A Wasted Opportunity
30 December 2009
With modern production capabilities, this version could have been the most brilliant rendering of Wyndham's book, but it wasn't. The CGId triffids from the leaves upwards were fair depictions of Wyndham's description but the speedily creeping tendrils at the bottom were more reminiscent of the Evil Dead than the Day of the Triffids. The lack of the three stumpy legs on which the plants 'hobble' and (through which they obtained the name Tri-ffed), as well as the hammer appendages through by they communicate with an indecipherable and creepy kind of Morse code (replacing this with typical Bug-Eyed-Monster growls), really wrecked the essence of the title.

What we got was not 'The Day of the Triffids' but 'The Night of the Salivating Foxglove' As normal, the script suffered from 'BBC Disease' - the sacrificing of literary accuracy for 'Social Relevance', which was taken to such extremes that it threw away any relationship with the original story and could only be described as supremely silly.

Eagerly anticipated, a sad anticlimax! better by far is the 1981 production starring John Duttine.
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