The War of the Worlds (1953)

A couple of weeks ago Channel 4 put on some classic sci fi films over consecutive days, as they often do from time to time, and I recorded three of them - well I nearly did until I realised I've seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers already! The first one I watched was the original movie adaptation of HG Wells' The War of the Worlds from 1953. I've seen the Steven Spielberg directed, Tom Cruise starring one from 2005, which was action packed but hampered by a weak ass ending, so I was intrigued as to what a pre-CGI version would make of the story. 

Plotwise, the earlier film has the edge. And while it has no stars to speak of, and special effects that are fairly primitive, it is still more entertaining and the aliens are just as creepy, if not more so than in the remake. Martians land on Earth and begin wiping out huge swathes of the population, while mankind fires every weapon it has - including nukes, at a time when the Cold War was simmering - to no effect, until the spacecraft begin falling out of the sky, a result of contagion by Earth's bacteria. And that's the plot in a sentence - nothing too fancy - there's some science vs religion debate that seems to have been won by the latter at the end (it's God who created the bacteria that saved Earth you see, not science-made nukes), and an uninspired romantic angle, but the action is exciting and the world-wide nature of the invasion is well done. I seem to recall the 2005 movie is typically US-centric, but then I think the focus of that film was on a particular family, not the bigger picture as in the 1953 version. 

There's some ropey acting, particularly from wooden lead Gene Barry (who?), and screaming from the stereotypical female in the cast. This is par for the course with this sort of movie though, I wasn't expecting anything Oscar worthy! The special effects are effective and I can imagine they blew people away at the time. I thought that this take on War of the Worlds' ending was much better done here, as the narration of the ending in the 2005 film rushed over the explanation and suddenly the film ended - here there was more of a sense of relief, and closure. It's a good film then, just not as chilling and effective as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.