The War of the Worlds (1953) - Trailer
Gene Barry (TV's Bat Masterson) and Ann Robinson (TV's Fury) are among the humans intrigued when a meteor-like object crashes to Earth ... but its occupants are definitely not friendly. The assault on Earth is underway, and the Martian machines -- hovering "swan"-shaped vehicles of destruction -- are both beautiful and terrifying as they cut a relentless path of annihilation.
The Night America Trembled 1957 - H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds
The Night America Trembled 1957 is probably one of the best films I have seen that proves, at least to me, the point that Americans have always been gun happy freaked out paranoid hicks. And that's why I love them, and I love this movie. The Night America Trembled is-as far as I know-the first movie of the events that happened during the radio broadcast of Orson Welles doing H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds on October 30, 1938. (Although not related, on October 28, 1940, Orson Welles met H.G. Wells in San Antonio, Texas; a local radio station KTSA recorded the conversation, which was likely the only meeting between the two)
Oddly enough Orson Welles is never actually mentioned by name in this flick. Bad blood from the radio broadcast still I guess. Anyway, Newsman Edward R. Murrow adds modern perspective to '50s audiences about subsequent events that make this Orson Welles production still seem frightening to anyone who didn't hear the beginning of the broadcast having switched from Bergin and McCarthy on NBC. I first saw the remake "The Night that Panicked America" when I was just a little Lush I couldn't believe how realistic it sounded. I thought myself it was a brilliant joke. In this original movie however the director of the radio play and Orson Welles are depicted as two different people when they were actually one and the same. Also, the sound of the Martians' opening their ship was visualized as the sound man manually spinning a bare record turntable when it was actually the opening of a jar. (The remake shows this magnificently) What makes this Version best though are the Westinghouse commercials with John Cameron Swazee for various nuclear products! Also worth mentioning are the early performances of Warren Beatty, Ed Asner, Warren Oates, James Coburn, Vincent Gardenia, and, for Honeymooners fans, Frank Marth and a very young John Astin on the typewriter! This film was (as mentioned) remade in 1975 as The Night That Panicked America which is also a brilliant film.
H.G. Wells 'War of the Worlds' trailer
The Story Behind War of the Worlds
In 1938, aliens attacked. Well, that's at least what Americans heard over the radio. Orson Welles and a group of actors interrupted a radio broadcast to warn the public that the planet had been invaded by aliens - really, they were just reading a script based off the novel, The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells. Unlike successful real-life alien hoaxes, this '38 fake news story spiraled the entire country into mass hysteria... Or did it?
Orson Welles - War Of The Worlds - Radio Broadcast 1938 - Complete Broadcast.
Orson Welles - War Of The Worlds - Radio Broadcast 1938 - Complete Broadcast.
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program's quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame.
War Of The Worlds (2005) - Trailer (Tom Cruise)
An ordinary man has to protect his children against alien invaders in this science fiction thriller, freely adapted from the classic story by H.G. Wells. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a dockworker living in New Jersey, divorced from his first wife Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) and estranged from his two children Rachel and Robbie (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin), of whom he has custody on weekends. On one such visitation, looking after the kids becomes a little more difficult when, after a series of strange lighting storms hit his neighborhood, Ray discovers that a fleet of death-ray robotic spaceships have emerged nearby, part of the first wave of an all-out alien invasion of the Earth. Transporting his children from New York to Boston in an attempt to find safety at Mary Ann's parents' house, Ray must learn to become the protector and provider he never was in marriage. Also starring Tim Robbins, War of the Worlds was directed by Steven Spielberg, who had been planning the project for years, but set it aside until a wave of "alien invasion" films (led by Independence Day) had run its course.
The movies based on The War of the Worlds in order of release are:
The War of the Worlds (1953): Directed by Byron Haskin and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson
War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction action-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel,
H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (2005): Directed by Timothy Hines
H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (2005): Directed by David Michael Latt and also known as Invasion or The Worlds in War internationally
War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008): Directed by and starring C. Thomas Howell
Alien Dawn (2012): Directed by Neil Johnson and loosely based on The War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds - The True Story (2012): A sci-fi/action mockumentary
War of the Worlds: Goliath: An animated sequel set 15 years after the novel
War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023): The most recent movie based on The War of the Worlds
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