I recommend everyone read Howard Keel's somewhat rollicking posthumous memoirs and read what he has to say about his participation in this science fiction cult classic.
Keel's career was at sea when he signed for this film. A big budget biblical spectacle, The Big Fisherman, was crowded out of existence by the bigger budgeted Ben-Hur. There went Keel's hope for a post musical career. He signed to do this British production and got the money up front so he did it.
He knew he was in a stinkarooney about a meteor shower that blinds nearly all the world's population. At the same time the meteors bring the spores of these carnivorous plants which when they grow can uproot themselves and move about, something like the Daleks in Doctor Who. They're doing a grand job destructing all life about them, especially human life. They spray a deadly poison, fatal on contact.
Howard Keel was in hospital having eye surgery as it turns out the night of the fateful meteor shower. Next morning when he's scheduled to have the bandages removed, he finds he's one of the few people who can see in all London. He saves another sighted person, Janina Faye, and moves on to France, where they in turn pick up Nicole Maurey.
Always meeting up with the giant size Triffids who are just pigging out on sightless humankind. Eventually they end up in Spain.
One day, the producers simply announced the film was over. The money people had taken a powder. Keel and the rest of the cast left the film. A year and a half later, money was found so another story line was filmed involving Kieron Moore and Janette Scott who discover how to destroy the Triffids. Keel was in fact supposed to do it. They integrated the Moore/Scott footage into the film and released it.
The Day of the Triffids became a cult science fiction classic, but not a favorite experience of Howard Keel. I can't say and spoil how the Triffids are destroyed, but in his memoirs Keel says the producers could have saved a lot of money if they had simply let him perform a biological function on them.
Now that would REALLY have been a cult classic.
Keel's career was at sea when he signed for this film. A big budget biblical spectacle, The Big Fisherman, was crowded out of existence by the bigger budgeted Ben-Hur. There went Keel's hope for a post musical career. He signed to do this British production and got the money up front so he did it.
He knew he was in a stinkarooney about a meteor shower that blinds nearly all the world's population. At the same time the meteors bring the spores of these carnivorous plants which when they grow can uproot themselves and move about, something like the Daleks in Doctor Who. They're doing a grand job destructing all life about them, especially human life. They spray a deadly poison, fatal on contact.
Howard Keel was in hospital having eye surgery as it turns out the night of the fateful meteor shower. Next morning when he's scheduled to have the bandages removed, he finds he's one of the few people who can see in all London. He saves another sighted person, Janina Faye, and moves on to France, where they in turn pick up Nicole Maurey.
Always meeting up with the giant size Triffids who are just pigging out on sightless humankind. Eventually they end up in Spain.
One day, the producers simply announced the film was over. The money people had taken a powder. Keel and the rest of the cast left the film. A year and a half later, money was found so another story line was filmed involving Kieron Moore and Janette Scott who discover how to destroy the Triffids. Keel was in fact supposed to do it. They integrated the Moore/Scott footage into the film and released it.
The Day of the Triffids became a cult science fiction classic, but not a favorite experience of Howard Keel. I can't say and spoil how the Triffids are destroyed, but in his memoirs Keel says the producers could have saved a lot of money if they had simply let him perform a biological function on them.
Now that would REALLY have been a cult classic.