Frenzied Love Making

April 9, 2008

I’m a bit swamped this week, what with working on my book/chapters

and grading and preparing for this Literary Arts Festival at one of the colleges where I teach Creative Writing (i’m giving a talk for their “Writer as Activist” Festival Theme–but more on that another time).

In the meantime, here is one of my latest finds/purchases via Ebay:

A pulpy British sci-fi novel called Revolt of the Triffids from 1952.

This was made into a creepy movie in 1962 called Day of the Triffids with hunky Howard Keel (of “Annie Get Your Gun” fame). I remember seeing the film when I was a kid and being pretty freaked out by it–especially the meteor shower at the beginning of the film that blinds everybody in England.

Like the recent film, The Ruins, it features killer plants.

Anyway, i’m a big fan of pulp novels, especially those that are based on films (like the one I got for the film “The Bad Seed“ a few months ago). So i’ve started collecting them.
Funny thing, though, this book, Day of the Triffids, really works the sex angle, which I didn’t think was in the original film, but by the looks of this pulpy cover the film could be soft-core porn (with plants). Note the buxom-y babe with the Jane Russell top and the Veronica Lake peek-a-boo hairstyle.

An ‘Unusual Science Fiction Novel.’ Mmm hmmm.

Fun stuff.

and the back:

They were lovers, caught between the heaven of their frenzied love-making and the hell of fighting the Triffids.

Here are some other, less sexualized, covers for the book.

And that, dear readers, is your movie trivia for the day.