Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird

Katy Soar (ed)
British Library Tales of the Weird

From the sun-seared shores of the Aegean to the misty bogs of ancient England, the dark tendrils of mythological gods and monsters have remained embedded in the minds of those who once believed, and throughout the past two centuries have inspired a haunting sub-genre of uncanny fiction.  

Collecting up strange tales of legendary Greco-Roman figures, pagan deities of Old Britain and godlings and abominations from the world’s pantheons returning to wreak havoc on modern civilization, this new anthology presents a thrilling array of weird fiction touched by the otherworldly and eternal mystique of myth, lore and legends. 

It's been a long while since I've dived into one of these British Library Tales of the Weird anthologies and even longer since I've enjoyed one as much.  There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a real pulp fiction character to the stories although I will note not as much as I was suspecting as the title had me anticipating various Lovecrafty 'Old Ones' rising from assorted 'deeps'.  Here though things are of a more historical bent, with a couple of exceptions.  

I'm certain I'm not the ony one who often finds anthologies to be a bit of  pick and mix in terms of quality but rather wonderfully there was nothing here that made me want to skip past although I did wonder if opening story, 'Dionea' by Vernon Lee, would get the better of me as I've struggled with her writing in the past, but this time perseverence paid off and the story unfolded nicely, if slowly.

Thomas Graham Jackson's 'The Ring' bears an acknowledged debt to M.R. James whilst R. Ellis Roberts' 'The Great Mother' has a Machenean feel, although one stripped of the Masters' more folkloric or evangelical characteristics.  

John Buchan, no stranger to a strange story, begins a run of pulp romps with tale filled with wind and fire, whilst F.A.M. Webster conjures Aztec magic in 'The Owl', Flavia Richardson evokes ancient cats in 'Pussy' and Eugene de Rezske tells a story of hidden cults and ancient relics in 'The Veil of Tanit'. 

'The Face in the Wind' by Carl Jacobi has the distinction of being one of the most popular stories ever published in the venerable 'Weird Tales' and I can see why, its a fun tale of ancient creatures and a big old wall.  Edmond Hamilton's 'Serpent Princess' treads into Lovecraftian territory with the re-awakening of an ancient goddess whereas John Wyndham plays for laughs in 'More Spinned Against'.

Evangeline Walton, who some will know from her retellings of Welsh mythology - most notably published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series - here focusses her attention towards France and the legend of Y's in 'Above Ker-Is'.  Ken Alden tells a tale of paganism and politics in Justice Tresillian in the Tower' before the book ends strongly with two fairly modern tales from Stephen Baxter, with a story of obligations in 'Family History', and John Cooling's Carnacki-esque viking wolf tale 'The House of Fenris'.

Soar has assembled a thoroughly enjoyable selection that dipped into a pleasingly varied selection of mythologies avoiding over-familiar choices and my reintroduction to this fun series proved to be one of the stronger and more cohesive entrants.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Night of the Triffids (Audio Drama)

Written by Simon Clark and originally released as a novel in 2001 to mark the 50th anniversary of John Wyndham's original, 'Night of the Triffids' is the story of David Massen - the son of Bill and Josella - and his misadventures on the island of Manhattan having crash landed his plane during a mysterious blackout on a floating island inhabited by many triffids and one young girl and being rescued by a ship full of Americans who whisk him off across the Atlantic.

The novel was adapted by Big Finish in 2014 with Sam Troughton (grandson of Patrick), Nicola Bryant (Peri Brown, assistant to both the 5th and 6th Doctors) and Paul Clayton taking the leads.  It's a quick and faithful version of a quick and faithful novel which means it suffers from the same problems as the novel - being overly slavish to the source material and with a very poor casting decision at it's heart but it's an entertaining romp and an enjoyable enough way to revisit the world of the Triffids.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Village of the Damned

Adapted, as I'm sure you already know, from the John Wyndham classic, 'The Midwich Cuckoos', 'Village of the Damned' is the story of an invasion of sorts that begins when the entire village of Midwich is sealed off from the outside world by a cone of sleep. For four hours everything - human and animal, villager and visitor - inside the village boundaries immediately falls asleep.  Waking with no memories of what has transpired it's not until 2 months later, when every woman of child bearing age is discovered to be pregnant, that the scale of the enigma begins to be revealed.  The pregnancies develop inhumanly quickly and the babies are born simultaneously with each displaying strikingly similar characteristics.  This accelerated development continues as the children mature at four times the speed of an entirely human child and display notable telepathic abilties.

Narrowing the focus from the novel, the film concentrates on one family, Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders - 'Psychomania'), Anthea Zellaby (Barbara Shelley - 'Quatermass and the Pit') and their 'son' David (Martin Stephens - 'The Innocents') who ostensibly acts as the leader of the children, who are, despite not appearing for the the first 30 odd minutes, the undisputed stars - as well as the focus - of the film.  The children, who operate a hive mind, are neatly conformist, joyless, quick to anger and utterly ruthless in it's expression and an obvious metaphor for the Nazi and Communist regimes that had so preoccupied minds over the previous decades and a reflection of the fear of the newly maturing baby-boomers and the societal changes they were inspiring - "Couldn’t you learn to live with us, and help us live with you?".

Anglo-German director Wolf Rilla in his only foray into science fiction plays a subtle hand avoiding those cliches that potentially would have littered the film if the originally planned US productions hadn't floundered.  His version (and vision as one of the scriptwriters) emphasises the mundane reality of the village made weird by the actions of the cuckoos in the nest, the cosiness that Wyndham was famously accused of shown to be only a thin veneer covering the turmoil raging below - the accusations, the abuse, the fear, the violence - and the focus is kept deliberately narrow only hinting at the wider picture. There are no answers provided, Gordon Zellaby's solution is one of coldly pragmatic necessity that is a reflection of the children's nature - "if you didn’t suffer from emotions, from feelings, you could be as powerful as we are" - and the who and the how of the children is never revealed and both they and the movie are all the more chilling for it. 

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Day of the Triffids (audio drama)

Originally aired on BBC Radio 4 in 1968 and essentially reusing the Giles Cooper script from the corporations 1957 adaptation this version of John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic classic features Hammer legend Barbara Shelley (Quatermass and the Pit) as Josella Playton, Gary Watson as Bill Massen and British TV icon Peter Sallis as Coker.

For those familiar with the novel there'll be no surprises but it's an enjoyably well mannered adaptation that's very much of the time it was written, respectful of the source material and well played with the added bonus of music from David Cain of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Kraken Wakes (audio drama)

Newly weds Michael (Jonathan Cake) and Phyllis Watson (Saira Todd) have, via his job for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC), intermittent front row seats at the beginning, middle and end of the end of human civilisation as they know it as they pursue the apocalyptic theories of the vilified scientist Dr. Alistair Bocker (Russell Dixon) with regard to the arrival and intent of the extraterrestrial visitors who have taken up residence at the bottom of the ocean.

This BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Wyndham's alien invasion / monsters from the deep / ecological disaster classic was made in 1998 but sounds far, far older which is testament to the care of the creators but does give it quite a dated feel.  It is though a solid performance of what I personally think to be a prescient but fairly stodgy book as Wyndham weaves a slowly unfolding story of goverment misinformation and misdirection and the general public's inability to react appropriately in the face of an obvious threat.  Some narrative corners are cut, not entirely successfully, particularly in the middle when Michael 'goes on holiday', but they tell the story concisely, conclusively and enjoyably if perhaps just a touch too reverentially.

 

.......................................................................................... 

 

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain 

 Any affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Chrysalids (radio play)

'The Chrysalids' was the third of the 'John Wyndham' novels published in the 1950s after 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Kraken Wakes'. It's the story of a group of telepathic children living in a post-nuclear Canada in a fundamentalist Christian society that practices an extreme doctrine of genetic purity following the 'Tribulation', a nuclear war that has left much of the world devastated and the remnants subjected to the vicissitudes of the fallout. Eventually forced to flee their home the telepathic teens are introduced to a wider world potentially every bit as extreme as the one they are running from.

This version was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 1981 by Barbara Clegg - later to become the first woman to write a 'Doctor Who' serial, 'Enlightenment' - and stars, amongst others, Stephen Garlick ('The Dark Crystal'), Spencer Banks ('Timeslip' & 'Penda's Fen') and Michael Spice ('The Brain of Morbius' & 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang').  It's an obvious labour of love that has been assembled with a real care for the source material.  There is an argument to be had over the use of adults voicing the children's parts but that's a quibble with what is otherwise an excellent adaptation. 

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny

Fiona Snailman (ed)
British Library Tales of the Weird

Churches, monasteries and convents have long been associated with sanctuary: sacred spaces should offer protection from evil in all its forms. This new anthology raises questions about the protection offered by faith, bringing together a collection of tales in which holy places are filled with horror; where stone effigies come to life and believers are tormented by terrifying apparitions. In a host of uncanny stories published between 1855 and 1935, Holy Ghosts uncovers sacrilegious spectres and the ecclesiastically eerie. 

The British Library continues apace with it's collections of the strange and the supernatural with a collection of stories based around churches and those who inhabit them.  These collections have on the whole been pretty solid and some indeed have been excellent - the Pan and the occult detective collections spring to mind - this one is somewhere in the middle.

Theme wise it seems strange that it's taken them this long to get around to a churchy collection and I'm glad they have as there were a couple of stories in here that I didn't know and enjoyed very much.  Sheridan Le Fanu opens the book strongly with the temptations of 'The Sexton's Adventure' and John Wyndham's rather slight 'The Cathedral Crypt' is good pulpy fun to finish the book.  In the intervening pages both Amelia B. Edwards' 'In The Confessional' and Robert Hichens' 'The Face of the Monk' provide engaging stories of redemption and I'm reminded that I need to further explore Hichens who was the author of one of the great strange tales, 'How Love Came to Professor Guildea'.

While we're on the subject of classics, there's a line in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's 'Good Omens' about how every cassette left long enough in a car will eventually turn into 'Best of Queen' well, I'm making a corresponding prophecy that into every unsuspecting supernatural anthology will eventually appear Edith Nesbit's 'Man-Size in Marble'.  I'm pretty sure the number of copies of this story I have in my collection far exceeds the number of books I have.  It's fabulous and deserves it's reputation but by god it's also ubiquitous and it is, of course, here.

Most of the other stories here are quite readable but perhaps not re-readable such as Edith Wharton's devious but obvious 'The Duchess at Prayer' and Mrs Henry Woods' equally obvious 'The Parson's Oath' but Elizabeth Gaskell's 'The Poor Clare' is far, far too long for it's scanty plot and Marguerite Merington's 'An Evicted Spirit' is sentimental claptrap rescued by an occasional enjoyably pithy phrase.

In summary a solid but stolid collection that I can't help but think would have been enlivened by replacing Gaskell's 70 pages with something a little more maverick like 'The Cicerones' by Robert Aickman or enigmatic like Arthur Machen's 'Opening the Door'.

.......................................................................................... 

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain 

 Any affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Audiobook of the Triffids

“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

No matter how many times I read it that opening line still gives me chills.  I first read Wyndham's masterpiece as a teen having watched and loved the 1981 TV show (US / US) and with little chance then of ever seeing it again.  It was love at first read. In fact, it was love at first sentence.

Over the intervening years (decades) I've read it more times than I care to mention and for some reason that I've never quite worked out but mostly I suspect because I can't walk past a copy I've amassed a collection of 25 different editions of the book including one in Dutch and in case you're wondering, no, not a word.

It's the story of Bill Masen and Josella Playton as they navigate a devastated world full of newly blinded people being occasionally preyed upon by genetically engineered and very murdery walking plants.  Written in the aftermath of the Second World War the book reflects Wyndham's wartime experiences watching over a London devastated by nightly bombings and muses over still depressingly relevant topics such as catastrophic civil breakdown, social change, genetic modification and even satellite warfare.

Buy the book here - UK / US.

Buy the audiobook here - UK - or listen below.



..........................................................................................

Associate links are included here for your convenience and to help mitigate the running costs of the zine.
If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Random Quest

Based on the John Wyndham short - originally published as part of his 'Consider Her Ways' collection - Random Quest is the story of a physicist, Colin Trafford (Samuel West), shunted into a parallel dimension and into the body of his counterpart, a selfish, philandering novelist whose wife, Ottilie (Kate Ashfield), he slowly begins to fall in love with.  On returning to his own life he undertakes a quest to reunite with Ottilie who seems not to exist in this universe.

What we get is a rather gentle sort of show slowed by lots of shots of Colin wandering around whilst being filmed from odd angles and through distorting lenses to a lazy, swirly trip-hoppy soundtrack.  As a love story it hits it's beats well and the core cast (including David Burke, Shaun Parkes & Jemima Rooper) are all very watchable.  The unusual premise does leave us with a number of questions though, most crucially the fate of the otherworld Ottilie -  although I do think the film-makers included a large hint with regard to this.

An unhurried and delicate sci-fi love story.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Jizzle

Take a dip into a world where reality trembles and sanity is all in the mind — a world created by the brilliant author of The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. 
There’s a monkey with a unique artistic talent. A man living his life over again. A tube in the rush hour that was so crowded it seemed like hell; in fact it was hell...
Jizzle will grip you from cover to cover with its unique blend of horror and fantasy — a combination which can never fail.

I had a copy of Jizzle here a while back but didn't like the cover art so I couldn't bring myself to read it (yes, I really am that picky).  This newly acquired copy with it's apocalyptic artwork was a different animal and I couldn't resist it.

This anthology is a collection of short stories written pre-1954 and includes stories previously printed in 'Argosy', 'Women's Journal' and 'Everybody's'.  They are, on the whole, pretty whimsical and there's a lightness here that is missing in many of his more famous works.  A sense of fun that, whilst not being something that I felt was lacking in those novels, was a nice thing to find here.

Love and relationships are at the core of many of these tales, often of course with a twist, such as the title story of a malicious monkey or the dream man of 'Perforce to Dream', the flea circus setting of 'Esmerelda' or the drunken fortune hunting of 'How Do I Do?'

Amongst the tales of the heart we do have some weirdness in the form of a rich old man getting to live his life again in 'Technical Slip' and the train ride to Hell in 'Confidence Trick, a ghost story ('Reservation Deferred'), science fiction ('Una') and even a post-apocalypse tale ('The Wheel'). Scattered throughout there are a variety of less satisfying stories that were, at best, a diverting piece of frippery but offered little more than that.

I am though at the final reckoning quite pleased to have found an aesthetically pleasing edition of what transpired to be a fairy enjoyable read that displayed a more playful side of an author I like very much indeed.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Chocky

John Wyndham
Michael Joseph

Matthew, they thought, was just going through a phase of talking to himself. And, like many parents, they waited for him to get over it, but it started to get worse. Mathew's conversations with himself grew more and more intense - it was like listening to one end of a telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with another person you couldn't hear. Then Matthew started doing things he couldn't do before, like counting in binary-code mathematics. So he told them about Chocky - the person who lived in his head.

I have a slight thing about reading certain editions of books.  There are quite a few novels I'd like to read but haven't yet because I've not found one with the right cover art.  Chocky was one of them until I scored this rather lovely 1970 2nd impression hardback.

I've a long standing love affair with one Wyndham book in particular (the one with the plants) although I like many of them very much.  I'm a long time fan of (post) apocalypse literature so those books in his canon - The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Kraken Wakes - are the ones that jumped out at me, Chocky less so.  A story of a kid with a telepathic alien chatting in his head never really appealed all that much but I always knew I'd get to it someday and despite my reservations I knew I'd probably enjoy it and I was right.

Chocky is very much what we'd now call a YA novel (but without twinkly vampires) which surprised me as I was kind of expecting something more in line with 'The Midwich Cuckoos' but this is a fairly gentle affair.  Most, if not all, the action happens off the page and we essentially get a second hand account with commentary from Matthew's father.

It's hugely enjoyable and is a very different sort of YA book that I just don't think would fly anymore which is a real shame because it's kinda lovely.

Buy it here - Chocky

Watch the TV adaptation here - Chocky

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Chocky (1984)

Matthew Gore is an ordinary sort of 12 year old; he can't draw particularly well, he's average at maths and isn't much good at cricket; that is until someone else takes up residence in his head.  That someone is an extra-terrestrial entity named Chocky and unusually for these sort of things she's not there to cause trouble.

Published in 1968 'Chocky' was John Wyndham's final novel. A YA novel of sorts; it's  rather gentle story marks a departure from the more overt post-apocalyptic scenarios - The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids -  that he was known for and in it's place is essentially a science fiction family drama that offers a different take on the idea of a possession or haunting.

Adapted by former Doctor Who script editor Anthony Read (who also wrote episodes for both Sapphire and Steel and The Omega Factor) the show for the most part stays very close to the source material with a few minor changes such as making Chocky telekinetic and allowing her a physical manifestation of sorts.

It's a beautifully made series that just like the book exists in the hinterland between a kids story and one with a more adult nature.  The cast are uniformly excellent with Wyrd Britain regular, James Hazeldine (The Omega Factor, The Last Train, Ride, Ride) and Carol Drinkwater (All Creatures Great and Small) as Matthew's parents providing solid performances around which the show revolves and with Andrew Ellams producing a nicely measured performance as Matthew pulling off that most rare feat for a child actor of not being precocious or irritating.  My only complaint would be that the book's weak third act isn't improved any by seeing it on film.

The success of the series led to two more being produced that took Matthew and his alien friend on further adventures which we'll return to another time.

Enjoy.

Buy it here - Chocky [DVD] - or watch it below.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

The Day of the Triffids (1981)

It's 1981 and I'm an 11 year old geek besotted by science fiction, comics and Hammer horror movies and into my world arrives a show about the end of the world and walking, killer plants and there begins an obsession that continues to this day.

Brought to the screen by producer David Maloney, who had previously been responsible for the first three series of Blake's 7 and who with a different hat on had directed several Doctor Who serials during the 60s and 70s including the classics  Genesis of the Daleks and The Talons of Weng-Chiang, this version, unlike the previous Howard Keel fronted version - which you can watch here - is a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel.

John Duttine plays Bill Masen who, whilst recovering from eye surgery resulting from a close encounter with a triffid's stinger, fortunately misses out on watching the spectacular meteor shower that blinds the majority of the worlds population.  Travelling through a desolated London he rescues Josella Playton (Emma Relph) before joining forces with a group of fellow survivors with plans on how to survive the catastrophe; plans derailed somewhat by the arrival of Jack Coker (Maurice Colbourne).

The end result is a fantastically atmospheric and bleak adaptation with some terrific performances from Duttine, Colbourne and Relph (who after a slightly stiff start improves noticeably through the series as she relaxes into her character).  The triffids are well realised if a little tottery and aren't particularly frightening but then they were never the main jeopardy in the story, that was always the other people.

Many of the TV shows beloved of Wyrd Britain - Children of the Stones, The Owl Service or The Changes - screened originally when I was a bit too young to be watching (or remembering) but this one, like Sapphire and Steel and The Quatermass Conclusion was mine.  I remember being there to watch it and being utterly mesmerised by it. I loved it on first viewing and still do today.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

The Midwich Cuckoos

Published in 1957, 'The Midwich Cuckoos' was the fourth of John Wyndham's post war novels after 'The Day of the Triffids', 'The Kraken Wakes' & 'The Chrysalids'. 

The book tells of the mysterious 'Dayout' suffered by the population of the town of Midwich and the subsequent discovery that every woman of child bearing age in the village has become pregnant.

Many people will be familiar with the story through the fantastic 1960 MGM movie 'Village of the Damned' starring George Sanders, Barbara Shelley and Martin Stephens as their fabulously creepy 'son', David.  Some of you may even know it through the risible 1995 John Carpenter remake starring Chrisopher Reeve.

The version below is a BBC Radio adaptation from 1982 starring William Gaunt (who played Richard Barrett in 'The Champions'), Charles Kay and Pauline Yates (perhaps most famously known as Elizabeth - wife of Reggie - Perrin) and with music by Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  It's a remarkably well-mannered adaption that seems like it should have been made in 1962 rather than 1982 but it does retain much of the post war character of the original material.

John Wyndham

Since my teens if at any point you were to ask me what my favourite book was you'd have got the same answer as you'll get now, John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids'.  For the young me it was a glorious apocalyptic romp with killer plants.  For the older me it's a populist exploration of the fears of an uncontrollable arms race, the excesses of cold war science, gender roles and the difficulties of sustainable survival in a ravaged world that also happens to be a glorious apocalyptic romp with killer plants.

The TV adaptations of 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'Chocky' alongside the Howard Keel travesty and the magnificence of the 'Village of the Damned' movie meant that Wyndham had a huge part in defining my tastes long before I ever got around to reading another of his books.  Indeed it was at least a decade before I read another of his books, 'The Chrysalids', simply I think because I loved 'The Day of the Triffids' so much I didn't want any possible disappointment stemming from another of his books to spoil it for me and yes I know that's a fairly stupid reason to not read a book especially one as good as 'The Chrysalids' turned out to be.

Presented below is a BBC documentary about the man and his work featuring contributions from fans, friends and contemporaries such as Brian Aldiss and Sam Youd (John Christopher).  A very private man who rarely gave interviews and refused to participate in a biography there is little to tease out about his everyday existence but the documentary still makes for interesting viewing about an author who in the pantheon of British science fiction must be placed alongside his erstwhile predecessor, H.G. Wells, as one of the defining voices of the genre although outside of more dedicated circles I suspect he will remain for the most part that bloke who wrote the book about the walking plants.

The Day of the Triffids (2009)

After the sheer ridiculousness of the Howard Keel movie and the faithful reproduction of the BBC's glorious 1981 version this new BBC remake attempts to update the story to modern times and falls quite a long way short of the mark.

It keeps the barest of the bones of the original story and around the blindness and the plants it builds the various strands of it's own story including political machinations, media spin, eco-terrorism and a quest for fatherly approval.  Along the way we learn that you can survive a plane crash by hiding in the toilet with some life jackets, nuns are nuts and that Triffid venom cannot penetrate tiny wooden slats.

It is a mess but it's a mess with a bit of a budget so for the most part it looks quite nice.  If it had ditched most of the political and familial faff and focused itself on a story of survival in a destroyed world perhaps it would have been a more enjoyable ride.

Still, I'm a Day of the Triffids fanatic and any version is better than no version so here in all it's dubious glory is (a very lo-fi copy of) the 2009 mini series.
(which you can buy it here -
Day Of The Triffids (Single Disc Edition) - The Complete BBC Series [DVD] [2009] )

The Day Of The Triffids (1962)

I'm going to be coming back to The Day of the Triffids a few times over the course of this blog, mostly because it's one of my favourites of favourites.  I have a collection of different editions of the novel and read it pretty much once a year and have done so for many years (I'm reading it now).  My love of it didn't start with the book however.  It didn't even begin with the fantastic 1981 BBC adaptation although that certainly cemented it. It began with the flawed but wonderful 1962 movie that bears very little resemblance to the book.

Howard Keel (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Dallas) plays Bill Masen, changed here from a British triffid expert into an American seaman,  who, due to surgery on his eyes, misses the meteor shower that blinds most of the rest of the world.  He meets a young schoolgirl - Susan (Janina Faye - who had previously appeared in Hammer's Dracula) and together they travel through France and Spain meeting several other sighted people along the way (including Mervyn Johns', Coker and Nicole Maurey's, Miss Durrant) all the time threatened by the alien plants brought to earth in the meteor shower.  So far so completely different to the plot of the book.

There is a further story running parallel to the adventures of Bill, Susan and Miss Durrant set on a lighthouse where secluded, alcoholic, scientist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his wife Karen (Janette Scott) fight a triffid that spits poison and kills.  There's no connection between the lighthouse sequence and the main storyline of the film due to this entire section being written, shot and edited in after the main storyline proved to be too short.  It also provides a (frankly absurd) conclusion to the story as the bickering pair discover the Triffid's secret weakness which will enable the world to fight back and reclaim the planet.

I can't even begin to tell you the number of times I've seen this film.  In the early 90s it became a drunken tradition to watch it on Saturday night after the pubs shut.  It's horribly flawed and with the exception of a couple of names and the walking plants it has almost nothing in common with it's source material but there's something about it I've always loved and probably always will.

buy it here - Day of The Triffids (1963) [DVD] - or watch it below.


The Day of the Triffids (1963) - Feature by filmgorillas

The Martians and Us: The History Of British Science Fiction

Narrated by the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi this three part BBC series from 2006 covers many of the classics of the genre - both written and filmed - trying to put them in some sort of context of the times they were written and the lives of their authors. 

Episode 1: From Apes to Aliens explores the dawn of the science age with particular attention to H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C. Clarke who appears here as one of the talking heads along with Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Brian Stapleford, Kim Newman and others.

Episode 2: Trouble in Paradise (Dystopias) discusses the British talent for imagining the most hideous dystopian societies looking particularly at the two masters, Aldous Huxley & George Orwell along with Nigel Kneale's 'The Year of the Sex Olympics', 'A Clockwork Orange' and '1985' by Anthony Burgess and Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'. 

Episode 3: The End of the World as We Know It closes the series with a look at my personal favourite of all the sci fi genres, the apocalypse and it's aftermath.  Within this episode we visit my favourite book, John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids' along with John Christopher's superb 'The Death of Grass', J. G. Ballard's 'The Drowned World' and TV apocalypses Survivors, Threads and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

It's a beautifully made documentary that takes both time and care to present a well rounded examination of it's subject matter through the words of the authors themselves, their contemporaries and a smattering of academics.  The very nature of the beast means that much is omitted and books are very much the focus over TV and film, which is no bad thing, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and filled with tantalising insights into many of the defining works of British SF literature.

...........................................................................