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In Reply to: RE: "Day of the Triffids" posted by The Duke on May 07, 2008 at 10:36:40
"According to Amazon there is a dvd…"
There is. I have a Region 4 PAL system copy of the disc (not surprising that it's Region 4 and in Pal since I live in Australia which is part of Region 4). I bought it 3 years ago for $10 Australian, currently equivalent to around $9.40 US.
"…but it is supposed to be of truly awful quality."
It is, both as a film and as far as video quality goes. You only get part of Wyndham's story and that is done badly. A separate story is introduced about an alcoholic researcher and his wife who are in a lighthouse on a small island because he wants to dry out while continuing some oceanic research. Most of the action with them concerns a deteriorating marriage but some triffid seeds get to the island and he accidentally discovers that hosing them with seawater kills them. As far as the Wyndham side of the story goes, it simply goes off the rails. The hero and a couple of others escape England to France where they run into problems like those experienced with the paramilitary takeover of the farm refuge in the novel. They escape from there to Spain where they're picked up by a US submarine which is rescuing survivors. That's the end of their story and we never find out if the 'hose them with sea water' solution is ever disseminated to the world and if there's the start of any recovery. The acting is generally as poor as the script, and that's poor indeed.
There's a BBC TV serial production from 1981 that's also available. It sticks reasonably closely to the novel as far as I can tell, since I haven't read the novel in 40 years or more, and it's well acted and photographed. I have a copy of it also and it wins hands down. If you want the story on video, go for it and I don't think you'll be disappointed. It's quite a reasonable job of the story.
David Aiken
Follow Ups:
...David, you sound like a true connoisseur.
…of crap :-) I probably wouldn't deny the charge. Some of my video tastes can be quite low-brow.
I like sci-fi and I enjoyed John Wyndham's novels in my teenage years. I bought the DVD of the movie when I saw it, but without particularly high hopes given the bad images on the cover. At least it was cheap but, even so, I don't think I got my money's worth :-)
I've enjoyed a lot of the BBC radio and TV serialisations of classic sci-fi novels so I was quite eager to buy the set of the TV serial when it was released locally, and I quite enjoyed it. Typical BBC approach to serialising a novel: sticking fairly close to the text and doing a good, workmanlike job. Not the sort of thing to win an Oscar or an Emmy but definitely something you can enjoy watching again when the mood takes you.
David Aiken
Now that is a connoisseur!
I agree the BBC version is far closer to the book. And far better. But I do remember quite enjoying the earlier film as a kid.
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