Day of the Triffids

     
     Triffids from outer space, some alien race, land in meteorites all over Earth, the light show causing blindness in people watching it.  Some didn't see the lights.  Howard Keel was unconscious in the hospital recovering from an eye operation.  He gets up, it's similar to the scene in the first episode of The Walking Dead when Sheriff's Deputy Rick wakes up after getting shot on duty.  The disaster has already happened, we don't see it happen, like Rick.
     In The Day of the Triffids (1963), space seedlings turn into carnivorous ambulating plants.  They look great as sci-fi horror special effects at first, menacing, gross, scary, their mouths like chocolate pudding- covered alien vaginas.  The first assault of a human is a night watchman at the Royal Botanical Gardens, where lurk several alien plants.
     The lighting in the room is dark, so we don't see the thing too clearly, making it particularly effective as a scary movie monster.  Later, in daylight, they look stupid, like some Doctor Who creatures, or the carrot shaped Venusian menace in Corman's It Conquered the World.  
     Keep the lighting low on the Triffids!
     The Triffids shamble across the countryside, they're everywhere but easy to run from.  Like plant versions of Daleks, they seek to exterminate humanity, taking over the world, plus they eat people.   Hacking at them and flaming them, hearing their screams, their voices exchanging ideas on how to defeat the humans, it's an illustration of human will to survive and kill anything in its way to succeed.  Granted, humans are fighting for their survival, there's an acute menace all over Earth that must be defeated or we'll be eaten alive by them.
     This is the kind of all or nothing premise the he-man anti-terror show 24 was supposed to thwart.  What if this guy has information that will save fifty million people?  Is it okay to torture him?  Some say yes, I say no and others say no.  
    Having started this review on March 27, I can say I don't remember much of Triffids.  It's a good movie.  I'll leave it there.

Vic Neptune
       

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