The Chrysalids (1971)

D. Michael Anders
Colour

‘The Chrysalids’ is a fantastic novel which I’ve travelled too far in life without reading and, now I have, I whole-heartily recommend it. As such I really wanted to enjoy this obscure and barely released film adaptation. John Wyndham’s ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ are much more wired into the psyche of the British public, I think, because of the film versions (the latter, of course, as ‘The Village of the Damned’). I wanted this film then to right a wrong, so that even if it wasn’t as well known it may one day get a cinema re-release, or a big DVD push, and the reputation of both it and the book would rise. Unfortunately, even though it doesn’t shy away from ambition, there are performances here so ropey they could be used in rigging, dialogue so mouldy it’s like it’s been delivered from a petri dish, the kind of continuity errors that would get most film-editors beaten, whipped and then sacked, and a plot which even a casual observer would stare at and wonder where all those bloody great holes came from.

Set in a harsh puritan society of a post-apocalyptic world, we follow decidedly mature teens Ian Ogilvie and Jane Seymour, who like nuclear Romeo and Juliet fall in love despite the enmity of their families. When the pair’s passion is discovered, the arguments which ensure result in the two of them revealing hitherto hidden telekinetic powers that mark them both out as devil’s spawn in their world. Their only chance for survival is to flee into the badlands outside the civilised world, but such is the fear they’ve provoked, they are pursued relentlessly by the mad preacher who runs the town.

I can handle Seymour and Ogilvie not really looking like teenagers at all. I can handle that the moment they escape, they ditch their buttoned up puritan garbs for some battered and revealing swimwear, as clearly they’re now rebelling. I can handle that the telepathy in the book has become the far more visually pleasing telekinesis in the film. I can ever handle that both Seymour and Ogilvie’s performances are bland, particularly when compared with the ridiculously and enthusiastically evil turn Roy Dotrice gives as the town preacher – and Seymour’s dad.

But what I really can’t get a grip on is the way telekinesis is only used when the plot needs it. At points the film just forgets that its lead characters can move things with their mind – which we can all agree, would be a useful ability to have in a scrape – and just finds some other way to get them out of trouble. Similarly the unexploded nuclear bomb they find at the end feels like deus ex grande machina. The book’s different ending also has a similar charge against it, but here we have two people, hundreds of years after a nuclear war that’s ill-defined in their history, instantly clocking what this weapon is and figuring out how to use it to their advantage. It’s like watching a caveman have a flash of inspiration on how to programme a digital watch.

There are some scary moments en route, particularly for Seymour who is very much screaming peril monkey of the movie, but this is a film which rides its way through the pretty English countryside with only a faint grasp on its own plot, and so never captures Wyndham and fails even on its own terms.