The War of the Worlds (1953 film)
The War of the Worlds (also known in promotional material as H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds) is a 1953 American science fiction thriller film directed by Byron Haskin, produced by George Pal, and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It is the first of several feature film adaptations of H. G. Wells' 1898 novel of the same name. The setting is changed from Victorian era England to 1953 Southern California. Earth is suddenly invaded by Martians, and American scientist Doctor Clayton Forrester searches for any weakness to stop them.
The War of the Worlds won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and went on to influence other science fiction films. In 2011, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress, who deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot[edit]
A large object crashes near the small town of Linda Rosa, California. At the impact site, Dr. Clayton Forrester, an atomic scientist, investigates. He meets Sylvia Van Buren and her uncle, Pastor Collins. Together, they attend an evening square dance. Back at the crash site, a hatch on the object unscrews and falls away. As three men standing guard attempt to make contact waving a white flag, a heat-ray obliterates them. U.S. Marines later surround the site, as reports pour in of more cylinders, presumably from Mars, landing all over Earth, destroying cities. Three war machines now emerge from the Linda Rosa cylinder. Pastor Collins attempts contact but is disintegrated. Marines open fire, but are unable to penetrate the invaders' force field. The aliens counterattack with death ray weaponry, sending the Marines into full retreat. Air Force attack jets follow up, but they are annihilated.
Forrester and Sylvia escape in a small plane but later crash land. Hiding in a nearby empty farmhouse, they are nearly buried by yet another crashing cylinder. A long cable with an electronic eye explores the house, but Forrester severs the eye with an axe. Later, an alien creature enters and approaches Sylvia but retreats when Forrester wounds it. He collects its blood on a cloth. Then, they escape just before the farmhouse is obliterated by a heat-ray. Forrester takes the electronic eye and blood sample to his team at a Los Angeles university, hoping to find a way to defeat the invaders. The scientists examine the sample and discover that the visitors' blood is extremely anemic. Meanwhile, as the world's capitals fall to the invaders, experts predict total world domination in just weeks. The U.S. government thus authorizes use of the atom bomb. However, it proves ineffective, and the aliens continue their advance on Los Angeles. During the city's evacuation, Forrester, Sylvia, and the other scientists become separated in the chaos.
Stranded in Los Angeles, Forrester looks for Sylvia. Based on a story she told him earlier, he guesses she would take refuge in a church. After searching through several, he finds Sylvia among many praying survivors. Just as the invaders attack near the church, their machines lose power and crash. As Forrester sees one of the aliens die, he reflects, "We were all praying for a miracle." He and other survivors look heavenward. An off-screen narrator observes that the aliens had "no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune [and] which God in His wisdom had put upon this earth."
Reception[edit]
Release[edit]
The official Hollywood premiere of The War of the Worlds was on February 20, 1953, although it did not go into general theatrical release until late that year.[6] The film was both a critical and box-office success. The film accrued $2,000,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making the film the year's biggest science fiction hit. ("Rentals" refers to the distributor and studio's share of the box-office gross, which, according to Gebert, is roughly half of the money generated by ticket sales.)[22]
Critical reaction[edit]
In The New York Times, A. H. Weiler's review commented: "[The film is] an imaginatively conceived, professionally turned adventure, which makes excellent use of Technicolor, special effects by a crew of experts, and impressively drawn backgrounds ... Director Byron Haskin, working from a tight script by Barré Lyndon, has made this excursion suspenseful, fast and, on occasion, properly chilling".[23] "Brog" in Variety said, "[It is] a socko science-fiction feature, as fearsome as a film as was the Orson Welles 1938 radio interpretation ... what starring honors there are go strictly to the special effects, which create an atmosphere of soul-chilling apprehension so effectively [that] audiences will actually take alarm at the danger posed in the picture. It can't be recommended for the weak-hearted, but to the many who delight in an occasional good scare, it's socko entertainment of hackle-raising quality".[24][25] The Monthly Film Bulletin of the UK called it "the best of the postwar American science-fiction films; the Martian machines have a quality of real terror, their sinister apparitions, prowlings and pulverisings are spectacularly well done, and the scenes of panic and destruction are staged with real flair".[26] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it "to put it gently, terrific", and "for my money, the King Kong of its day".[27]
The War of the Worlds won a Special Achievement Award from the Academy for its Visual Effects, as there was no competitive category that year. Everett Douglas was nominated for Film Editing, and the Paramount Studio Sound Department and Loren L. Ryder were nominated for Sound Recording.[28]
The War of the Worlds still receives high acclaim from some critics. On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 90% rating based on 39 critics, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The consensus states: "Though it's dated in spots, The War of the Worlds retains an unnerving power, updating H. G. Wells's classic sci-fi tale to the Cold War era and featuring some of the best special effects of any 1950s film".[29]
4K restoration[edit]
In 2018, a new, fully restored 4K Dolby Vision transfer from the original three-strip Technicolor negatives was published on iTunes.[30] In July 2020, the film was reissued on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection in the United States using the same 4K remaster and restoration. The Blu-ray documentation says the transfer process and careful color and contrast calibrations allowed the special effects to be restored to Technicolor release print quality, without the war machine's supporting wires.[31][32]
Legacy[edit]
The War of the Worlds was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant in 2011 by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.[33] The Registry noted the film's release during the early years of the Cold War and how it used "the apocalyptic paranoia of the atomic age".[34] The Registry also cited the special effects, which at its release were called "soul-chilling, hackle-raising, and not for the faint of heart".[34]
The Martians were ranked the 27th best villains in the American Film Institute's list AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains.
The 1988 War of the Worlds TV series is a sequel to the Pal film. Ann Robinson reprises her role as Sylvia Van Buren in three episodes. Robinson also reprises her role in two other films, first as Dr. Van Buren in 1988's Midnight Movie Massacre and then as Dr. Sylvia Van Buren in 2005's The Naked Monster.[35]
The 1996 film Independence Day has several allusions to Pal's 1953 War of the Worlds. The failed attempt of a dropped atomic bomb is replaced with a nuclear-armed cruise missile launched by a B-2 Spirit bomber (a direct descendant of the Northrop YB-49 bomber in the 1953 film) and Captain Hiller being based in El Toro, California, which Dr. Forrester mentions as the home of the Marines, which make the first assault on the invading Martians in Pal's film.[36]
The Asylum's 2005 direct-to-DVD H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds has mild references to the Pal version. The Martian's mouth has three tongues that closely resemble the three Martian fingers in the Pal film. The Asylum film has scenes of power outages after the aliens' arrival via meteorite-ships. As in the Pal film, refugees hide in the mountains, instead of hiding underground as in the Wells novel, and the protagonist actively tries to fight the aliens by biological means.[37]
Steven Spielberg's 2005 version, War of the Worlds, although an adaptation of the Wells novel, has several references to the 1953 film. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson have cameo appearances near the end, and the invading aliens have three-fingered hands but are reptilian, walking tripods. A long, snaking, alien camera probe is deployed by the invaders.[38] In his 2018 film Ready Player One, Spielberg included a fallen Martian war machine more akin to the 1953 film.[39]
Tomohiro Nishikado, creator of the breakthrough 1978 video game Space Invaders, stated that seeing the film in childhood was one of the inspirations for the inclusion and the design of the aliens in the game.[40]
Mystery Science Theater 3000 named one of its lead characters, the mad scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, as an homage to the 1953 film.[41]
In 2004, War of the Worlds was presented with a Retrospective Hugo Award for 1954 in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation — Short Form (works running 90 minutes or less).[42]