares that it has no central nervous system. In that case, Tom, in what sense did you “kill” it? In pretty much no sense, we find out, as it comes back to “life” inside the lighthouse. They take away advanced degrees for that kind of stupidity, don’t they?

So scenes of their dissecting and testing are intercut with Bill’s more peripatetic storyline, as they desperately seek some chemical agent to use as Triffid-B-Gon. And it isn’t until the number of triffids on the island has grown large enough to break into the lighthouse and chase the scientists up the stairs (ooh, the Daleks are now officially jealous!) — with Karen shrieking and cringing all the while — that Tom grabs the emergency firehouse and accidentally discovers what kills triffids: Seawater.

Seawater?

Yes. Seawater. These two scientists have been trying to find a compound that kills triffid tissues — on an island — and neither of them ever thought to try seawater, or even salt. On the other hand, you can’t blame them much, since the triffids themselves show no ill effects while growing on a rocky island sprayed by the waves, with the tang of the ocean heavy in the air. (It amuses me, though, to imagine the triffids ambling over the rocks crusted with seawater residue: “Ouch! Ow! Ooh! Yowch!”)

“Gentlemen, welcome to the Free Speech Zone.”

And that’s where their storyline ends, with having discovered that triffids dissolve in seawater. Not only is their character subplot still unresolved — Tom is still a drinker, and their marriage hasn’t gotten any better with their forced, stressful confinement — but, um, they’re still on an island. And frankly, I don’t see how their seawater solution is going to work any better than Bill’s solution of burning the triffids. They seem just as dead when burnt as when waterlogged, and it’s going to be an awful lot easier taking out triffids far from the ocean with flamethrowers than by hauling seawater in from the coast.

But that’s our resolution, such as it is. One assumes that the sighted people gathered together by the rescue operation will be able to rebuild and repopulate the world. And is it just me, or is the timing of the rescue operation a little macchiavellian? We heard nothing previous to that time about survivor airlifts or anything; one has to wonder, was the military intentionally waiting until the blind people had all died off (they simply disappear gradually from the movie, one assumes either stung by triffids or fallen down open manholes), in order to rescue only the most “viable” survivors?

In any event — and I don’t say this often — Day of the Triffids looks like it’s due for a remake. (Edit: Yes, I know that the BBC did it as a miniseries in 1980; I’m talking about a new feature film. Please stop informing me of the BBS version.) It’s a great concept, but the presentation here is far too restrained, dating from an era in which showing total societal collapse was a little too icky for direct presentation. Movies like 28 Days Later, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and others have broached the idea of the post-civilized movie for modern theater-goers; a new Day of the Triffids could show us the parts those movies skip over, the messier social dissolution brought on by the catastrophe. And the triffids wouldn’t look like dandelion Daleks.