The Mask

If I wanted to credit it with rationality I'd speculate that something about the presence of the venom gave off some kind of pheremone that marked the humans out as 'triffids', and not to be stung... you could further speculate that the idea of doing it round the eyes specifically was the result of some kind of ritual developed in Africa and not actually necessary to achieve that affect i.e. the venom could be applied without the mask, but the practice was the result of tribal wisdom not scientific analysis.

I consider this reasonable speculation based on an unreasonable plot element. In fact, the whole presence of the African mask and that tribal ritual appears to exist for no very good reason whatever. Pretty much the same events transpire at the end of the original book - i.e. Bill and friends go outside, let the triffids in to deal with their pursuers, and escape... but without any need for the whole venom immunity thing.

I recommend the book incidentally - it's rather old-fashioned in some respects, but lacks many of the less dramatically sound elements of the mini-series.

That's an easy question to answer. The mask is clearly something magical that turns the poison into an antidote to the person wearing the mask.


In Zaire, as a kid, when they first found the Triffids (Bill, and his mum & dad), the natives performed a ritual on him which made him immune to the venom of the triffids, although he didn't know this at the time. It's clearly a special property of the mask.

Only now, that he has been stung again, and hence been hallucinating about the ritual with the masks since he was bandaged in the hospital, does he realise that the mask saved him, since it was used on him before.


And since the triffid poison is used in the ritual itself, if the ritual has been done afresh on all of them, they still have the poison/venom itself in their eyes, so, when the triffids look at them the triffids think that these people are already dead/poisoned. This is because the triffids kill this way, so when it sees poison in their eyes, they think that these people will die anyway, so they don't need to kill them twice, do they?

They effectively tricked the triffids into not killing them, and possible making themselves immune to their poison in the long run, like Bill was at the beginning of the tv series.

The triffids always go for the eyes with their venomous stinging tentacles, so something about mammalian eyes triggers their instinctive attack. If the venom is dripped into the eyes, then that changes something, and they don't get the signal. If a triffid doesn't detect an eye, it won't attack. Also, I would guess that the venom is only toxic if it breaks the skin (or possibly the skin of the eye). It won't kill or blind you if you use it as eyedrops.

(This is all conjecture on my part, of course.)

I interpreted it like a sort of "funnel" to channel the venom directly into the eye, b/c if it touched the person's bare skin it would be fatal.

Something about the venom entering the eye ducts, instead of the skin, created an immunity and Triffid deterrent. That doesn't make much sense medically I don't think, but perhaps it was an "antivenom" sort of logic. If it entered the body, but NOT the blood stream- you were protected.

It's not a perfect idea, but I appreciate the attempt to honor the original novel.