My Favourite Movies: The War of the Worlds (1953)

War of the Worlds is probably my favourite classic Sf novel and I’m still hoping that someday a decent movie, in its original time setting, is eventually going to be made. I remember to this day the thrill of reading about the engagement between the Thunderchild – the state of the art warship – and the Martian Tripod. When the Martian machine crashed down in flames I cheered only to ‘see’ a second Tripod close in and cut the gallant warship in half with its heat ray. Now THAT would make a dramatic scene in any movie! But such things are not to be (though the generally appalling Tom Cruise version at least had the possibility of such a scene and fluffed it – maybe it was on the cutting room floor?).

Anyway…. Despite moving the action from South East England in the late 19th century to early 50’s California this wasn’t a bad version at all. Based more on the Wells radio show than the Wells novel I think it still managed to get the flavour of the novel without losing too much in the transition or translation. The initial ‘meteor’ impact and later emergence of the first Tripod is suitably dramatic and shocking. The Tripods or War Machines as they are often referred to are brilliant – despite the fact that you can easily pick out the wires holding them up on even low quality DVD copies. The magnetic flux holding them in the air and their force fields (deemed necessary to cope with ‘modern weapons’) are well done especially when you think this was made over 50 years ago. The early battle scenes when the American forces tried to hold them were really impressive and must have wowed 50’s audiences. The feeling of helplessness and despair in the face of unbeatable weapons of an invading power is still very palpable even at this distance. The cinema’s back then must have felt very claustrophobic indeed!

The acting was reasonable at best. The scientist who was working things out and helping the military (Dr Clayton Forester played by Gene Barry) was pretty good as the man on the spot caught in the middle of things during a fishing trip. His love interest (Sylvia Van Buren played by Ann Robinson) was pretty terrible as the supposed Masters student who didn’t even recognise the man she did her thesis on and who spent most of the film screaming at things and being hysterical. The rest of the cast where basically stereotypes – oddball and foreign sounding scientists, tough no nonsense military men, frightened townsfolk. The destruction of LA was pretty well done with some great explosions and buildings completely destroyed by Martian heat rays. Although it largely derives (from memory at least) I really didn’t like the ending where – not really a spoiler – the aliens had no immunity to Earth bacteria and gradually succumbed to things which we shrug off with little difficulty. The film portrayed this as a kindly act of God saving the world through His wisdom in creating the bacteria in the first place. Of course I saw the flaw in this idea even as a child when I saw the movie the first time. If God had intervened to save Humanity why did he allow presumably millions of innocent people to die before He intervened? Oh, and the other thing that jumped out at me was the idea that the Martians, unless stopped, would destroy the world in 6 days “the same it took to create it”. Of course conveniently forgetting that they’d already been fighting them for at least a few more days (at least) which kind of destroyed the whole Biblical angle completely.

However, despite these few niggles (and the lack of a Thunderchild scene) I still really enjoy this film. It still remains one of the best classic SF books made into one of the best classic SF movies of the Golden Age. Forget the Tom Cruise version. Check this one out!