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The War Of The Worlds (1953)

MOVIE INFORMATION

Production Company : Paramount Pictures
Country : USA
Language : English
Colour : Technicolor / B & W
Running time : 85 minutes
Original Music by Leith Stevens
Writing credits : Barré Lyndon & H.G. Wells (novel)
Produced by George Pal
Directed by Byron Haskins

AWARDS

Best Editing (nom), Everett Douglas, 1953 Academy
Best Sound (nom), Loren L. Ryder, 1953 Academy
Best Visual Effects (win), 1953 Academy

(for a comprehensive list of academy awards in 1953, click here)

SPECIAL EFFECTS

The film had a budget of $2,000,000. $600,000 was spent on the live action scenes while the remaining $1,400,000 was spent on the elaborate special effects.

CAST

Gene Barry .... Dr. Clayton Forrester
Ann Robinson .... Sylvia Van Buren
Les Tremayne .... Maj. Gen. Mann
Robert Cornthwaite .... Dr. Pryor (as Bob Cornthwaite)
Sandro Giglio .... Dr. Bilderbeck
Lewis Martin .... Pastor Dr. Matthew Collins
Houseley Stevenson Jr. .... Gen. Mann's aide
Paul Frees .... Radio Reporter
William Phipps .... Wash Perry (as Bill Phipps)
Vernon Rich .... Col. Ralph Heffner
Henry Brandon .... Cop at Crash Site
Jack Kruschen .... Salvatore
Cedric Hardwicke .... Commentary (voice)
Vittorio Cramer .... Narrator

MOVIE TRIVIA

Reportedly, George Pal wanted to do the final third of the movie in 3-D, starting with the sequence in which the atomic bomb is used unsuccessfully against the Martians.

Originally, the Martian War Machines were supposed to "walk" on visible electronic beams. This was attempted by having electrical sparks emanate from the three holes at the bottom of the machine. This was quickly abandoned for fear of it becoming a major fire hazard.

The Flying Wing depicted in the movie is the Northrop YB-49. Two were built and both crashed. Stock footage was used in the movie.

VIDEO CLIP

54 Second Video Clip (3.25MB) - (DIVX required)
Video Clip(s) are copyright Paramount Pictures

Stills from the trailer

SUMMARY : The film adaptation of the classic H.G.Wells story of the invasion of Earth by Martians. A flaming meteor lands in the hills of a small town to the excitement of the local residents. Their joy is cut short when they discover it has passengers who are not very friendly at all.  The Martians unleash an attack on earth, with hundreds of indestructible crafts. The invasion takes place all over the world and all the major cities are destroyed.  The military are called in, but their tanks and missiles have no effect; even the atomic bomb can't stop them.

PLOT : H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds had been on Paramount Pictures' docket since the silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal. Like Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio adaptation, the film eschews Wells' original Victorian England setting for a contemporary American locale, in this case Southern California.

A meteorlike object crash-lands near the small town of Linda Rosa. Among the crowd of curious onlookers is Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry, who strikes up a friendship with Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis Martin.

Because the meteor is too hot to approach at present, Barry decides to wait a few days to investigate, leaving three townsmen to guard the strange, glowing object. Left alone, the three men decide to approach the meteorite, and are evaporated for their trouble. It turns out that this is no meteorite, but an invading spaceship from the planet Mars.

The hideous-looking Martians utilize huge, mushroomlike flying ships, equipped with heat rays, to pursue the helpless earthlings. When the military is called in, the Martians demonstrated their ruthlessness by "zapping" Ann's minister uncle, who'd hoped to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the standoff. As Barry and Ann seek shelter, the Martians go on a destructive rampage. Nothing-not even an atom-bomb blast-can halt the Martian death machines.

The film's climax occurs in a besieged Los Angeles, where Barry fights through a crowd of refugees and looters so that he may be reunited with Ann in Earth's last moments of existence. In the end, the Martians are defeated not by science or the military, but by bacteria germs-or, to quote H.G. Wells, "the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon the earth."

Forty years' worth of progressively improving special effects have not dimmed the brilliance of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Even on television, Pal's Oscar-winning camera trickery is awesome to behold. So indelible an impression has this film made on modern-day sci-fi mavens that, when a 1988 TV version of War of the Worlds was put together, it was conceived as a direct sequel to the 1953 film, rather than a derivation of the Wells novel or the Welles radio production. This article was written by Hal Erickson and can be seen on All Movie Guide

Stills from the movie

       
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