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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Day Of The Triffids (1962)

Starring Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Mervyn Johns
Directed by Steve Sekely
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A meteor shower brings blindness that afflicts nearly all of the Earth's population, and also spores that grow into immense mobile plants that stalk human victims.

Howard Keel stars in this version of the science fiction novel by John Wyndham, which per my recollections of the book and its synopsis on Wikipedia, is not a very faithful adaptation, eliminating characters and condensing a bit too much, but still offers some effective scenes, with the triffid plants rendered about as well as one could expect for special effects of this era.  The filmmakers and actors do a good job of creating characters we can care about, and the eerie sound effects accompanying the triffids' movements are first rate.  However, the film would have been better had the screenwriters kept more of Wyndham's novel in their script.

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