Somebody’s not going to make it to the end of this story. Who forgot to pay off the author?
For a 1950s-60s B-class sci-fi movie, I have to say The Day of the Triffids (1962) is one of the better examples of the genre: its characters feel like they have, or had, lives of their own beyond the movie, they move in believable story arcs, there’s a real sense of apprehension, and even if you find the triffids ludicrous, they are ludicrous in a way that is unsettling, as if they are life, but not as we know it, to quote an old chestnut.
For one long night, the Earth is bombarded with an immense meteorite storm. They burn up in the atmosphere spectacularly, which lures the entire population out for a “Once in a lifetime show”. However, for one security guard at a London arboretum, the show will be coming to an early, bloody end … The next day, all of humanity (but why not the pets, and the wildlife?) is going blind.
But there are exceptions. Bill Masen, a merchant mariner, was in hospital for eye surgery, and was thus protected by his bandages. When he wakes up the morning following the light show, anticipating the removal of said bandages, no one answers his calls, and he ends up taking them off himself. Thus, we experience with him the wreck of the hospital, his encounter with his now-blind doctor and how, after an examination, the doctor commits suicide.
Bill decides to travel to his ship, which gives us a taste of the piercing tragedy of a world gone blind – not in piles of bodies, but the personal tragedies of those, blind themselves, desperate to reach and help their own loved ones, all while a burgeoning population of triffids are supping on their ready-made prey. Bill’s inability to help brings the tragedy home, and it’s a relief when he discovers a young runaway orphan, Susan, who spent the night hiding in the baggage car of a train, and was thus spared this universal malady. Together, they find his ship, abandoned, and listen on the radio as an airliner, calling for help, crashes.
“Why do you keep your secret lover out on the ledge, my dear?”
Meanwhile, a couple living in an isolated lighthouse cum laboratory have also been spared blindness, probably because Tom was blind drunk during the night. His emotional depression meets its match in the frantic need to discover how to survive and destroy the triffids, and we follow their methodical, frustrating approach to the problem, all while holding off the triffidian invasion of their lighthouse.
Back to Bill and Susan, they discover a sanctuary in France, run by several sighted French, for the blind. But the triffids are on their way and preparations are made to evacuate. But, believably, a troop of French prisoners invade and destroy the sanctuary, and then all die under assault of the triffids, with only Bill, Susan, and french lass Christine getting out. They’ve heard the radio announcements of evacuation by submarine from Spain, and that becomes their goal. Will they get there?
Back at the lighthouse, Tom and Karen are becoming frantic as each chemical assault on their sample of triffidian cells is a failure. When the triffids resort to battering their way in, they make their despairing way up the stairs, and, in the end … discover the answer.
And it’s a classic movie poster, too. No one gets snatched up in her nighty.
It’s a hoary old aphorism of science fiction authors that your audience will always permit 1 to 1.5 incredible things in a story. The Day Of The Triffids is, really, an outstanding example of how to best utilize this truism: the triffids may be ridiculous out of context, but the context built by the believable actions and reactions of the characters we follow, and the reports they and we hear, transform them from fun little special-effects efforts into monsters which become the center of gravity of this story. Through them, the characters are permitted to embody the theme of Never give up, fight to the last breath – because sometimes only in that last breath do we discover the solution for which we’ve been searching.
The film quality itself is so-so, given its age, but I have to say that I rather enjoyed this old flick. If you haven’t seen it before but enjoy science fiction, or film history, give this one a whirl.
