Continuing with our brief look back at the fifties, and also just
in time for the upcoming release by the BBC, let’s take a look at the first
film adaptation of the very earliest tale of invaders from Mars—The War of the
Worlds.
HG Wells’ classic 1898 novel defined an entire subgenre, and
indeed much of science fiction for the century to come—pioneering the earliest
fictional examples of energy weapons, mechas, and malevolent aliens. But the deeper
point to the novel was an inversion of the imperialism of the time, hence the
Martians within targeting the heart of the British Empire. Ever since, almost
every adaptation has reinterpreted the story and changed the setting—but the
key ingredients remain the same.
We all know about Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio play
that supposedly terrified a nation (the effects it had are exaggerated, and in
any case we’re not ones to laugh any more at our gullible thirties forefathers
over fake news…), and a little over a decade later, producer George Pal jumped
on the scifi surge of the fifties with a new effort. Originally, there was more
focus on staying true to the novel with its cephalopod like Martians and tripod
war machines with stop motion effects by the legendary model pioneer Ray
Harryhausen, but this was deemed too expensive. Some early test footage still
exists, and scifi fans will often debate and wonder what could’ve been.
But what we ultimately got in the film visuals wise was just
as memorable. Instead of the cliché flying saucers appearing everywhere then,
the Martians here use hovering destroyers armed to the teeth, sleek and
manta-like. It’s a look that holds up very well, and even the sound is classic
in its own right. The pulsing audio made by the rapid-fire disintegrators they
used was infamously appropriated by Star Trek for its photon torpedoes, thus
immortalizing them over the sixty-five years since. Even the crackling of the
heat rays powering up and the unearthly antigravity sounds that accompany the
invaders are still genuinely kind of creepy years later.
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| "Burn baby buuurn--" |
Obviously, the setting was once again shifted to contemporary
America—but the invasion here is a global one. In many ways, the story is even darker
than that of the book—the Martians have no interest in capturing and harvesting
humans like they did there, just simple extermination. The book likewise has
the Earthlings score a few lucky kills on the aliens—not so here. In an awesome
and memorably terrifying sequence the Martians just annihilate all military
hardware before them, and not even the might of the atom can even slow them. Even
in other fifties genre films, usually the brave scientists would pull a plan
from their posteriors that’d miraculously work. In one of the darkest scenes in
scifi of the time, all hope is lost after the science team in the film is lost to
looters, leaving the protagonist to try and survive in a burning Los Angeles,
besieged by Martians with destruction effects that still look cool today.
Speaking of the characters, let’s discuss that. Most of them
are familiar archetypes—Gene Barry plays the handsome Dr. Clayton Forrester, Ann
Robinson as lady friend Sylvia, and Les Tremayne is the definitive fast-talking
and confident military officer. Unfortunately, in comparison to Them with its
headstrong female lead, Sylvia here falls into the fifties cliché of
screaming every five seconds over just about anything. It can get a little
annoying to modern eyes, unfortunately.
Still, at least the rest of the film holds up for its time.
Even the Martians themselves are pretty unique and memorable—no silly looking
makeup here, but these weird cyclopcean dwarves. You fittingly see only a
glimpse, in a memorable ‘trapped in a ruined house’ sequence basically imitated
directly in the 2005 Spielberg version.
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| I had much the same response to the Roland Emmerich Midway trailer. |
Now speaking of, let’s take a glimpse at the other various takes
on the Wells story—and as it’s public domain, basically anyone can do it. The
Spielberg version can be popular to hate on these days, but I think it has its
pluses—the tripods are suitably terrifying and it has some chilling moments of
quiet death and destruction, despite some slightly annoying characters. In that
same year, Pendragon pictures also released a version that was meant to be
loyal to the original novel—which it was, sort of, but at the expense of
hilariously terrible effects, acting, pacing, and, well, just about everything.
There was also an animated feature in 2012 called War of the
Worlds Goliath, a sort of steampunk sequel about a teched-up Earth repelling
another invasion, but I say check out the superior graphic novel with a similar
premise, Scarlet Traces. The Pal film itself received a sequel TV show in the eighties, which had very little to do with the original story, and had the invasion here be completely covered up and forgotten. Somehow. Because of course.
All in all, George Pal’s War of the Worlds is definitely one
of the best of fifties scifi, and while cheesy in parts to a modern viewership
obviously it’s still well paced, has lots of gorgeous effects and spectacle,
and it’s still fun to see candescent heat rays vaporize all they touch. Just
remember that the actual chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one…but
still, they come…
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