#1037: HASKIN, Byron: The War Of The Worlds (1953)

HASKIN, Byron (United States)
The War Of The Worlds [1953]
Spine #1037
Blu-ray


A mysterous, meteorlike object has landed in a small California town. All clocks have stopped. A fleet of glowing green UFOs hovers menacingly over the entire globe. The Martian invasion of Earth has begun, and it seems that nothing — neither military might nor the scientific know-how of nuclear physicist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) — can stop it. In the expert hands of genre specialists George Pal and Byron Haskin, H. G. Wells's end-of-civilization classic receives a chilling Cold war-era update, complete with hallucinatory Technicolor and visionary, Oscar-winning special effects. Emblazoned with iconographic images of 1950s science fiction, The War of the Worlds is both an influential triumph of visual imagination and a still-disquieting document of the wonder and terror of the atomic age.

85 minutes
Color
Monaural
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2020
Director/Writers


Based on the novel by H.G. Wells.
Screenplay by Barré Lyndon.
Byron Haskin was 54 when he directed The War of the Worlds.

Other Haskin films in the Collection:

#404: Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Eight-page wraparound featuring an essay by film critic J. Hoberman.

Commentary

From 2005 featuring filmmaker Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns, and author Bill Warren.

Movie Archaeologists

A program on the film’s visual and sound effects featuring sound designer Ben Burtt and visual-effects supervisor Craig Barron.

From the Archive

A program about the film’s restoration featuring Barron, Burtt and Paramount Pictures archivist Andrea Kalas.

Audio interview

With producer George Pal from 1970.

The Sky is Falling

A 2005 documentary about the making of the film.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Radio play of The War of the Worlds from 1938, adapted by Howard Koch and directed and narrated by Orson Welles.

Radio program

From 1940 featuring a discussion between Welles and Wells, author of the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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