Another film-role immortalised in the line above, from the soundtrack of The Rocky Horror Show! Bit of a misnomer actually, SHE didn’t fight the triffid, Kieron Moore did! All poor Janette did was to stand there shoving her hand in her mouth and screaming!

Well here’s another sci-fi flick seems to have struck a sour note with many viewers. Yeah, there HAVE been many liberties taken with John Wyndham’s original tale, doesn’t mean though “Hey, three strikes you’re out! Derided and laughed-at, much like RAISE THE TITANIC, many aspects of this film are clearly socially responsible and relevant today. How would YOU handle yourself in the situation Howard Keel finds himself in after the majority of the world’s population is blinded by the light emanated from a meteor shower? The film was made for a 1960’s outlook and acceptance, not new millennium desensitised and pseudo-enlightened audiences. Maybe the triffids WERE men in suits, they were damn good ones though. The fx where the triffids were seeking to gain entry to the lighthouse I thought were exceptionally good for their age. OK, so the film DOES also offer what is probably the WORST train pile up ever filmed (you never actually see it!) but give the makers a break. What did you EXPECT them to do? close Charing Cross station and have an eight coach steam train from Watford ram the buffers at 100 mph?

Many wonderful images from this film stick in the mind. That great scene where Mervyn Johns and Howard Keel stand on the edge of the quarry, watching the triffid spores becoming airborne. The triffid, as it lashes the back window of the Humber as Keel shepherds the little girl to safety. The stock-standard British stiff upper lip when the blinded crew of the airplane know they are doomed. The panorama of burning triffids when Keel rigs up the elctric fence then has to torch them before they break through. Even now so many years since I saw it, I can still hear that ice-cream truck as the triffids are led in pied-piper fashion away to their ultimate fate.

I can forgive ‘Tommythek’ his less than relevant comments. He at least admits to being “illiterate” and functioning at the lowest level. Others though are stupefyingly brittle and short-sighted. THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is top sci-fi entertainment, not quite a fully-fledged classic I agree, but I’ll watch it anyday before I ever sit through CAST AWAY again!