New Blog Posting Day; Book-To-Movie: 'The Day of the Triffids'

Credit: Pixabay

New Blog Posting Day Coming

I said a few weeks back that our blog posting schedule would change from the weekends to Mondays. And so it did. For one Monday. However, I’ve temporarily returned to posting on the weekends for about two weeks. I hadn't announced the new post schedule here at the Fantastic Site enough and so I don't think a lot of people know about the new schedule yet. So, I'm officially making the announcement now that we will be changing to a Monday schedule beginning March 13th. 

This new schedule is due to the statistics reflecting throughout the last six months-to-a-year that many of you prefer to read blog posts during the week and, so far, Mondays seem most popular for that. The new posting schedule doesn't count the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. That's exceptional because it's a group activity and so will, to my knowledge (since I don't coordinate it), continue on its first Wednesday of the month schedule. So, again, our first blog post of the new regular schedule for A Far Out Fantastic Site will occur on March 13th. 

Now for the Book-To-Movie . . .

Book-To-Movie: 'The Day of the Triffids'

Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Allied Artists Pictures

It's the fourth weekend of the month and so time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. I've always been fascinated with man-eating plants in science fiction and horror. My first encounter with a man-eating plant story was one afternoon when I was nine and caught the tail-end of a Spanish-German-made movie called "Man Eater of Hydra". It terrified me to where I could hardly speak for the rest of that day. But that was a very cheap movie although a good one in its own right. One of the best, and my favourite, films of the man-eating plant genre is 1963's "The Day of the Triffids", which is based on the John Wyndham novel of the same name. It follows the same basic plot as the book, but there are a lot of differences. One of the biggest differences is the man-eating plants that the book was named after. That said, the movie lives far more up to the book’s title than the book does. 

The Book

Influenced by H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" and the concerns for advancing science and technology of the mid-20th century, "The Day of the Triffids" is a 1951 novel of apocalyptic science fiction horror written by British author John Wyndham. It's also an epic in that the story spans several years (at least three) and involves the main characters in a constant journey for survival. It’s been interpreted as a reflection of England’s decolonisation of its now former territories and the consequences of its oppression of them.

The story: After a night of a big meteor shower, biologist Bill Masen wakes up in a hospital recovering from an eye operation only to find everyone except himself has gone blind and into a panic. He goes out into the streets and meets up with a young woman, Josella Playton, one of the few other people who still have sight, when he rescues her from a blind man who is beating her. Together they must survive this new apocalyptic world of wandering nomads, decreasing resources and flesh-eating plants called triffids that were created from bioengineering. 

John Wyndham does a good job making the story’s events believable as well as the main characters likeable. He does good timing the intense moments to create the suspense and terror. Also, the plot is well-integrated. The only problem is that the events of the story are not as relevant to the triffid take over as they could be. The triffids tend to stay in the background until about the last quarter of the story. Before that, they are only encountered by the main characters now and then, but the big battle with them doesn't really begin until Bill, Josella and a few others they've teamed up with have finally settled on an estate. Yet, the events in between are convincingly show how society reacts when it breaks down from a disaster. 

Although the novel doesn't end with a solution to the triffid problem, it does end satisfactorily while keeping open-ended enough for a sequel although there wasn't one. By the same author, that is. The first sequel, titled "The Night of the Triffids", by Simon Clark, didn't come out until 2001. The second sequel was published in 2020 by another author yet, John Whitbourn, and titled "The Age of the Triffids". 

The Movie

The 1963 movie adaptation of "The Day of the Triffids" was directed by Steve Sekely and Freddie Francis with a screenplay written by Bernard Gordan. It starred Howard Keel as Bill Masen. It follows the basic plot of the book. However, the plot is not as unified as the one of the novel in that there is a subplot that, although integral to the story, is simply depended on by the main plot rather than interdependent with it. The two characters in the subplot are a married couple who are marine biologists trapped in a lighthouse surrounded by triffids. Their actions contribute good to the ending but they never meet up with Bill or the other main characters which doing so would bring the story together more seamlessly. 

The storyline is much more escapist and simplistic than that of the novel. However, these qualities work for a movie of the science fiction horror genre. It also takes place within less than a year, unlike the novel. The ending is more closed and completed than the one in the book which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't cause the viewer to speculate what may happen afterwards.

Another problem is that Josella Playton’s character is cut out. The main characters are likeable but aren't as well-developed as in the book. 

Another major difference in the film from the book is that the triffids are not bioengineered but come from space before the big meteor shower occurs. So, like in the book, they've already been around but don't mutate into eaters of human flesh until they’re effected by the meteor shower. In the book, they were originally cultivated but then get loose after the majority of the world's population goes blind and so it's then that they threaten to wipe out the human race. But, more importantly, the movie focuses on the triffid invasion more than the novel does while yet showing the social chaos that comes from the majority of the population’s sudden blindness. 

While Wyndham's novel, "The Day of the Triffids", doesn't live up to its name as much as it could, the 1963 film doesn't quite live up to the book as much as it could. And I do mean “quite” because the condensing of the story works for the movie especially in that time when most films didn’t go much beyond an hour-and-30-minutes. The novel is a story of general apocalyptic survival and so survival at all levels of life, whereas the movie is a story of defending one's self from the attacking plants that it and its source material are named after.

See you this Wednesday for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop post! Have you read John Wyndham’s science fiction horror novel, “The Day of the Triffids”, or seen the 1963 movie adaptation?

Until next time . . .