ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Howard Keel (star of several of MGM's best musicals during the 1950s) plays an American seaman whose bandaged eyes save him from being blinded by a strange meteor shower which destroys the eyesight of almost everyone else in the world.

The meteors also deposit a fluffy spore that grows into plants which can walk and sting people to death. Despite the fact that the plants walk very slowly, they still pose a serious menace because so many people are blind.

Kieron Moore and Janette Scott (both from A Crack in the World) take refuge in a lighthouse to which the plants lay siege. Keel teams up with Nicole Maurey and other survivors, and they end up at a deserted farm, surrounded by thousands of murderous mobile plants.

The fatal weakness of the alien vegetables is discovered in the nick of time. Directed by Steve Sekely (with uncredited co-direction by Freddie Francis) from a screenplay by Philip Yordan.

In the original novel, John Wyndham makes it clear that the plants were not of extraterrestrial origin (they came from South America), and that the meteor shower was an unrelated event. But the movie makes the two events part of an alien invasion. Although the plants aren't portrayed as being intelligent, sheer numbers make them a threat to mankind.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Every year when I'd go outside in my backyard in the spring to cut back my neighbor's flora that was growing onto my fence & into my yard I'd think. Holy Moly, if this stuff was sentient, mobile, & deadly, we'd all be in serious trouble as there is so much of it!

Scary film. Watched the 80s version that was a miniseries & well done.
Have not seen the most recent version where CGI & practical props were employed as Triffids.

[Bud Brewster]

Call me crazy (and it wouldn't be the first time), but I wonder if maybe those nasty old triffids could be bio-engineered a bit to make them actually do something useful — like push a lawn mower!



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I don't think that the Triffids would want to mow, Bud.

They would be cutting into their kin.

[Bud Brewster]

[ralfy]

Great show, although I liked the one from the '80s more.

[trekriffic]

Didn't think about it when I was a kid but now I find it strange that the triffids made that crickety chirping sound. That alone would classify them as of alien origin as I don't know of any earthy plants that produce a sound.

[Bud Brewster]

Interesting observation. So, if they had walked around killing people without making any noises, we'd be less certain they were from out of town, so to speak?

Seems to me the walking and killing abilities are the plants' real claim to fame.

Granted, chirping plants are definitely something new, but if you did an autopsy on one of those guys you'd find a wealth of things not present in terrestrial vegetation — like structures that serve the same purpose as muscles, and some kind of sensory organs that allow them the navigate when they roam around looking for victims.

I actually like the explanation for the plants given in the novel: they were bio-engineered in the USSR, and specimens were actually released in the wild. That's ironic in the view of my whimsical suggestion that the triffids could be bio-engineered to do manual labor, like lawn work!

Gosh, I'm sure smart, ain't I?

The book even suggests that the meteor shower wasn't a natural phenomenon either — it was a series of orbiting weapons, triggered accidentally.

So, the whole thing is a series of human blunders, the dreaded "science experiment gone horribly wrong" kind of thing.

Wikipedia has a great article on the novel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Did you know that a Triffid is in the movie E.T.?

[MetroPolly]

In the novel, the only noise they make is a rattling from the sticks in the stems, or something.

This movie isn't bad exactly, but it does drag on, and it doesn't resemble the book at all.

[Bud Brewster]

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I read the book in the late 1960s. I remember enjoying it.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[bulldogtrekker]

What I remember most about the movie is the airplane full of blind people. And it was easy to tell that the lighthouse scenes were added to the movie at a later date.

[MetroPolly]

You know, I thought the lighthouse stuff felt tacked on.

[Eadie]

Nice view of the top of the, uh, "flower".

[WadeVC]

I haven't seen this in years (decades actually), but I do remember the first time I watched it...it was with my mother, who loved this movie.

I remember it was a rainy November day, and she popped some pop corn and made us Kool Aid and we both sat and watched the movie together.

After watching this, I remember we had a very large Pothos plant in the living room which I never looked at the same since. I mean, what if it was actually a Triffid intent on doing us in (yeah, the mind of a child).
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"You look like a pooped out pinwheel."
-Robot Monster