Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

HotToastyRag The screenplay of The Day of the Triffids was probably extremely interesting to read, and even through the cheesy finished product, I was able to recognize the original worth of Bernard Gordon and Philip Yordan's script. I don't know if Steve Sekely and Freddie Francis's directing made the film silly, or if the studio insisted on turning the movie into a cheap horror movie. It starts with an extremely similar premise to Little Shop of Horrors: While everyone watches a meteor shower, they're blinded, and man-eating Venus Flytraps try to take over the world. The few people who didn't watch the meteor shower can still see, but the vast majority of the population are blind and helpless. Imagine an airplane full of blind passengers, crew, and pilots-an extremely suspenseful scene featured in the film!Howard Keel and Janina Faye team up to save the human race, while Kieron Moore and Janette Scott also try to stay safe amidst the chaos. The worst parts of the movie are the horror bits. Women scream and extremely fake plants attack, and the audience rolls their eyes at the silliness. Had the scary scenes been cut out or handled with more drama and class, the movie probably would have been very good. As it is, if you liked the original Little Shop of Horrors from 1960, you might like this one. Despite the presence of musical king Howard Keel, there are no songs in this one. It's still pretty interesting though, so give it a shot if the premise appeals to you.

ozborovac Man eating ficuses. Cinematic gold of the purest kind, that stuff writes and directs itself. Just picture the flesh hungry potted darlings just breaking free from their lives as aesthetically pleasing wastes of space and turning on their unassuming former masters. Chaos breaks out as a fern decides to head-butt a random jogger, or an almond tree starts lunching its fruits as a fusillade of delicious death. Who wouldn't want to watch this display of nutty aggression? Director Steven Sekely stepped up to the challenge of directing a movie about the Day the Arboretum Walked, and found himself not exactly up to the challenge. Day of the Triffids is based on the novel of the same name by John Wyndham. The book takes place during an apocalypse scenario in which the titular Triffids might not be the biggest threat, and it deals with the effects of social disintegration in an exhaustive and complex way. Sekely's version on the other hand is only a stunted version of the original as it only retains basic plot beats and characters. The story goes – a massive meteor shower has left the vast majority of planet's population blinded. We follow Bill Masen (Howard Keel), an eye- surgery patient whose eyes were covered up due to an injury during the incident, and thus remained unaffected by the blinding flash. With his eyesight slowly returning he ventures outside the London hospital he was treated in, only to find that the fabric of society has slowly started to unravel. Blind people stumble around the streets, searching for the few lucky ones with functioning eyesight to lead them. In this weakened state, humans are perfect prey for a unique type of planet called a Triffid. These are plants capable of locomotion, are taller than a person, and carry a distinct flavor for flesh. They arrived on planet Earth on a meteorite some time before the flash, so perhaps they could be categorised as aliens as well? In any case, they were relatively docile before the flash, but became intensely aggressive and hungry for humans afterwards. Another plot starts at this point as well, a pair of scientists , Tom (Kieron Moore) and Karen (Janette Scott) attempt to understand the Triffids and find a way to destroy them. In short, the movie criss-crosses between the two story lines – Masen's journey from London to France, and finally Spain, and the scientist's race against time to find the cure and repel the onslaught of Triffids in front of their doors. Along the way, he rescues Susan (Janina Faye) , a girl with her eyesight intact, and together they have to find a way to survive their predicament. Others join and leave this party throughout the movie, making Masen a kind of protector against Triffids and malicious humans as well.With that, you can visualise some of the basic themes the movie deals with. Class-ism, political structures, family, sacrifice and environmentalism are the salient driving force. A degree of nihilism towards the pillars of society pervades the movie, and a return to a so-called natural law is interred. This primitive interpretation of the way contemporary society stands against anarchy is delved deeper in the book, but is kept fairly simplistic in the movie. The book implies inter-dependency between all people, while the movie postulates that only the clean, chosen protagonists are the only one worth caring about. In general, this movie deals with its apocalyptic motifs in a quite literally biblical fashion. The way the two main stories are intertwined provide some of the movies egregious errors. While Masen's scramble to keep himself and his friends alive provides the brunt of the story-line, the secondary story-line with the scientists provides a poor contrast and fails to add anything relevant to the story, save delivering a few lines of exposition and an ultimately unrewarding and simplistic ending. Overall, the story lacks both direction and focus, a lot of time is lost on establishing locations and set-pieces, while the drama is usually relegated to uninspired dialogue or drab tension scenes. Like Night of the Lepus and its carnivorous coneys, Day of the Triffids has the unenviable task of making non-threatening entities seem like monstrous ghouls. This endeavour does not end extremely well. The Triffids themselves are these gigantic asparaguses topped with a flower head that move daintily along a rail and slowly lumber towards the camera. The effect is less than frightening. They look like the dope smoking vine monster from Scary Movie 2, the one that rolls up Shorty. To emphasise their appearance, they are usually introduced with a scream, and this technique becomes obvious and grating as the movie progresses. On a more positive note, some of the matte paintings and environmental special effects aren't completely terrible, and have that seventies psychedelic style. These don't save the movie, but remain one of the more satisfying parts of the experience. The acting is par for the course, politically and environmentally minded horrors and thrillers were par for the course during the sixties and seventies, and Day of the Triffids shows that actors were well aware of what is expected of their delivery. Also worth mentioning is the way the blind are portrayed veers far to easily into parody territory. Some of the establishing shots where the blind roam around the landscape seem like something taken from the Three Stooges.To finish, Day of the Triffids does depressingly little both with its loaded story-line and its absurd premise. Despite a few laughable special effects, the whole endeavour feels tepid and uninspired. That said, the book the movies is based on has become more relevant with the popularity of zombie epidemic and apocalypse media, so check it out and you just might find something of note from this wacky idea.

beltezam1939 The book by John Wyndham "Day of the Triffids" is excellent. The British TV series based on the book,was also excellent. This 1962 version is terrible, full of unrealistic monstrous Triffids and with none of the social statements in the book and British series, 1981. The 1981 mini-series, which I saw first, was much more faithful to the book. Unfortunately, it is very hard to find the mini-series on DVD and it was only shown three times n the US, on the A&E channel which was not very good quality. It was one of those rare and wonderful productions, like the TENKO series, which was only shown on A&E and does not seem to be shown again since the early 90s.

guylyons This film looks very very dated, but it has its moments. The beginning is none too bad, but there is an opportunity here . This film should be be remade, and with the right budget , stars, and special effects, it would be a roaring success.When i saw this film in 1962, i always felt something was not quite right, probably because the effects were so limited. The problem with cult films is that they tend to be low budget productions, and if they are old, they simply don't past the test of time.Students and makers of Science fiction work, should see this film, and see why i think like War of the Worlds, with Tom Cruise, which was a fine remake could be either equalled or bettered, if this story was retold.