Review of 'The Day of the Triffids'

The Day of the Triffids is an apocalyptic, science-fiction story in which the world undergoes successive catastrophes. The first one is 99% of mankind becoming blind because of a comet-like celestial body that fills the sky with green shooting stars, a never seen before spectacle that attracts the sights of everybody at night and make them blind the following day. The second one is the attack of triffids, poisonous plants that can uproot themselves at will and move about -and when they kill someone, they root on the dead body in order to feed from it. The story was created as a novel, then adapted countless times for radio, film, comic-book and TV – with all kinds of endings, ranging from optimistic to pessimistic. This is a review of both the book and the film.

Book review

 

The novel The Day of the Triffids, by British writer John Wyndham, is published in 1951 by Michael Joseph. The edition reviewed here is a 1981 edition by Penguin Books in association with Michael Joseph. According to this edition, 'The front cover shows John Duttine and Emma Relph in Douglas Livingstone's adaptation of The Day of the Triffids, directed by Kevin Hannam and produced by David Maloney. A BBC TV Production in association with RCTV Inc. and the Australian Broadcasting Commission'. The copyright for the photograph is attributed to BBC and its credit to David Edwards.

In the novel, the triffids come from Russia and become widely grown because of their high-quality oil. Their poisonous stings and ability to move around are easily being taken care of by growing them into well-watched fences -until the first catastrophe happens and triffids are left unwatched. Afterwards, a third catastrophe happens: most blinded people fall ill and die because of an unknown plague.

The novel is the first-person account of family-less Bill Masen, who recounts all the events starting that fateful morning after. 'When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere'. Bill is a worker for a triffid-growing company that happened to be convalescent from accidentally receiving some drops of triffid poison in his eyes and therefore missed the blinding shooting stars. Bill has a self-centred, cynic personality that reflects on his narrative and makes it petulant. 'This is a personal record. It involves a great deal that has vanished for ever, but I can't tell it in any other way than by using the words we used to use for those vanished things, so they have to stand'. But that is something that is called for, as the main topic of the novel is the fall of civilization and the rise of the law of the jungle amongst the survivors. This topic, an all-time favourite of the British writers and explored in works such as The war of the worlds, is best-treated not by describing the devastated scenarios, but by showing its deep psychological impact on the protagonist's mind. In his account of events Bill meets a lot of people, but doesn't recall the name of most -so quick they enter and leave the story. There is something that feels missing though -the protagonists, in spite of managing to obtain electricity sometimes, never mind to use a radio.

Bill's wanderings start in London and eventually lead to the countryside. Soon enough, the story becomes a survival story, where the surviving people are as much fearsome as the lethal triffids. Small parties are formed, and as they compete to find resources, hostility arises. Parties of blind people try to capture people with sight, whereas parties of sighted people just try to find a safe place for themselves. In the middle of the chaos Bill meets Josella Playton and from that moment on he tries to keep her company, and search for her when misfortune separates them. Anywhere, triffids keep coming in sooner or later, and no fence can hold them off forever. And to top it all, a militarized party tries to get control of all survivors in a tyrannical way.

It's a history of dread and despair, but also of perseverance and ingenuity. Mankind fighting for survival against all perils, including mankind itself. All in all, a notable work, mainly by its accurate and detailed exploration of an apocalyptic England and its reflection on the surviving people's views.

Film review

The film The day of the triffids, also known as Invasion of the triffids in the Internet Movie Database, is released in 1963, twelve years after the novel. In the film the triffids are plants not only poisonous, but carnivore too. They exist due to their seeds arriving on a previous meteorite, and then they become active the same fateful night of the shooting stars.

Comparison of film and book is inevitable. The film never gets as bitter and dreary as the book is, and this appears to be a fault; but isn't the book too much dreary and hopeless? The biggest difference is the role of the radio. Absent from the book, in the film the radio becomes essential. Maybe some estates in the film shouldn't have electrical supply, but of course ships, planes, and buildings with generators would still have electricity enough to power their radios -and of course the survivors would turn to the radio as their biggest hope, some to use the receivers and some to man the radio stations. The film lacks the detailed and accurate descriptions that make the book so much plausible, but on the other hand the use of the radio seems way more realistic.

The family-less protagonist is named Bill Masen as in the book, but he's not a triffid farmer but a merchant navy officer -hence his first move is get to a radio and then search for a naval base. Along the way, he takes under his wing an orphan girl named Susan (rather than the intelligent Josella Playton from the book). As in the book, the threats are both the triffids and the other survivors. Blind people will try to capture people with sight, and military survivors will try to take advantage of other survivors.

There is a parallel story where the protagonists are the Goodwins, a couple of marine biologists isolated in a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall. Having been spared of blindness, they fight the invasion of the triffids and also try to study them. This secondary story complements the first one but never gets to relate to it. (If we read the Trivia section at the Internet Movie Database, we learn that it was filmed only after editing the main story and finding out that it was only 57-minutes long, so a complement was in order). This secondary story makes the film ending more optimistic than the book is.

The film has an excellent production that succeeds at showing the full extent of the catastrophe. We get to see not only the deserted centre of London, with the Houses of Parliament and Piccadilly Circus, but the centre of Paris too, and also a Spanish village. We get to see a train crashing into the station. We get to see the drama aboard a liner ship, sailing the seas with no one sighted on board, and then a plane in the same situation, bound for doom. The direction of Steve Sekely is good though the pace is a bit slow; a couple of times when protagonists are climbing stairs we have to see them going the entire flight. The music from Ron Goodwin and Johnny Douglas is adequate.

As for the cast, Howard Keel and Janina Faye deliver a flat performance. Just about are Nicole Maurey, Mervyn Johns, Ewan Roberts and Geoffrey Matthews – the latter playing a Spanish landowner speaking Spanish with an unmistakable British accent. The best acting comes from Kieron Moore and Jannette Scott.

All in all, a great apocalyptic film.

According to Internet Archive, the film is now Public Domain. Is is available at YouTube since 2016, so here it is for anybody willing to watch it:

Title:	The day of the triffids
Genre:	Horror, Science-fiction
Year:	1963
Nationality:	United Kingdom
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Steve Sekely
Writer:	Philip Yordan, John Wyndham
Cast:	Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Mervyn Johns, Ewan Roberts, Alison Leggatt, Geoffrey Matthews, Janina Faye, Gilgi Hauser, John Tate, Carol Ann Ford, Arthur Gross, Collette Wilde, Ian Wilson, Victor Brooks
Producer:	George Pitcher
Executive producer:	Philip Yordan
Cinematographer:	Ted Moore
Art Director:	Cedric Dawe
Music:	Ron Goodwin
Running time:	93 minutes
Language:	English, French, Spanish