31 DAYS OF HORROR 2022 -Day 29: THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1962)

                                                                   Flower power...NOT. 

A cosmic event in the form of a meteor shower lights up the sky around the world, much to the initial delight of the billions of people who watch it proceed. 

 

"There's beauty up above/That you'd better NOT take notice of..."

Unfortunately, what no one could have predicted was those who watched being permanently struck blind by the spectacle. Consequently, most of the world's population stumbles about blind, with only a handful of lucky people who were either asleep during the event or otherwise prevented from using their eyes. Simultaneous to this catastrophe, previously harmless extraterrestrial plants of the order Triffidus Celestus, commonly referred to as Triffids and found in abundance all over the planet, uprot themselves, having gained the power of mobility, and in no time mindless hordes of the damned things are traipsing all over the place. The Triffids, mindless but legion, wield a deadly poisonous stinger at the end of a whip-like tongue, and their favorite food is man. With most of humanity blind and helpless, the nations of the world find themselves suddenly transformed into a banquet for carnivorous alien plant life that stalks prey not by sight but sound, and the narrative follows the tribulations of a handful of survivors amid the most bizarre of an apocalypse. 

                                                        The face (?) and sting of a Triffid. 

Our main protagonist is Bill Masen (Howard Keel), a merchant naval officer who underwent eye surgery, just before the meteors began to fall, so his bandaged eyes miss the once in a lifetime show, leaving him one of the handful of sighted people in all of England. 

 

After removing his bandages, he is horrified to see the state of the world, but he sets of in hope of finding other sighted individuals. He soon encounters Susan, a pre-teen girl who also has her sight, and he rescues her from being forcibly hauled off by some blind rando who likely seeks to enslave her as his personal human service dog (and possibly worse, if you get my drift). Masen and Susan form an unlikely pair but they are that that the other has, so their relationship becomes one of surrogate father-daughter survivors as they wander Triffid-infested Europe, facing many unspeakable horrors in the form of the killer plants and the utter collapse of human civilization. 

There's also  a B-plot involving a married pair of scientists (Kieron Moore and Janette Scott) wwho are doing research at a remote lighthouse.

Bickering boffins.

Their marriage has clearly seen better days, as the two constantly and viciously bicker while the husband salves his issues with drink. They are suddenly forced to cut their petty bullshit and band together to survive when they find themselves at Ground Zero for a Triffid incursion. Having defeated one of the plants, they set about figuring out how to wipe them out en masse, but they soon find out the hard way that Triffids can regenerate...

Based on the superb 1951 novel by John Wyndham — who also authored the equally excellent THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS (1957), which was adapted into the classic VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) — THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is technically a science-fiction film, but one of those that straddles the thin line between sci-fi and horror territory, though I consider it to be flat-out horror. It depicts what is basically the end of the world, giving us several set pieces in which utterly bleak hopelessness reigns supreme. As if the man-eating plants and blindness were not bad enough, we get a planeload of passengers who are blinded...as well as the pilots (zero points for guessing how that turns out), 

 

international communications mostly being dead, and, particularly awful, a French chateau that was serving as a safe haven for the blind until it is taken over by escaped convicts who all have their sight. They immediately grab the female occupants and commence a drunken orgy with rape heavily implied. It's bad enough to be sexually assaulted, but to have it happen when blind and defenseless is just... (SHUDDER) 

 Forced to dance with convicts before the screaming starts...

Fortunately (?) an army of Triffids arrives and soon overruns the place as our heroes escape, taking sighted French lady Christine (Nicole Maurey), along for good measure, thus completing a ragtag family unit of sorts.

The film is not without its flaws — such as the shonky Triffid puppets, but their craptasticness kind of works in their favor and lends them an undefined, otherworldly look and feel — but I have found it a compelling watch since first seeing it during a weekend afternoon screening on Secaucus, New Jersey's WWOR Channel 9, in the days before my mom got us cable. I must have watched it something like ten times, always mulling over the sheer terror of such an apocalyptic event and how human society would simply go straight down the bowl were such a thing to actually happen. That said, the film has been very hard to find on home video in a decent print, often turning up in washed-out transfers, so keep your eyes open for cable movie channels possibly airing it. It's a classic that is absolutely worth your time, and it will likely scare the shit out of the kiddies.

Poster for the U.K. release.

Poster for the U.S. release.