The Day of the Triffids - 1962

I'll say that as I was inputting this movie title just now, I was struck that somehow when I'd watched it last night, the entire concept of "when the movie was made" had pretty much escaped my thinking.  I was not entirely off when I guessed the year (I guessed 1968).  I was drunk, slamming down some ridiculous sub-par malt liquor and chillin in my apartment.

This is the type of stuff that gives you a harsh headache the next morning.  And the beer shits.

The Day of the Triffids is a movie which we've all probably heard of, maybe some have seen it, and I'm sure some have not.  This is a movie where, I have seen it before, but my memories of it were distant, and if memory serves me right, I saw it on TV, with commercials and everything.  Where and when and why this happened, who the hell knows.  Weird, random ass memories.

I was thinking when I watched this, given this came out before Night of the Living Dead, and obviously before such movies as Signs and 28 Days Later, just how influential this movie actually was.  This is a overlooked influence, I think because of the silly premise, however when you look at some of the ideas they had here, it's clear that this was still a major influence on later films.

Plotwise, Bill Masen is going to have his eyes uncovered in the morning after an accident.  There's a meteor shower that night that everyone's looking forward to, and he's gonna miss it due to his blindness.  He wakes up in the morning only to discover that no one is there to take his bandages off.  He gets up, takes them off himself, and discovers that everyone who watched the meteor shower last night is now blind. Not only that, but giant living plants are now roaming around, killing people!

It's got some silly ideas and schlock value to it, yes.  It's clear that they wanted it to be taken seriously, and honestly it's not like the idea is THAT silly.  It's just you know, walking trees do look sorta dumb.  I wish that an extra in the film had said "Entmoot" as an easter egg.

This is one of those movies I'd say is almost essential to a classic horror weirdo's library.  It's just so much a product of it's time, and does look good for it's day.  They got a stunning amount of atmosphere and bizarre-ness right on, and handled the dynamics of a silly villain pretty well.  Do a double feature with The Night of the Lepus.