Day of the triffids

[F5 Dave]

Well I guess I missed the adverts (I'm dynamite with the remote). so nothing much on, do a channel surf of the sky preview timetable. Hmm, gee haven't seen that for years! Whats the chance they're playing it on prime time? oh. The Americans have got hold of it & remade for TV (no chance of it being a movie).

Short story long I watched the first 1/2 hour & doing the ironing in another room was more inviting.

What a load of crap! The whole premise was faulty & the acting just made it worse.

waste of bandwidth! Feckin Americans, why can't they keep to monster trucks & whatnot to keep themselves amused?

[Str8 Jacket]

I am bginning to wonder if you and Malcolm have a weird connection sometimes....We saw the adverts the other night anf he commented that if the Americans made it it would be crap and probably not worth watching

[F5 Dave]

Well we weren't going to tell you yet hon. but while we're all here there's something we've been needing to say. . .

[Donor]

As soon as I saw it had been remade, I made the executive decision that I would rather scoop my own eyes out using a melon baller than watch it.

Freakin' 'merkins and their damnable ruining of classics!

...now, where's the torrent to download the original... hmmm, the Tripod trilogy could be a go as well...

[Dave Lobster]

Wasn't Day of the Triffids a brit TV series?

The 'mercins can't have remade it, surely??

[Leviticus]

Wasn't Day of the Triffids a brit TV series?

The 'mercins can't have remade it, surely??.

It was made by The BBC back in the eighties. The book was better though

[Kickaha]

I mssed it tonight but as soon as I saw the ad that showed someone being dragged away I thought it would be rubbish,it is one of my Favourite books

The first Midwich cuckoos/Village of the dammed was heaps better than the merkin remake as well

[Donor]

All is good in the world - I has all 6 episodes of the 1981 BBC mini series winging their way to my hard drive... ahhh...

[Kickaha]

hmmm, the Tripod trilogy could be a go as well...

Another series I really like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods), there was a prequel written as well which I haven't read

The White Mountains
The City of Gold and Lead
The Pool of Fire

Disney has owned the film rights to The Tripods since 1997. It was reported in 2005 that a cinematic version is in pre-production with Australian-born director Gregor Jordan signed on to rewrite and direct for Walt Disney's Touchstone Pictures label. The film version is expected for 2012, with no casting announced as of January 2010.

[F5 Dave]

Ya know I should have been in the garage fettling stuff, but I had a case of the CBFs & was looking for an excuse to stay put.

But on the plus side all my shirts are spiffly pressed & I'm listening to Rockradio1.com etc surfing.

. . . course I should have gone to the garage but it's too hot and other such excuses.

[Leviticus]

The 'mercins can't have remade it, surely??


It has the look of a Modern BBC production, The accents are too good to be yanks

[Big Dave]

Missed it - surely it couldn't be worse than the Hitchhiker's Guide fiasco. Please. My eyes have only just stopped bleeding from that. Triffid stings would be welcome.

Edit - Oh! - free to air - people still watch that? :-)

Eddie Izzard is a yank?

[spacemonkey]

Thankfully the antidote to trifids americanisation arrived in the mail today.... Gormenghast on DVD! :D

[F5 Dave]

ok now I'm shocked & stunned. I googled it. I'd assumed it was 'mercan as it was so bad.

I was wrong & now I apologise. It's a BBC production. As I said, shocked & stunned.

Bloody Pommy 'mercans.

[Motu]

It's still set in England,and it still has English actors....so for a 21st century remake it's pretty damn good.Not tooooo far away from the book,global warming,Triffid farms etc....but it has been a few decades since he wrote the book.Went out into the garage a couple of days ago and found my 1959 edition,but one of my kids is reading it.The first of The End Of The World As We Know It books...so a classic story.

[F5 Dave]

Course we need them for oil. But if only we'd known, if only we'd listened.

Nah! BLEERGH - it was tragic!

The original used to scare the crap out of me as a kid, ok I was a kid, but for the time it was good.

[Donor]

Another series I really like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods), there was a prequel written as well which I haven't read

The White Mountains
The City of Gold and Lead
The Pool of Fire

Disney has owned the film rights to The Tripods since 1997. It was reported in 2005 that a cinematic version is in pre-production with Australian-born director Gregor Jordan signed on to rewrite and direct for Walt Disney's Touchstone Pictures label. The film version is expected for 2012, with no casting announced as of January 2010.

All going well, I have seasons 1 and 2 on their way... released on DVD in March of 2009 I believe...

[Motu]

Well my granddaughter just came home for the last 5 minutes - she was clinging to my leg saying ''What's that?,what's it doing?'' I think Day of the Triffids still has the power to scare little kids.

[Madmax]

The original film was made about 1950 something (black and white)
Then the BBC mini

[Madmax]

Original film 1963 is a classic

[Tink]

Well I guess I missed the adverts (I'm dynamite with the remote). so nothing much on, do a channel surf of the sky preview timetable. Hmm, gee haven't seen that for years! Whats the chance they're playing it on prime time? oh. The Americans have got hold of it & remade for TV (no chance of it being a movie).

Short story long I watched the first 1/2 hour & doing the ironing in another room was more inviting.

What a load of crap! The whole premise was faulty & the acting just made it worse.

waste of bandwidth! Feckin Americans, why can't they keep to monster trucks & whatnot to keep themselves amused?


All is good in the world - I has all 6 episodes of the 1981 BBC mini series winging their way to my hard drive... ahhh...

Dare to share Donor... plus I watched 20 min... and fell asleep (not) I was still bored... and looked at my wine glass intensely thinking wtf... am I watching yawn...

Classic Bikes are like classic movies.... only reproduce if ya can do it right!!!!!

[Drunken Monkey]

Missed it - surely it couldn't be worse than the Hitchhiker's Guide fiasco.

I agree there are some rubbish remakes of films out there (like last week's Andromeda Strain), but WTF? I assume you're talking about the Garth Jennings 2005 version? It was as faithful as you can expect a film of a book like that be, and was very well cast. Alan Rickman was superb as the voice of Marvin, Stephen Fry was spot on as the narrator, in fact I thought everyone was a brilliant cast choice. Please don't tell me you honestly preferred that low budget BBC version? OMG, you're just bagging it for baggings sake, surely?

[Big Dave]

I'm not sure whose it was - in the cut I saw, the film ended before the final bag of scrabble scene. Like, only 2/3rds of the way through the book.
It was the crappest ending Since No Country for Old Men. Haruuumph.

And yes the low budget BBC was infinitely better. Wordy hoke is best delivered Hokey and with Ham, not glam.

Was saying to Jnr, I don't 'begrudge' remakes. I don't recall one that I preferred to the original, they are for generation next, I think it's good they know get smart, but if you lived it as a kid, there's only one Max, Pugsley or Ginger or Zaphod.

[Big Dave]

Cheese = good.
<object height="295" width="480">An avalanche of Terror!


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[Donor]

Dare to share Donor... plus I watched 20 min... and fell asleep (not) I was still bored... and looked at my wine glass intensely thinking wtf... am I watching yawn...

No worries - have just crawled out of the scratcher, and lo! there are 6 old school episodes of Day Of The Triffids in my little directory.

Upon inspection, it's old school, and I love it!

[Ladydragon]

I've already got got the oraginal The Day Of The Triffids on dvd when it was first released also got the BBC whole mini series on dvd too

got it from a place called DVD Planet on the net

[F5 Dave]

Well my wife stayed up & watched it ("I haven't seen the original so I have nothing to compare it with" sez she). By the time I'm in bed it's like
"well that was dumb I can't be arsed watching tomorrow".
& this morning adds, " so everyone was blinded by the solar flare. . . . even on the other side of the world. . . . yet all it took to not be blinded was having a damp towel on your face for the hero & being asleep on a plane with a baseball cap for the beardy guy". Sure.

Yeah I loved the original HitchhikersGTG & didn't think much of the movie (although I agree with the Stephen Fry & Marvin voices). Like music, everyso often someone comes along with an improvement remake. but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Mind you age & past experience does cloud one's opinions. I tried to read HGTTG a year back & it was no longer new fresh & quirky like when I was 19.

Doesn't explain "The Italian Job" being remade. What was wrong with the original?

[KiwiPhoenix]

Last nights "Day of the Triffids" was made last year and is a UK production. Eddie Izzard is an english comedienne (sp?) and actor.

For a BBC programme it's actually quite good, some of the BBC stuff is crap!

[Drunken Monkey]

It was the crappest ending Since No Country for Old Men. Haruuumph.

haha, heaven forbid someone releases a story without a nicely-tied-up-opiate-for-the-masses Hollywood ending. (don't watch the Sopranos!)

Also, you do realise Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay for the 2005 version, a lot of the deviations from the book were by his own hand.

Oh well, each to their own, but I'll take each version on it's own merits. Sometimes classic trumps remake, sometimes remake trumps classic.

[Drunken Monkey]

Doesn't explain "The Italian Job" being remade. What was wrong with the original?

Like Jeremy Clarkson said, it should have just been called "The". It could certainly have been titled differently and sold as a film on it's own merits, it had little to do with the Peter Collinson (1969) version. I'm sure to a lot of people, "The Italian Job" is synonymous with Italy, the Mini, gold bullion and Michael Caine, so we see it as an affront that these elements are either missing, or merely mentioned in passing to create a weak link. Had the film been given an original title and the weak links removed, the film would certainly be passable on it's own merits. Jason Statham and Seth Green were good, dunno about the rest of them though.

People don't make remakes because they think someonething is wrong with the original, they make them because they can make money on the success of the name of the original. Whether it's better or worse, or "wrong" or "right" is totally subjective.

[Swoop]

The original black and white movie was much more enjoyable.

The production that was shown last night, was extremely underwhelming. When they got to the part where "triffids were being milked for their endless supply of oil" which "saved the world from global warming" the OFF button was used.

I was wondering how a transvestite comedian was going to be involved in saving the planet...:scratch:

[Drunken Monkey]

Updating the fears people face in a film to something more topical is quite common and often I find the efforts pretty weak. I noticed in the Sam Miller/2005 'Quatermass experiment', it was set in contemporary times but they kept the fears of the 1950's in the conversations. Watching a contemporary film, set in contemporary times, with actors talking about fears of nuclear annihilation was simply laughable.

Perhaps they would have been better off keeping the remake of Day of the Triffids set circa 1960?

[duckonin]

Original film 1963 is a classic

Won all our 1st fifteen games back then coach took us into Wellington to the movies as a treat, yep scared the shit out of all of us....But the train ride home !!