The Day of the Triffids
There were quite a few jokes about this flying around on Friday after the meteor strike in Russia. They don’t make trailers like this anymore!
Come to think of it the garden of my Cardiff residence was looking a bit overgrown on Saturday morning…
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February 18, 2013 at 10:12 am
This was one of the worst films, made from one of the best books, of its genre. In the film it turned out that salt water, of which there is a fair amount available to the human race, killed triffids like Agent Orange – and they all lived happily ever after. In the book there was a long hard slog to reclaim the earth.
Nobody ever made a decent film of Wyndham’s books, which is a great shame because Triffids, Chrysalids, Kraken (my favourite), Lichen and Web were (and still are) eminently filmable.
The BBC 1980s miniseries of Triffids was a lot better. As I recall it featured the late lamented Maurice Colbourne as Coker. Anyone remember him as John Kline in Gangsters, a multicultural analogue of Get Carter set in 1970s Brum?
February 18, 2013 at 10:21 am
I agree about the film – it was shown on telly when I was at Junior School and we all thought it was hilarious rather than terrifying. The TV series was very good. I suddenly remembered the 1970s series The Survivors, which I found very gripping and frightening…
February 18, 2013 at 10:44 am
The TV series gave me the screaming heeby-jeebies when I was a younger person in the 80s…