The War of the Worlds: A George Pal Classic

I remember when I first came across The War of the Worlds.  I was watching some Saturday afternoon TV when I was a teenager, and this was the next movie to air.  It looked interesting, so I stayed tuned, and it was great - this was probably in the early 1980's.  The film originally came out in 1953, and I have to say that the special effects are still amazing to this day.

I had known about The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells.  In elementary (grade) school, the big three were:  The Invisible Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein.  I had not heard of The War of the Worlds, and was also not aware that Wells wrote this one as well. 

A handful of years later, I was introduced to old time radio - various companies made popular radio shows from the 1930's and 1940's available on cassette tape:  Abbot and Costello, Burns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, etc.  Eventually, I came across the original Mercury Theater broadcast of The War of the Worlds that starred Orson Welles, and found it interesting that the live broadcast apparently fooled some listeners into believing the Earth was really being invaded by Martians.  The style of the program contributed to this - the earlier portion of it had sections of a radio journalist interviewing people at the crash site that would have sounded convincing enough.  That is, until you listed to the program further, and heard the narration of Orson Welles himself.  I remember the closing of the broadcast included an apology for alarming anyone.

While listening, I found it interesting how much the radio show differed from the film - it followed the book more closely (well, that's much easier on radio, isn't it?).  While I found it interesting, I also found it on the slow side, bordering on boring.  I prefer the George Pal film version much more, and I feel the filmmakers made some choices which make the story more effective from a visual standpoint (in much the same way that The Wizard of Oz differs from the book).

What were some of the things that made the film more effective for me?

The "manta"

First, the design of the alien ships.  Not tripods, like in the book.  The ships are shaped like manta rays, with the heat-ray as a cobra-like head on a long extension.  In addition to the heat-ray, they have skeletal beam weapons mounted on the sides (you need to see the film to know what this means), rather than the poisonous black smoke from the novel.  And, actually, these ships do kind of qualify as tripods.  While they appear to fly through the air, in certain scenes, you can see they are held aloft by three almost invisible "energy" legs.  The tripods also had tentacles for manipulating things, which are missing from the ships in the film.  When the heat-ray itself fires, it has a very scary sound.  A sound which clearly indicates that something bad is going to happen.

As described in the novel

Second, the look of the Martians.  I the book, they are described as round creatures the size of a bear, with brown bodies, V-shaped mouths dripping saliva, disk-like eyes, and 16 whip-like tentacles.  This would have been immensely difficult to pull off in the film.  Instead, they had a bipedal figure, much like a man, but with very broad shoulders, skinny arms and legs, and a single large eye with red, blue, and green lenses.  Their fingers also ended in suction cups.  To me, this is a much creepier and disturbing design.

From the film

There are many other differences between the book and the film, but these are the ones that made the biggest difference for me.

A few elements which are missing from the George Pal film are featured prominently in the 2005 remake made by Steven Spielberg.  First, what the martians do with captured humans - they are certainly captured and carried in baskets behind the tripods.  Second, the fast growing "red weed", which we do see in the film, without any real explanation of what it is.  While these scenes from the novel are present, they are somewhat difficult to decipher what is really going on.

The War of the Worlds remains one of my favorite 20th century science fiction films - far superior to many films that were made decades later with incredibly inferior special effects and stories.  It wasn't until many years later that I learned that George Pal was responsible for many other classic science fiction films - The Time Machine, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, and Destination Moon (based on Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein) to name a few.

If you have never seen it, you should.

Any other big fans of this film out there?