Film review: The Day of the Triffids/Invasion of the Triffids (1963)

I think I probably saw the (definitive) early 80s BBC version of The Day of the Triffids before I read it, but either way, it made a deep impression on my young mind.  (I know we also read another of John Wyndham's "cozy catastrophes" - The Chrysalids - in school.)  Enough to know that the opening of 28 Days Later is shamelessly ripped off from Day.  Anyway, I had never seen this 1963 version, called Invasion of the Triffids in The US (Jami thinks that's a better title because there's no single day that the Triffids win on, but I think (a) "Day" is just much classier and (b) "Day" doesn't refer to the unit of time, but is being used as in "every dog has its day").  It's a mixed bag.  On the one hand, the special effects are pretty damn good for the time, and the incidents portrayed surprisingly grim.  One the other, some unnecessary changes are made to the plot of the book.  On the one hand again, the actual events depicted make sense, and if anything, the Triffids are moved to the forefront of the action (in the book it's the now-common (the Walking Dead also ripped off Day) "humans are the real monsters" theme) and it effectively conveys the sheer numbers and indominatability (if that's a word) of the damn things, but on the other, there's a cop-out ending.  In a nutshell, as with the book, a man is in hospital with his eyes bandaged as an incredible meteor shower happens that everybody else watches in awe because it's the most amazing sight they've ever seen.  In this case, however, the man is an American Navy officer, and no explanation is given for why he's had eye surgery.  In the book (as I recall) he's (a) English, (b) not in the Navy, and (c) the reason his eyes are in trouble is because he's taken a triffid sting to the face.  And that raises another difference between book and film: in the film it's clear that the triffids arrive on the meteors (although one is already in the botanical gardens (one of the more effective scenes in the film is it creeping up on a hapless security guard as he eats his sandwiches and drinks from his thermos) and a character also states that some had arrived on an earlier meteor) whereas in the book triffids are already well-established and known about, and under control.  But of course in both, the meteor showers make everyone blind who witnessed them and in the ensuing breakdown of human society the triffids take over.  The scenes of chaos are effectively rendered and as I said, pretty grim: mass death of characters who are introduced ahead of time so you care that they die.  One fault with the triffids is that you don't see the stingers.  At one point it looks as if they squirt their poison (in another effective scene where the young girl that the main character adopts is stalked in the fog and then they struggle to escape in a car that's stuck in the mud).  Another is that their means of communication (the tapping noise) is never explained, even though you hear it throughout.  Another couple of differences: the focus of the film is split between the travels (to France and Spain (!) again unlike the England-bound book) and travails of the American (presumably to appeal to the US market) Navy officer and his acquired "family", and a couple who are stuck on an island in a lighthouse because the boat that's supposed to come and pick them up never arrives after the meteor night, and a triffid somehow takes root on their island.  (Fun fact: the woman is played by actress Janette Scott who is name-checked for the role in a song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  She went on to marry Mel "Velvet Fog" Torme.)  Their escapades are a little tedious, the main point of them being that they are the ones who discover that triffids dissolve in salt water - the convenient (relatively) happy ending.  Overall, I'm not sure you could do the book much better in one film, and as I said, for the times it's fairly effective.  The film's gotten a bad rap over the years, and it does drag in parts (Jami was not a fan) but it's honestly better than all but the very best Toho studios monster movie of the day.  (Bonus: one minor character is played by Carol Ann Ford, the actress who played Susan in the first couple of seasons of Doctor Who, presumably around the same time as this film was made.)