What’s the world coming to? There’s not one single decent release of The Day of the Triffids yet We live in the fucking future, in 2014 - we can go to the moon and we all know Erich Von Däniken was right all along (at least that’s what the government is covering up!), and we still don’t have a good DVD (or...a blu-ray!) of this wonderful, stiff, cynical and semi-religious American (masked as a British) sci-fi film! This could be one of the first old-school sci-fi’s I ever saw, probably on Swedish television in the early eighties - I have a vague memory of it being at my grandma’s place, but it’s probably just my mind making that up.
I once read how the latest miniseries based on the Triffids novel ripped off 28 Days Later, but as anyone knows - at least those who have some kind of knowledge in cinema history - this 1963 version begins in a very similar fashion to Danny Boyle’s seminal modern take on the zombie-mythology (it’s not zombies, I know, but lets call them that just to keep it simple!) with a man waking up in the hospital, finding everyone around him is gone or dead - but instead of zombies killer plants - and most humans have gone blind in the process! A happy places for evil veggies! He, because he just had eye surgery, can see and hooks up with a small girl and they together travels the UK countryside in the search for help and for more people to spend some quality time with - and of course they kill a lot of plants along the way!
This is a stiff movie. It’s actually very stiff, but like 1964’s The Last Man On Earth (directed by either Ubaldo Ragona or Sidney Salkow), also a very stiff film, the stiffness (lots of stiffies here!) makes it a bit more serious considering the sometimes silly subject - and I for one always preferred old-school genre cinema without humor or irony. Most shots are static, sometimes with not-so-good matte paintings or other visual sorcery, but it kinda makes it hypnotic to watch and if you look beyond that it’s way more ambitious than it ever had to be. There’s a lot of spectacular scenes which becomes spectacular just because the filmmakers tried to make something extra with them - the train accident for example, the famous scenes when the hoodlums takes over a girl school - and my favorite, the scene on the airplane when the pilots decide to take suicide, taking the passengers with them. Quite powerful, serious stuff hidden in this cheese.
The first half of the film is great, and even if the quality of the rest is quite good, it starts lagging during the last half. Maybe because the initial curiosity of what happen is gone, the characters just needs to survive and keep away from those darn flowers. There’s also some kind of absurd christian message at the end, much similar to what they did in George Pal’s War of the Worlds, which comes of as extremely silly and just plain stupid.
The Day of the Triffids has a lot of plant-action, a quite big body count and overall it’s a very ambitious production only hampered by the money involved. But it REALLY deserves a proper release, because even the legit, official DVD from Second Sight sucks. It’s in the correct ratio, but it doesn’t help when it’s non-anamorphic widescreen and with a resolution only worthy to be uploaded on PornTube.
"and we all know Erich Von Däniken was right all along (at least that’s what the government is covering up!),"
Yeah, and if Aftonbladet writes about it we know it´s real, accurate and....ehhhhhhh....maybe not.
"I once read how the latest miniseries based on the Triffids novel ripped off 28 Days Later, but as anyone knows - at least those who have some kind of knowledge in cinema history - this 1963 version begins in a very similar fashion to Danny Boyle’s seminal modern take on the zombie-mythology (it’s not zombies, I know, but lets call them that just to keep it simple!) with a man waking up in the hospital, finding everyone around him is gone or dead - but instead of zombies killer plants - and most humans have gone blind in the process!"
That was interesting.......never seen this one(or read the book) but Danny Boyle might have seen this one or read book?
Coooolllllll....
"but like 1964’s The Last Man On Earth (directed by either Ubaldo Ragona or Sidney Salkow), also a very stiff film"
Awwwww...come on now....it´s not that stiff....I like that one.
"(lots of stiffies here!)"
Careful young man!
"Quite powerful, serious stuff hidden in this cheese."
Hmmm...some Gouda with Chili Lime, perhaps?
"The Day of the Triffids has a lot of plant-action, a quite big body count and overall it’s a very ambitious production only hampered by the money involved. But it REALLY deserves a proper release, because even the legit, official DVD from Second Sight sucks. It’s in the correct ratio, but it doesn’t help when it’s non-anamorphic widescreen and with a resolution only worthy to be uploaded on PornTube."
Whoa now.....don´t bash pornsites......where else can you get some of the finest looking thespians in the world engaged in......shall we say.....visual arousing activities?
Enough.....I get it.....better version should be released, good review and thanks.
Posted by: Megatron | June 02, 2014 at 00:13