The Day of the Triffids (1963) on Netflix
Approved19631h 33mHorrorSci-Fi
A meteor shower blinds most of the world and rouses the triffids, tall plants that sting. Bill Masen, bandaged in a hospital, can still see, and joins a schoolgirl named Susan.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.1/109,860 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
Meteors light up the night sky and almost everyone who watches them is left blind. In a botanical garden, triffids, tall plants with a whip-like sting, tear free of their beds and start to move. Bill Masen, a merchant seaman, spent the night in a London eye hospital with his head bandaged and can still see. He walks out into a city of wrecked vehicles and blind survivors, and on the Underground he takes charge of Susan, an orphaned schoolgirl who also kept her sight. Off Cornwall, the marine researchers Tom and Karen Goodwin hear on the radio that the disaster has struck the whole country. Bill wants to reach his ship and cross to France, and from there to an American base in Spain, while the Goodwins try to work out what the triffids are.
Cast
- Geoffrey Matthewsas Luis de la Vega
- Gilgi Hauseras Teresa de la Vega
- John Tateas Captain - SS Midland
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Day of the Triffids (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In August 1960, blacklisted Hollywood writer Bernard Gordon was hired to rewrite the screenplay but stayed anonymous; producer Philip Yordan took the on-screen credit, a practice called "fronting", and the Writers Guild of America later restored Gordon's credit.
SPOILER
Howard Keel said filming was cut short because the producers ran out of money before they could shoot the climax, in which the triffids are lured to their deaths in the sea; that sequence was shot by a second unit in Spain, using doubles for the principal actors.- Gordon devised a two-character lighthouse subplot to supply the film's missing climax; the roughly twenty minutes of new scenes were scripted by Jon Manchip White and directed by Freddie Francis over three weeks at MGM-British Studios.
- A 1959 offer of the lead to Fred MacMurray came to nothing when producer Sydney Box, of Orbit Films, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and withdrew from all his film and television projects, most of which were canceled or taken over by other companies.
SPOILER
Richards, the screenwriter who introduced the idea that seawater is lethal to triffids, claimed after the film's release that his material had been appropriated and sought redress from the Kings, Yordan and Allied Artists.- Film restoration expert Mike Hyatt, a fan of the picture since his youth, spent a decades-long effort restoring it by hand, using a jeweler's loupe and a needle to pick specks of dirt off the negative, and in 2010 the restored interpositive was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
