Killer Plant Smack-Down!
Title: The Day of the Triffids
What the Hell?: A meteor shower renders everyone in the world blind but an American naval officer, a runaway orphan, an alcoholic marine biologist and his beautiful, British wife, and an assortment of French people. Not only that, but giant killer plants called Triffids are stalking the newly blind and eating them whole. While Bill Masen (the Navy dude) and Susan (the precocious orphan) travel through Europe searching for survivors and just narrowly escaping Triffid attacks, Tom Goodwin (the marine biologist) and his wife Karen (hot) try to find a way to kill the Triffids. In the end, Bill gets his band of survivors safely onboard a rescue submarine and Tom discovers the Triffids dissolve into green slime when they are blasted with sea water. This discovery makes it possible for mankind to defeat the man-eating plants from space. Good for you, human race! Too bad you're all still blind.
What's to like: Even though this is a cheesy horror trifle from the early 60's, it has some genuinely moving scenes (a freshly-blind pilot begging an absent ground control to talk an airplane full of blind passengers safely to the ground; Susan excitedly asking her new blind friend "Isn't it wonderful," when Bill gets the lights back on; a blind couple trying their very best to continue living life as usual in the Spanish countryside).
What's to not like: The Triffids themselves are the low point of this feature. They're slow moving and lack any true design. Also it kind of bothered me that a radio announcer reporting the plague of worldwide blindness is also able to give quite an accurate description of the monster-plants that are roaming around consuming people. How the hell does he know? How does anyone know?The truth: The Day of the Triffids takes place in a simpler time when a nurse would light your cigarette for you at the hospital and the field of marine biology focused solely on the dissection of sting rays. This is a movie that could benefit from a big budget Hollywood remake, and I don't often support that kind of thing. It's a great story and while the human actors were actually pretty good, the whole thing deserved better Triffids. Get on it, Peter Jackson.
NEXT TIME: Little Shop of Horrors
