Let’s Talk About ‘The War of the Worlds’ (1953)

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In 1938 Orson Welles scared the crap out of America with a radio broadcast adapting The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The story, about a large-scale invasion of Earth by advanced forces from the red planet, was adapted from its Victorian setting to a modern one and presented as a radio broadcast from reporters in the field. It was realistic enough to cause many who heard it to believe it was real, despite disclaimers. Many didn’t even realize the invaders were supposed to be Martians and believed the Germans had declared war on the US. They had heard – on the radio, of course – the rumblings around the world that would soon turn into the bomb blasts of World War II.

It would take another fifteen years before producer George Pal would get the Martian machines to rise on the big screen, this time in the shadow of the Cold War. In the paranoia and fear of that time, Pal showed us what a war fought with “the terrible weapons of super science” might look like. In the process, he created the precursor of the modern sci-fi blockbuster and left us with indelible images and unforgettable sounds of the world’s destruction.

What The War of the Worlds Means to Us

H.G. Wells’ seminal sci-fi classic was first infamously adapted into a radio broadcast helmed by Orson Welles that resulted in (somewhat overblown) mass hysteria and then much later into an epic action film from Spielberg in 2005. There have been many other adaptations over the years but those two are probably the best known, so it’s funny that the third most well known, falls in the middle of the two in the release timeline and also, in quality. Since it was released almost 70 years ago, the film has unfortunately aged (you can definitely see the strings on the Blu-ray) but outside of some dodgy effects and some bland acting (Gene Barry is no Tom Cruise. Hell, he’s not even on Orson Welles’ level and all he did was read the book aloud), the film still holds up. The Technicolor is still as gorgeous today as it was then, the design of the Martians is still creepy as all get out and the alien destruction is still impressive. It may be a 50’s B movie but it’s one of the best.

—Sailor Monsoon

They’re Working to Some Kind of a Plan

Paramount Pictures first started working on developing The War of the Worlds as a film in 1925, after it bought the rights from HG Wells. At one time or another filmmakers like Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchock and even Sergei Eisenstein were attached to direct. (And you can’t help but wonder what kind of films they would have envisioned!)  It wouldn’t be until 1951 that the film would finally move forward, this time under the guidance of George Pal.

Born in Hungary as György Pál Marczincsak, Pal started out as an animator and created the Puppetoons series of short films. By 1951 he’d moved into producing and was already well known for science fiction films, including Destination Moon (1950) and When Worlds Collide (1951). With War of the Worlds, Pal would take everything he’d learned on his previous two films and elevate it, with a focus on special effects and a bombastic storyline.

For a director, Pal chose Byron Haskin, who had been a cinematographer before directing a series of films that included Treasure Island for Disney – their first live-action film. It was a fortuitous pairing and Haskin would go on to make more films with Pal, including 1955’s The Conquest of Space. Haskin’s experience in special effects – he’d won an Academy Award for it in 1938 – was probably a help on the effects-laden film.

Albert Nozaki, who had also worked with Pal on When Worlds Collide, provided the iconic design for the Martian war machines. He updated Wells’ famous tripods into a deadly looking manta ray shape with a cobra-headed, articulated neck. Nozaki would go on to win an Academy Award for Art Direction on The Ten Commandments.

Useless Against That Kind of Power

On August 12, 1953  the USSR exploded their first thermonuclear device. The next day, Mars invaded theaters across the US. The success of George Pal’s War of the Worlds adaptation can be attributed – at least in part – to the Cold War and Amerca’s fear of a foe that might be more technologically capable then they were.  The Korean War had ended only weeks before, and Stalin had died earlier in the year. The world was unsettled, and the shadow of the atomic bomb loomed large over the whole world. The War of the Worlds makes this connection clear in the opening narration by the great Paul Frees:

“In the First World War, and for the first time in the history of man, nations combined to fight against nations using the crude weapons of those days. The Second World War involved every continent on the globe, and men turned to science for new devices of warfare, which reached an unparalleled peak in their capacity for destruction. And now, fought with the terrible weapons of super-science, menacing all mankind and every creature on the Earth, comes the War of the Worlds.”

The weapons used by the Martians in the film are truly terrible, from the heat ray that melts or burns everything in its path to the green blasts that, according to science hero Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry), disrupt matter on a subatomic level – causing whatever they hit to simply “cease to exist.” Pal envisioned technology that was simply superior to our own in every way, making the destruction of Earth only a matter of time – six days, to be exact. (The same amount of time it took to create it, one character notes.)

In addition to the their weapons, the Martians deploy their distinctive war machines. The design incorporated an electronic version of the tripod from the original novel, and you can see the supporting beams in several shots. It was difficult to shoot, and so doesn’t appear consistently. In addition they have an early representation of a force field – the “protective blister” that defends the Martians from everything mankind can throw at them. Including – in a scene that would be copied wholesale in films like Independence Day – a nuclear weapon.

America had been in two wars since 1942, but for most Americans the destruction of military combat was a distant thing, seen only in newsreels and the pages of Life Magazine. War of the Worlds brought the destruction home, showing the utter defeat of the American military and the razing of one her biggest and brightest cities. It must have been an awesome and terrifying thing to see Los Angeles City Hall destroyed in 1953, much like it was for the Japanese to see Godzilla do the same thing to the Diet building later that same year.

Intellects Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic

The Martians themselves only make brief appearances on screen in the film, but we hear quite a bit about their ancient and dying civilization early on. The early narration by Cedric Hardwicke (perhaps most recognizable as Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments) describes Mars as a dry and freezing world that the Martians are desperate to escape.

Despite their technological prowess, the Martians themselves are a fairly weedy bunch. Their blood is apparently anemic compared to ours, and our gravity would of course be much harsher. Their three lobed eyes – lit up in Technicolor blue, green and red – dominate their torso, and their limbs are spindly. Despite this, their first appearance in the film is a nicely creepy one, with our heroes trapped in a partially destroyed farmhouse and the Martians appearing only in shadows (or, in one memorable scene) placing a sucker-fingered hand on Sylvia’s (Ann Robinson) arm. And of course they prove particularly susceptible to our microbes. They should probably have talked to Jonas Salk, who first tested his Polio vaccine that same year.

The presentation of the Martians and their equipment is notably non-human, at a time when most science fiction represented aliens as humans in fancy dress, or with slightly enlarged craniums. (Though we did get the occasional straight-up monster.)

For the Sake of Future History, if Any

The War of the Worlds was a huge box office success, and led to more big budget science fiction films, like Forbidden Planet (though none of them were as successful). The special effects were notably ahead of their time and the sound effects – particularly the one for the heat ray – have been used over and over again in film and television.

As an aside – the wires holding the miniature ships up were very visible in many subsequent releases of the film, leading some to assume it always looked fairly cheesy. This was a result of not using Technicolor print stock, which blurred the lines (and was what the filmmakers were expecting when they were shooting). The 2018 restoration attempts to emulate the Technicolor look, and as a result the lines are much less noticeable.

There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of alien invasion movies since 1953, and in ways both big and small they owe a debt to George Pal’s vision. Independence Day (1996), in particular, seems like a cinematic twin of sorts. The story itself has been adapted multiple times, most notably by Stephen Spielberg in his 2005 War of the Worlds. That film took the fears and concerns of the day, post 911 and the middle of the War on Terror, and made its own statement. Maybe it’s time for the story to be retold. I can only hope whoever does so makes sure to watch the original before striking off on their own.

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Have you seen The War of the Worlds? What did you think of the film? Do you have a fun fact or piece of trivia about the making of the film? Share it in the comments below!