The Day of the Triffids

When you think of the number of novels of John Wyndham's adapted for the screen one must ask why has THE CHRYSALIDS not been put to film. I suppose that is neither here nor there, here we a thinking about his 1951 work THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. Influenced by H.G. Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, this one deals with an obnoxious plant that, after most of humanity is pretty much blinded by some weird ass meteor shower, go about taking over Earth. It sounds like a pretty silly story and the way it is executed here in this 1962 Steve Sekely film doesn't help matters much. However, if you have the patience and a good imagination this one will work for you, mainly because Sekely has enough skill as a director and was quite used to teasing the best product he could out of a film regardless of the budget. Howard Keel, who most will know from the show DALLAS is an interesting, if stiff, lead and the overall atmosphere of this film works even if the special effects can't match it. There was a BBC mini-series production of this which worked much better and many will find it far more to their liking, still, this version has it's place and to some is considered a classic...
and nodoby can tell me the Genesis song ATTACK OF THE GIANT HOGWEED wasn't influenced by this!