- Directed by Steve Sekely, Freddie Francis
- Written by Bernard Gordon, Philip Yordan
- Stars Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3ABIkAs
Synopsis
There is a voiceover that talks about “Eating plants” like the Venus Flytrap. This film is about a new species, known as Triffids. Credits roll.
There is an unprecedented meteor shower, but the meteorites all burn up before they hit the Earth. We watch a security guard walk through a greenhouse with a flashlight as three little plants sit up and take notice of him. They get bigger before he makes his way back.
We hear on the radio that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle as Bill Mason complains about the bandages covering his eyes. He’s had an operation and the bandages won’t come off his eyes until morning.
Meanwhile, at the lighthouse, Karen and Tom Goodwin argue about his drinking problem. They’re both marine biologists, but he doesn’t care about that any more. He doesn’t care about anything.
As the night watchman eats his dinner, the Triffd behind him grows and crawls across the floor behind him. By this time, it’s bigger than he is.
Bill Mason wakes up in the morning, and no one is around. He stumbles around yelling for a while, still wearing bandages over his eyes. He hears a woman scream and decides to take his own bandages off. After a moment or two, his vision clears, and he can see. The hospital looks trashed, but everything was fine last night– what happened? He runs into Dr. Soames, who can’t see at all now; he’s become completely blind. His optic nerves are gone. Everyone who looked at the meteors last night has gone blind. Everyone. Mason is one of the very few who couldn’t look at the meteors.
Tom and Karen wonder why the boat to pick them up hasn’t arrived yet. The radio doesn’t answer either. They hear about the blindness situation and the man-killing plants on the radio. How will they get off the island?
Mason goes to the train station, but the trains aren’t running. Everyone needs help. No, the trains are running– out of control. He meets up with Susan, a little girl who can see. They run across a dog who is barking at a strange plant, but the plant kills the dog. They walk across London towards Mason’s ship, they pass several large, burning matte paintings of London landmarks.
Their car gets stuck in the mud, and they get out to look for rocks. There’s a big Triffid that is pulling itself out of the soil nearby. It starts to pursue them, and they barely escape. They make it to the dockyard, where they board Mason’s ship. They hear a radio call from a cruise ship where everyone’s gone blind. They quickly learn that the problem is happening all over the world. Mason and Susan listen as a plane calls mayday, as they;’re running out of fuel. The plane crashes right outside Mason’s ship.
Karen finds one of the evil plants outside on the lighthouse island. When they get outside to look at it it’s gone. It got inside while they were out. Tom fights it with a spear while Karen screams and looks terrified. At last, Tom cuts its head off. They start to dissect and study the remains. They eventually get tired and go to bed, but the plant isn’t quite finished yet.
Somehow, Mason and Susan drive to Paris from London (how?) and run into Christine Durant and her child. They take them to Mr. and Mrs. Coker, who have been helping the many blind people in the area. Susan gets paired off with Bettina, a blind girl. Mason warns that the world is about to get really nasty, but Ms. Durrant refuses to leave her sanctuary.
Meanwhile, on the lighthouse island, the dead Triffid reassembles itself while Tom and Karen sleep. They come downstairs to find it has broken down the door and escaped.
Mason is preparing to leave the group and look for help when he spots a Triffid walking past. They find a whole bunch of them, and they’re releasing seeds into the atmosphere. There will soon be millions of the things. Mason gets back to the sanctuary, but finds the place has been overrun with escaped convicts who can see. Mason rescues Durrant and Susan and drives away just as a swarm of Triffids attack everyone inside.
Tom and Karen have barricaded themselves inside with a number of Triffids outside. They’re still trying to find a way to kill the monsters.
Mason runs into a couple, and the woman is pregnant. She was blind already, so she’s not as limited as everyone else. The man there has heard of several submarines whose crews were all perfectly fine. They plan on meeting with the submarine crew tomorrow, but in the meantime, Mason hooks up an electric fence. Just in time, because there’s a whole field of Triffids approaching!
The electric fence holds them back for a while, but they don’t have enough power to keep it running. Mason spots a fuel truck and sprays them with a makeshift flamethrower. The Triffids just stand there and burn. By morning, the Triffids have returned, and they think maybe the sound is attracting them. Maybe they can lure them away with sound as well.
Mason gets in the musical taco truck and drives away, leading the Triffids to follow him and allowing the others to make their escape. He jumps out of the truck and heads to the shipyard, where Durrant and Susan are boarding a submarine. Mason eventually catches up with them.
Meanwhile, Karen and Tom listen to the reports on the radio. Something comes banging on their door– it’s the Triffids, who break in as a group and force them up into the tower. Tom grabs a fire hose and sprays the monsters with sea water, which makes them dissolve. All it takes is sea water.
Commentary
The meteor effects are awful, even for the time period, and the Triffid plant things are not impressive by today’s standards at all. The mass blindness and deserted cities are really interesting ideas, and supposedly were a big inspiration for “28 Days Later” and probably a number of other films including quite a few zombie films.
The storyline itself is really interesting, and the consequences of who would and wouldn’t be blind make a lot of sense. It would have been a good movie even without the killer plants. The entire storyline in the lighthouse was simply added to extend the length of the film, as they found the story with Mason wasn’t long enough, but it was a good reason for a lot of exposition and explanation.
We never learn how Karen and Tom got off that island and told anyone about how to kill the Triffids, but I guess they did, because the narrator says we have a happy ending.