Day of the Triffids?--UPDATE
Posted by yabbitgirl on Aug 17, 2008 · Member since Apr 2006 · 14266 posts
OK so I got my mitts on the BBC Radio version of "Day of the Triffids" and put it on my MP3player. Go ahead and laugh, but is it scary at all? I usually use my player when I can't sleep and I don't need "the magic of radio" scaring the hell out of me instead. Radio dramas tend to open the theatre of the mind...guess I have a very scary (or perhaps frightened) mind.
I've never listened to the radio version. I watched the movie many times as a kid. It's certainly intended to be scary, but I'm not sure how successful it is. I'll bet the radio program is scarier, as it is not burdened with having to give physical form to the triffids.
I love radio shows! Especially when on long distance drives. I really wish they would play more radio shows on the radio. Sometimes NPR does some, usually for kids, but they are still fun to listen to.
Like books on tape, I especially like the books on tape that have sound effects to go with them.
I love listening to old time radio shows, especially the detective dramas: Johnny Dollar, Nero Wolfe (especially, because I love Archie Goodwin), Sam Spade, The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes...
Nero Wolfe...me too. I have some of the movies A and E did. They got everything right.
(Timothy Hutton...*swoon*).
I'm almost through listening to it. It's not scary in the "Dark Shadows" sense, but certainly thought-provoking. From a modern perspective, it's more science than fiction in comparison to when it was made, back in the late 50's or early 60's. Now it can be seen, not as a "future disaster" story only, but as a cautionary tale on the dangers of GMO's. They never explain how they created the Triffids, these mobile plant forms that are semi intelligent and can hear and communicate among themselves, but what they call "hybrids" are obviously GM.
I know it's late 50's or so by the accents, very Recieved Pronunciation BBC English haw-haw. And that the class system is somehow still firmly in place; most of the good guys are upper class while the baddies are all Cockneys or so.
I wish I had the actual book, not the radio play. I bet it's a lot better. They usually are. (Aside from the typical BBC habit at the time of fading in and out without finishing sentences, to give a sense of "realism", and the rather pathetic sound effects and "theme music".)