The War of the Worlds (1953 film)

As Caroline Blake has written,[9] the film is very different from the original novel in its attitude toward religion, as reflected especially in the depiction of clergymen as characters. "The staunchly secularist Wells depicted a cowardly and thoroughly uninspiring Curate, whom the narrator regards with disgust, with which the reader is invited to concur. In the film, there is instead the sympathetic and heroic Pastor Collins who dies a martyr's death. And then the film's final scene in the church, strongly emphasizing the Divine nature of Humanity's deliverance, has no parallel in the original book."

Pal's adaptation has many other differences from H. G. Wells' novel. The closest resemblance is probably that of the antagonists. The film's aliens are indeed Martians and invade Earth for the same reasons as those stated in the novel (the state of Mars suggests that it is becoming unable to support life, leading to the Martians' decision to try to make Earth their new home). They land in the same way, by crashing to the earth. However, the novel's spacecraft are large cylinder-shaped projectiles fired from the Martian surface from some kind of cannon, instead of the film's meteorite-spaceships; but the Martians emerge from their craft in the same way, by unscrewing a large, round hatch. They appear to have no use for humans in the film. In the novel, however, the invaders are observed "feeding" on humans by fatally transfusing their captives' blood supply directly into Martian bodies by using pipettes; there is also later speculation about the Martians eventually using trained human slaves to hunt down all remaining survivors after they have conquered Earth. In the film, the Martians do not bring their fast-growing red weed with them, but they are defeated by Earth microorganisms, as in the novel. However, they die from the effects of the microorganisms within three days of the landing of the first meteorite-ship; in the novel, the Martians die within about three weeks of their invasion of England.[5]

The Martians themselves bear no physical resemblance to the novel's Martians, who are described as bear-sized, roundish creatures with brown bodies, "merely heads", with quivering beak-like, V-shaped mouths dripping saliva; they have sixteen whip-like tentacles in two groupings of eight arranged on each side of their mouths and two large "luminous, disk-like eyes". Due to budget constraints, their film counterparts are short, reddish-brown creatures with two long, thin arms with three long, thin fingers with suction-cup tips. The Martians' head, if it can be called that, is a broad "face" at the top-front of its broad-shouldered upper torso, the only apparent feature of which is a single large eye with three distinctly colored lenses (red, blue, and green). The Martians' lower extremities, whatever they may be, are never shown. (Some speculative designs for the creature suggest the idea of three thin legs resembling their fingers, while others show them as bipeds with short, stubby legs with three-toed feet.)[5]

The film's Martian war machines do actually have more of a resemblance than they may seem at first glance. The novel's machines are 10-story-tall tripods and carry the heat-ray projector on an articulated arm connected to the front of the war machine's main body. The film's machines are shaped like manta rays, with a bulbous, elongated green window at the front, through which the Martians observe their surroundings. On top of the machine is the cobra-swan head-like heat-ray attached to a long, narrow, goose-neck extension. They can be mistaken for flying machines, but Forrester states that they are lifted by "invisible legs"; in one scene when the first machine emerges, you can see faint traces of three energy legs beneath and three sparking traces where the three energy shafts touch the burning ground. Therefore, technically speaking, the film's war machines are indeed tripods, though they are never given that designation. Whereas the novel's war machines had no protection against the British army and navy cannon fire, the film's war machines have a force field surrounding them; this invisible shield is described by Forrester as a protective blister.[5]

The Martian weaponry is also partially unchanged. The heat-ray has the very same effect as that of the novel. However, the novel's heat-ray mechanism is briefly described as just a rounded hump when first seen in silhouette rising above the landing crater's rim; it fires an invisible energy beam in a wide arc while still in the pit made by the first Martian cylinder after it crash-lands. The film's heat-ray projector when first seen is shaped like a cross between a cobra and a swan, and has a single, red pulsing "eye", which likely acts as a targeting telescope for the Martians inside their manta ray-like war machine. The novel describes another weapon, the "black smoke" used to kill all life; the war machines fire canisters containing a black smoke-powder through a bazooka-like tube accessory. When dispersed, this black powder is lethal to all life forms who breathe it. This weapon is replaced in the film by a Martian skeleton beam—green pulsing bursts fired from the wingtips of the manta-ray machines; these bursts break apart the sub-atomic bonds that hold matter together on anything they touch. These skeleton beams are used off-screen to obliterate several French cities.[5]

The plot of the film is very different from the novel, which tells the story of a 19th-century writer (with additional narration in later chapters by his medical-student younger brother), who journeys through Victorian London and its southwestern suburbs while the Martians attack, eventually being reunited with his wife; the film's protagonist is a California scientist who falls in love with a former college student after the Martian invasion begins. However, certain points of the film's plot are similar to the novel, from the crash-landing of the Martian meteorite-ships to their eventual defeat by Earth's microorganisms. Forrester also experiences similar events like the book's narrator: an ordeal in a destroyed house, observing an actual Martian up close, and eventually reuniting with his love interest at the end of the story. The film is given more of a Cold War theme with its use of the atomic bomb against the enemy and the mass destruction that such a global war would inflict on mankind.[5]

An effort was made to avoid the stereotypical flying saucer look of UFOs: The Martian war machines, which were designed by Al Nozaki, were instead made to be sinister-looking machines shaped like manta rays floating above the ground. Three Martian war machine props were made out of copper for the film. The same blueprints were used a decade late (sans neck and cobra head) to construct the alien spacecraft used in the film Robinson Crusoe on Mars, also directed by Byron Haskin; that film prop was later reported melted down as part of a scrap copper recycling drive.[5]

Each Martian machine was topped with an articulated metal neck/arm, culminating in the cobra head heat ray projector, housing a single electronic eye that operated both like a periscope and as a weapon. The electronic eye also housed the Martian heat ray, which pulsed and fired red sparking beams, all accompanied by thrumming and a high-pitched clattering shriek when the ray was used. The distinctive sound effect of the weapon was created by an orchestra performing a written score, mainly through the use of violins and cellos. For many years, it was utilized as a standard ray-gun sound on children's television shows and the science-fiction anthology series The Outer Limits, particularly in the episode "The Children of Spider County".[4]

The machines also fired a pulsing green ray (referred to as a skeleton beam) from their wingtips, generating a distinctive sound, also disintegrating their targeted people; this second weapon is a replacement for the chemical weapon black smoke described in Wells' novel. This weapon's sound effect (created by striking a high tension cable with a hammer) was reused in Star Trek: The Original Series, accompanying the launch of photon torpedoes. The sound used when the Martian ships begin to move was also recycled by the original Star Trek as the sound of an overloading hand phaser. Another prominent sound effect was a chattering, synthesized echo, perhaps representing some kind of Martian sonar; it can be described as sounding like hissing electronic rattlesnakes.[4]

When the large Marine force opens fire on the Martians with everything in its heavy arsenal, each Martian machine is protected by an impenetrable force field that resembles, when briefly visible between explosions, the clear jar placed over a mantle clock, or a bell jar; cylindrical and with a hemispherical top. This effect was accomplished by the use of simple matte paintings on clear glass, which were then photographed and combined with other effects, then optically printed together during post-production.[5]

The disintegration effect took 144 separate matte paintings to create. The sound effects of the war machines' heat rays firing were created by mixing the sound of three electric guitars being recorded backwards. The Martian's scream in the farmhouse ruins was created by mixing the sound of a microphone scraping along dry ice being combined with a woman's recorded scream and then reverse-played for the sound effect mix.[4]

There were many problems trying to create the walking tripods of Wells' novel. It was eventually decided to make the Martian machines appear to float in the air on three invisible legs. To show their existence, subtle special effects downward lights were to be added directly under the moving war machines; however, in the final film, these only appear when one of the first machines can be seen rising from the Martian's landing site. It proved too difficult and dangerous to mark out the invisible legs when smoke and other effects had to be seen beneath the machines, and the effect used to create them also created a major fire hazard. In all of the subsequent scenes, however, the three invisible leg beams create small, sparking fires where they touch the ground.[4]

Despite the many accolades awarded to the film, for 50 years, beginning in the late 1960s when The War of the Worlds 3-strip Technicolor prints were replaced by the easier-to-use and less expensive Eastman Color stock, the quality of the film's special effects suffered dramatically, resulting in a degradation of lighting, timing, and image resolution, causing the originally invisible wires suspending the Martian war machines to become increasingly more visible with each succeeding advance in film and video formats, leading many, including respected critics, to believe the effects were originally of low quality.[10]

The War of the Worlds had its official Hollywood premiere on February 20, 1953, although it did not go into general theatrical release until the autumn of that year.[5] The film was both a critical and box-office success. It accrued $2,000,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year's biggest science fiction film hit.[11][Note 1]

In The New York Times, A. H. Weiler's review of The War of the Worlds 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".[12] "Brog" in Variety felt, "[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".[13][14] 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".[15] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it "to put it gently, terrific", and "for my money, the King Kong of its day".[16]

The War of the Worlds won an Academy Award for Special Effects (it was the sole nominee that year). Everett Douglas was nominated for Film Editing, while the Paramount Studio Sound Department and Loren L. Ryder were nominated for Sound Recording.[17]

The War of the Worlds still receives high acclaim from some critics: At the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 89% rating based on 35 critics; the consensus states: "Though it's dated in spots, The War of the Worlds retains an unnerving power, updating H. G. Wells' classic sci-fi tale to the Cold War era and featuring some of the best special effects of any 1950s film".[18]