War of the Worlds (1953)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

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#90. War of the Worlds (1953)

 

“These recordings I’m making are for future history … If any.”

-- An unnamed Radio Journalist, played by Paul Frees

 

H.G. Wells’ novel “War of the Worlds” (1898) was one of the most important of early SF novels. Reading it more than 120 years later, it still comes across remarkably modern, while most of Wells’ fellow journeymen in the new, still-un-named, Genre of SF are merely quaint. It was structured as a memoir by a Survivor of Disaster, with some additional materials provided by other sources to flesh out aspects of the cataclysm that the un-named Narrator couldn’t personally see, so it draws from the then-popular form of the Epistolary novel mixed with some Pseudo-Journalism. It still has a readership, and has had been adapted, parodied, plagiarized, and endured numerous Sequels-by-Other-Hands in every conceivable media. Direct adaptations and alleged sequels have included at least nine feature-length films and three TV series.

 

Fans of the novel keep pining for a faithful version (actually, a few are pretty faithful) and especially one set in Victorian England, since some of the book’s important themes and its powerfully specific verisimilitude haven’t always translated to more modern settings (actually, there’s a few Victorian (1837-1901) or Edwardian (1901-1910) ones).

 

Cinema was attracted to Wells early on, and before his death in 1946, he saw a number of his fictions, some SF,F&H, some not, adapted to the screen (“The Island of Doctor Moreau” (first published 1896) was adapted as both “The Island of the Lost” (1921) and “The Island of Lost Souls” (1932); “The Wheels of Chance” (1896) became a film by the same name (1922); “First men in the Moon” (1901) became both, “Voyage to the Moon” (1902) and “First Men on the Moon” (1919); “The Invisible Man” (1897) became a film of the same title (1933) which itself became a franchise; "The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost" (1902) became an episode in “The Dead of Night” (1932); “The Story of the Passionate Friends” (1913) became a film by the same name (1922). Wells mostly complained about them. He was also directly involved in at least two film Productions (“The Man Who Could Work Miracles” (1898) became a film by the same name (1937); and “The Shape of Things to Come” (1933) became “H.G. Wells’ Thing’s to Come” (1936, which he also complained about, but less-so).

 

This particular novel drew a lot of interest from the International Film Industry, but the demands of the necessary FX, and the near disappearance of SF from English-language cinema between 1937 and 1949, stymied all projects (this disappearance may have been part-triggered by Wells’ himself, “Things to Come” was quite popular, but so damned expensive to make, it still failed commercially). Legendary Soviet Director Sergei Eisenstein wanted to do this novel in 1920s, two equally legendary Directors, Cecil B. De Mille and Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to made it in the 1930s, the great FX Wizard Ray Harryhausen worked on his own version and shot some test footage in the 1940s, and there’s even stories of Producer Alexander Korda, the man behind the two films that directly involved Wells, wanted to take on this project.

 

The man who finally got it to the screen was Producer George Pal; DeMille held the Silent Film Rights, but didn’t go back and get the Sound Film Rights when that became technologically feasible, but instead assisted in Pal’s production. Early in this film there’s a quick glance of a movie theatre playing DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah” (1949), an affectionate nod to DeMille’s assistance. The Cinematographer was a DeMille-alumni and Oscar Winner, George Barnes in what would prove to be his last film. Barnes palette of infernal reds and cleansing blues echoed DeMille’s color films. Also, though he was not ultimately used for the part, DeMille was Pal’s first choice for the Narrator of the film.

 

It was only Pal’s fourth feature-length project of a then-already-nearly-twenty-year-long career (a career that would continue for another twenty-plus-years). Not long before, he’d single-handedly saved SF cinema from perdition with “Destination Moon” (1950), the first SF film of any significance made in the English-speaking world in over a decade. Pal’s earliest film background was in Animation and FX and for the rest of his career the majority of his films were SF or Fantasy, many of them are considered among the best of their decades. Though sometimes the Director or Writer, here he handed those two tasks over to others.

 

His chosen Director was Byron Haskin, who began his career in the Silent Era as a Cameraman for News-Reel Documentaries, then moved onto Cinematographer and FX Designer, all experiences that are fully on display here. The Writer was Barré Lyndon, who mostly penned Crime films (this was his only SF) and the script is tight and full of compellingly specific-detail that lent much credibility to the Fantastic story, but also showed little concern for original Author Wells’ underlying themes.

 

Though there is remarkable indifference the Wells’ original intent, it still towers in influence and Audience affection above all other versions. The film blithely ignored the uncomfortable content of the novel, such as a disregard for Religion (the film is actually pretty Devotional) and condemnation of Imperialism (the film doesn’t praise Imperialism, per se, but is an implicit celebration of the American Empire). It also gives us a very 50s-style Scientist Hero, an expert under contract with the Military, instead of the novel’s Everyman, whose only motivation was to cross the War-torn landscape and by reunited with his family. Basically, despite following the novel’s outline reasonably closely, very little of the book survives.

 

It’s very much a product of the Cold War (1947 – 1991) but even more so a reflection of the devastation wrought by WWII (1939 -1945). Author Wells had predicted WWII with disturbing accuracy in a number of his other SF novels, but not this one. Wells then got to witness from a threatened England when it finally broke out and was, in fact, targeted for Assinsation in some of the Nazis’ unexecuted plans.

 

The opening narration, made up mostly of Wells’ original prose, was ultimately provided by Actor Cedric Hardwicke who was already a veteran of Wells-based-or-influenced films, notably, “Things to Come”:

 

“No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th Century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us. Mars is more than 140 million miles from the sun, and for centuries has been in the last status of exhaustion. At night, temperatures drop far below zero even at its equator. Inhabitants of this dying planet looked across space with instruments and intelligences that which we have scarcely dreamed, searching for another world to which they could migrate.”

 

This certainly wasn’t the first SF film about an Alien Invasion, not even the first such of the 1950s SF boom, but 1953 year was when Invasion themes really began to dominate, “War of the Worlds” came mere months after two other classic (but much lower-budgeted) examples, “Invaders from Mars” and “It Came from Outer Space,” as well as several others that we’d prefer to forget.

 

Though the action was moved from England to California, USA, and moved forward in time, like the novel, the film begins celebrating the loveliness of semi-rural life before everything goes to hell. Our hero, Doctor Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) is on a fishing vacation in an idyllic and insular small town when the first of many Alien crafts crashes nearby. The town’s people are obviously concerned, but don’t panic, and after setting up a proper perimeter, continue to go about their daily business. The Martians have yet to emerge, and having shown no hostility, there was really no reason to cancel the dance party.

 

During that party, the Martians do emerge, or at least their technology does. The film cuts back-and-forth between the party, where Clayton starts romancing Sylvia van Buren (Ann Robinson), local Librarian and niece of Pastor Dr. Matthew Collins (Lewis Martin), while the three unfortunates are left guarding the crash site (Bill Phipps, Jack Kruschen, and Paul Birch) see an opportunity to try and communicate with the Martians and are cruelly slaughtered for their trouble.

 

(An aside here regarding a small detail, but I think a significant one: Of the first three Characters to die, Salvatore, was a Hispanic (though played by Kruschen, actually a Russian Jew). Salvatore’s role is a sorta accidental mile-marker in USA history. Back in 1942, under the Bracero Program, Mexicans were being invited to cross the border because of labor storages in the USA’s Agricultural Industries caused by WWII. Even though the Program wasn’t officially ended until 1964, the abuse of both Documented and Un-Documented Immigrants was on the rise in the USA even as this film came out. The very next year after the movies release, 1954, saw the execution of the notorious Operation Wetback. That was spear-headed by a Racist Murderer named Harlon Carter who, by an evil trick of fate, became a ranking member of Federal Law Enforcement, and later still, in 1977, became the President of the National Rifle Association. Operation Wetback was notorious for its Humiliation Tactics and Physical Abuse towards Hispanics, including leaving 88 of them to die in the desert. In 2015, soon-to-be President Donald Trump praised the Program and has repeatedly tried to imitate it. This film is very much about the Fear of the Other, but in this film, Salvatore wasn’t the Other -- in the real-world though, he was already or about to become one.)

 

The Martian weapon of choice was a Heat Ray accompanied by one of the most fondly remembered sound effects in SF film history. Their victims are reduced to man-shaped piles of ash. That’s pretty close to the novel, but for the film’s original audience, this was made more compelling because it demanded comparisons to the Atomic Bombs recently dropped on the Japanese Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both 1945), where the incinerated dead sometimes left eternal shadows on the concrete behind them as they died. The Real-World was entering an Afraid New World of WMDs, and everyone knew it.

 

Key to understanding this film’s impact (and all other good versions of the same novel) is grasping that what it shown was not always what the audience saw. There are several scenes that beautifully evoked the utter Alienness of the Martians, but the much of the Audience must have seen the Other as something closer to Human. The film utilized WWII newsreel footage (mixing black & white footage with color worked far better than you might expect) and other scenes of staged mass-panic and Homeless Refugees that were inspired by WWII newsreels. The end result was that the Audience of 1953 saw Fascists and/or Communists. The Fascist Sneak Atack on Pearl Harbor was only twelve years prior, the Fascist threat crushed only eight years before. The Communist threat was just emerging, they had nukes since 1949, and the USA entered a sort-of-direct Military Conflict with them in 1950 with the Korean War, which ended in a Cease-Fire (not a Peace-Treaty) the same year this film came out.

 

So, the most Alien thing about the Aliens wasn’t how weird they looked (and the looked pretty weird) but their Inhuman savagery. Critic Douglas Cowan observed of the Martians killing methods, “seconds later that character will be a smoldering pile of ashes in consequence of his belief that monsters share anything, such as rationality and humanism, with human beings.” But this was also in the context of a Nation all-too familiar with Humans capacity to descend into the Genocidal savagery so Humans demonstrating how Inhuman they could be on a Grand Scale. Maybe the USA Audience wanted to believe only Fascists or Communists could behave that way. Critic Peter Biskind’s observed the USA Audience probably believed "that their country had the endorsement of the Almighty, the Divine Seal of Approval.” This was also the decade (1956 to be exact) that the USA’s motto was officially changed from “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of Many One”) to “In God We Trust.”

 

We believed that the USA only turned to WMDs in a desperate pinch, and only after careful consideration. In contrast, Wells’ novel, there’s a blunt statement about we could all be the Martians:

 

“And before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”

 

Soon, the film’s Martians prove more powerful than the novel’s version. In the novel they moved along on clumsy Tripods, but in the movie, they elegantly glided through the air in stream-lined Ships to looked a lot like manta-rays. Critic Roderick Heath described them as, “a menace that is graceful, even beautiful, sublimely menacing, all shining, slippery, aerodynamic surfaces.” In the novel, the overwhelmed Humans have a few, pyrrhic, victories, but the movie granted Humanity even less as the Martians brush off everything with their powerful Force Fields.

 

(A Force Field is a Scientifically dubious, but very popular, SF trope that wouldn’t appear in the Genre until 1931. This film is notable that our Hero Scientist does try to explain how it works, and to a non-Scientist like me, the film’s pseudo-Science is convincing enough.)

 

When the novel was written, WMDs were mostly the stuff of bad dreams, reflected in its use of Bio-Weapons, Poison Gas and Heat Rays, all allegedly had predecessors in Ancient Warfare. Across history, Bio-Weapons were sometimes used effectively but pretty inconsistently; Poison Gas had no significant Battlefield Use until 1915; and an effective Heat Ray for Combat still doesn’t exist in 2025. The film toys with, but does not use Bio-Weapons; Poison Gas is absent as it became an International Taboo in 1918; but the film retained the novel’s Heat Rays.

 

Wells predicted the Atomic Bombs with remarkable prescience, but in “War of the Worlds,” that would have to wait for a later novel, “A World Set Free” (1913). Here, Atomic Bomb was the biggest thing the Audience had ever seen, and it was still beyond their imagination, yet Martians brush them off casually. To make the film seem up-to-date, the A-Bomb was delivered by the just completed Northrop YB-49 Flying-Wing Bomber, but in the Real World, the plane’s manufacture was, abruptly and without explanation, the project was scrapped by Air Force with only one ever being completed, now on display in the Smithsonian Institution.

 

The Humans considered, but failed to use, Bio-Weapons. During WWII all the Major Players on both sides were developing them, but none got the Bio-Weapons to work well.

 

There are three things any direct adaptation of this novel must be judged by to measure how serious it is: 1.) how well it conveys the hopelessness of the Human plight, 2.) does it match the novel’s verisimilitude, and 3.) the handing of one key scene, perhaps the dramatic center of the whole book. This version does the first two exceptionally well, but barely even attempts the third.

 

Regarding: 1.) Clayton is a fine Hero, a calm and Rational Man of Action. His colleagues at the Pacific Institute of Science and Technology (an unsubtle stand-in for Real-World CalTech) are all brilliant and dedicated during the race-against-time to find the Martians weaknesses. The Team does discover vital clues (leading to a discussion of Bio-Weapons) but the Martians crush Los Angeles before the Scientists can exploit their findings. Though Character Clayton showed remarkable lack of personality in the film’s opening passages, Actor Barry really came alive in this last act as he, suppressing panic, desperately searches the streets of the devastated city, having already lost his irreplaceable equipment and probably his lover Sylvia. That scene was after the Martians brushed an A-Bomb and now slide triumphantly through undefended streets, burning everything they pass. The potent scenes of panicked mobs are quickly followed quickly the same streets empty and desolate.

 

2.) As mentioned above, Director Haskin had a Newsreel background, and used both staged and actual Newsreel footage in the film. The use of such footage usually indicated corner-cutting in a low-budget film but not so here (this film’s budget, $2 million, was modest, but still huge compared to almost all other SF of the Era). The Newsreels greatly opened-up the story’s canvas. In the novel, we know it’s a Global Invasion, but mostly see through the eyes of one man, and he’s mostly traveling on foot. The movie allows us additional POVs and widening the perspective even more because so many of them are employed by the Military/Industrial complex and therefore are in-the-know. We get reports from everywhere, with World Capital after World Capital falling, until only the USA stands alone, and even she is clearly helpless (notably, the Communist Nations go unmentioned). Then there’s all the wonderful details in Lydon’s script: Clayton figuring out that the Martians manipulate magnetism while still at the dance party. Sleeping Sylvia curled in Clayton’s arms, when she awakens, she smiles, but only for sparse seconds; then she remembers where she is, and her eyes fill with terror again. There’s the scene with the Radio Journalist quoted at the top of this essay.

 

3.) As for that key scene from the novel that this film essentially skipped, I think that reflected a conflict between Author Wells’ public Atheism and Producer Pal’s devote Catholicism. In the novel, the Narrator holes up in the basement of a ruined farm-house and there meets a Curate. As the days pass, the Curate descends into madness. The Curate’s loud End-Time rantings put the Narrator at risk of discovery, so to save himself, the Narrator his forced to beat the Curate to death. But in the film, Pastor Matthew isn’t a raving loon, but a Brave and Honorable man, equal in Intelligence to, and Respected by, Scientist Clayton. Matthew’s Religiosty is grounded in a Reasoned Moralism ("If they're more advanced than us, they should be nearer the Creator for that reason.”).

 

Unfortunately, things don’t really work out well for Matthew, but it was a far more Honorable Death than the Curate and happens way before the basement scene. There’s a subtext in his death though that was deeply reactionary, but only made clear in recognizing the pattern in the volume; Critic Dana Polan pointed out that "in many '50s monster films there is a character, often a priest, whose attitude toward the monsters is, 'Let us try to reason with them.'” By the end of the film, and most ‘50s SF, with corpses of innocents piled high, that Christian Humanism is kinda old hat, and kill, kill, kill, is the proper Philosophy (that same year’s, “It Came from …: is a notable exception proving the rule). I’m confident that Philosophy wasn’t Pal’s intent, but the interpretation in inevitable given the school of fish he was swimming in.

 

 

So, when we get to the basement scene there’s no Curate Character but Clayton and Sylvia, and Sylvia has no corresponding Character in the novel. Instead of Madness and Desperation we get the films warmest moments (well, warmest until the Martians show up). Actors Barry and Anderson finally relax into their roles and demonstrate actual Characterization. These are nice people and you root for them. Overall, the novel had more really rotten people in it than this film version.

 

Apparently, Director Haskin complained his two leads, Actors Barry and Robinson, were “terribly wooden.” I disagree; I blame the script. For all potent detail and tight pacing, Writer Lyndon gave neither Actor much to work with in the opening passages, he was new to SF and there was a lot of exposition to get out of the way.

 

Over all, the film seems profoundly uncertain of how to treat its women, typical of most SF of its day, may it be prose, cinema, or TV. It was obligated to nod to the changing role women had in our society, but the nod was only a nod. One member of the Pacific Tech Team was a woman, Dr. Duprey (the great Character Actress Ann Codee, who bizarrely went uncredited) but like the rest of that Team she was too busy working to get any Character development. The later Big-Star, Actress Carolyn Jones, has a bit part here, and finds herself listed in the credits as the "Bird-Brained Blonde." Lead Actress Robinson deserves a little extra-credit for her infusing some Character in badly underwritten Slyvia, she basically screams a lot and serves coffee.

 

But one should not under-estimate the importance of the role women played even though the role was constrained. Men are assumed to take the roles of Heroes or Villains, but our world is larger than that, making the women representative of everything else. Critic Heath again, “‘The War of the Worlds,’ which envisions everyone essentially as an orphan looking for their place in the world. Sylvia’s raw humanity is everyone’s, as the film advances to describe a descent into helplessness and chaos in which only a certain effervescent need for succour and the touch of other humans.”

 

 

When the Martian (played by Make-up Artist Charles Gemora, who often acted as the Monsters he created costumes for) finally shows its face, it’s one of the decades most impressively Alien Aliens. Though it was created of papier-mâché and rubber-tubbing, it was convincingly pulsing, wet, icky, and weird)

 

Of the many direct adaptions, there only two that come close to this film’s influence/popularity; they were Director/Actor Orson Welles radio play (1938) and Director Steven Spielberg’s feature film (2005). Both moved the action from England to the USA and move the story forward-in-time, yet both preserved more of the novel than Pal’s version. Notably, both take the basement sequence head-on.

 

The radio play famously preformed its first act as Mock-News Broadcast, causing some significant panic because many listeners thought it was a real News story. Historians who investigated the incident noted that those panicked were often not thinking of Martians, but Germans. The savage Military Conquests that eventually evolved into WWII began as early as 1935, when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia. In 1937 Japan Invaded China (sorta expanded an earlier Invasion, that story is complicated) leading to the Fascist Government gaining full control of the Nation the next year. The Chinese Invasion also proved that the League of Nations was wholly ineffectual in stopping the Fascists’ Genocidal intents. In 1938 Germany annexed Austria and a large portion of Czechoslovakia. At the time of the broadcast, WWII hadn’t officially started, that would have to wait for Germany’s Invasion of Poland in 1939, but really, the world was already aflame and everyone knew it was going to get worse.

 

The radio play’s second act was a more traditional piece of radio theater, and that’s when the scene in the ruined basement happens. This time the Madman was not a Curate (he seems more influenced by another Character in the novel, an unnamed Artilleryman), he’s still Raving and Desperate, responding to the threat of the Martians by dreaming of creating his own quasi-Fascist underground in the sewers.

 

Director Spielberg’s big-budget feature also retains that scene, and more similar to the radio play’s the Madman than the novel’s Curate. Spielberg explicitly echoed post-9/11 fears over either the novel’s satire of Imperialism, the radio play’s anticipation of a Fascist Global War, or this film’s remembrance of Fascism combined with fears of Communism to come. By the time Spielberg’s was made, the Military crises in Afghanistan and Iraq had already descended in quagmire, and there was increasing outrage regarding the lack of Psychological Aide for our returning Vets, and that likely contributed to the shaping of this version of the Character.

 

Both the novel and this film treat Religion as the last refuge of the terrified, but this film’s perspective on this is far more positivistic than the novel’s. This film’s most repeated locale is a Church, where the dance party was held in the opening scenes and, in the climax, there are the interiors of two Churches filled with the Desperate who couldn’t escape LA. In both versions it is not Heroism, but Biological Evolution that saves the day, meaning Martians are brought-low by Terrestrial Germs for which they have no Immunity to. In the Wells, he’s echoing how European Imperialists were vulnerable to Malaria. For Pal, Evolution and Divine Intervention were one-in-the-same.

 

During the basement scene, Character Sylvia re-tells a story from her childhood, “I always knew if I hid in a church and prayed, my true love would find me there.” Nearing the end of the film, Clayton finally finds Sylvia in a Church where, from the Pulpit, a Priest (unnamed and uncredited) calls out for a Miracle as the pounding sounds of Destruction get closer and closer to the door. Almost at that moment, the Martian Ships start falling from the sky.

 

The ending narration again partially quotes Wells, but with greater emphasis of the Divine because of context:

 

“After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity saved by the littlest things which God in his wisdom put upon the Earth.”

 

Small, but highly visible, parts were given to veteran Character Actors, this includes not only the above-mentioned Martin and Cobee, but also Robert Cornthwaite and Sandro Giglio as two more Scientists, Les Tremayne and Vernon Rich as Military Officers, and legendary voice-actor Paul Frees as the on-the-scene radio Journalist. Also, Producer Pal had a bit part as a bum. I bring this up because the film had a remarkably large and talented Cast, a bit of a miracle given the modest $2 million dollar budget, especially since $1.3 million went to FX alone. To demonstrate by contrast, that same year’s “Roman Holiday” had a smaller cast and essentially no FX, but cost only $500 thousand less to make, and when we exclude FX budget, “War of the Worlds,” it actually comes in at $800 thousand cheaper than “Roman Holiday.”

 

“War of the Worlds” deservedly won an Academy Award for Best FX and was also nominated for Best Sound and Film Editing. Regarding the FX win, the award didn’t list any names so, by default, FX Supervisor Gordon Jennings got all the credit. This is a shame; this was definitely a case where Director Haskin earned that Oscar as much as Jennings. This was almost a reverse of when Director Stanley Kubrick arrogantly took sole credit for the FX in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), snubbing his FX Supervisor Douglas Trumbull. Had Haskin been named, this would’ve been his sixth Oscar Nomination, and second Win, all in the FX field.

 

Director, FX Supervisor, Production Designer/Art Director, and Cinematographer, are over-lapping disciplines regarding a film’s look. The fact that this film’s FX were mostly “Practical Effects” (meaning what you saw in the theater was on the original negative) made it even more so. All this combined talent gave this film its lasting power. Sequences a mass destruction required intricate creations glass paintings, miniatures, and matte work, (yes, sometimes the wires are visible, but that mattered not) while making room for the desperate Humans filmed separately. Everything with Humans was in vibrant, but not unrealistic, color, while everything with the Martians was in marvelously extreme with surreal primaries.  Critic Heath again, “The dense and fleshy colours, ingenious sound design, the vistas of awesome violence and terrible beauty.”

 

So, I must now address three men not named above, Sound Supervisor Loren L. Ryder (he was Oscar nominated) and Art Directors Albert Nozaki and Hal Pereira (not even nominated), whom I’m also crediting for the Lighting Design because no one else seems to be. As most of ‘50s SF films were denied this movie’s modest budget, but all wanted to recapture its magic, and the work of these three would become the most imitated because only disciplines of Sound and Art Direction were within the reach of most others.

 

Producer Pal and Director Haskin would work together again. Without Haskin, Pal would return to Wells with a more-faithful adaptation of Wells’ “The Time Machine” (novel published in 1895, film released in 1960). Haskin’s resume, with or without Pal, includes almost every Genre, but is best remembered for his SF, and one of his later ones, a non-Pal project, is the sadly underrated “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964), which would reuse this film’s Martian Ships.

 

The adaptations (and rip-offs) of this novel would continue to mount, apparently trigged by each significant leap-forward in FX technology. I noted the two most important above, there are two more I want to note now:

 

2005, the same year as the Spielberg version, saw two low-budget Mockbusters trying to ride Spielberg’s coat-tails. The were both awful, and the worse of the two was “H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds” Directed by Timothy Hines. Hines was apparently so embarrassed by the product that he went back and did it again, now not merely on a low-budget, but a micro-budgeted: “War of the Worlds: The True Story” (2011) which proved unexpectedly marvelous. It was staged as a pseudo-Documentary, and moving the action from the Victorian Era to only a few years later, to the end of the Edwardian Era, so that he could incorporate WWI newsreels. It is more faithful to the novel than any of those listed above, in fact, it is the most faithful I have seen.

 

Trailer:

The War of the Worlds (1953) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

 

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