Mysterious and highly publicised meteor shower makes the entire human population blind, except few people who for various reasons have not watched it. One of them is navy officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel) who woke up in empty hospital after eyes operation and takes off his bandages just to discover the whole London completely collapsed and full of blind people roaming the streets helplessly. As Masen travels to France and later Spain to catch up with possible rescue mission, he encounters various survivors and discovers that dangerous, meat-eating plants Triffids arrived on meteors, attacking humans and animals. Simultaneously, we also follow a scientist and his wife who struggle to survive Triffids attack on their isolated lighthouse spot.
I knew the plot but not from John Wyndham's classic 1951 SF novel but from some comics adaptation from my childhood and in my mind often confused it with famous "The Omega Man" movie which is also about humans surviving in apocalyptic world (and completely another novel, both still to be read). Apparently not very faithful to original novel but still very influential and known widely (the beginning with main character waking up in empty hospital was re-used many times later) this 1962 movie is still great fun but unfortunately more as old-fashioned, camp fun than genuinely frightening. Not only that special effects are laughable today but even acting is kind of contrived and all the women behave like absent minded, lobotomised dolls to such degree that it makes you wonder did anyone actually notice it back in 1960s. After all, UK always had brilliantly gifted actors with depth and characters so seeing helpless Janette Scott and elegantly poised but completely misplaced French lady kind of spoils everything - you almost wish that Triffids eat them. Not as great as I expected it to be and one of the movies that definitely deserves modern remake.
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