By Todd Garbarini
My
introduction to science fiction came in the form of George Lucas’s Star Wars
(1977), though many would argue that this initial film in the first trilogy is
a glorified western set in outer space. This was a point of view I would not
have remotely considered the following summer when my father bought me a copy
of the June 1978 issue of Space Encounters magazine featuring an article
on and, best of all, photos of this glorious space opera. Among the other films
showcased in this magazine that were new to me were Destination Moon
(1950) and The War of the Worlds (1953), the latter of which was depicted
in beautiful color, filling me with intrigue. When I think of science fiction
now, the images of Douglas Trumbull’s slow-moving spaceships gliding through
space in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the
mothership landing near Devil’s Tower in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters
of the Third Kind (1977), or the dystopian landscape of Los Angeles in
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), come to mind. Back then, however, the
effects were a lot more primitive but no less effective to a child’s eyes: something
about the way these creepy-looking, Manta-shaped Martian ships with cobra-like
heads that fire a deadly heat ray capable of incinerating just about anything
in its path unnerved me. It is this film that is now available from Paramount
Home Video in a gorgeous new 4K UHD Blu-ray, in a double feature set of two
discs that also includes a standard Blu-ray of 1951’s When Worlds Collide,
clearly the lesser of the two films.
Dr.
Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) is an atomic scientist who gets more than he
bargains for when he stumbles upon a heated object that has crash-landed
nearby. At the impact site, he meets Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) and her
pastor uncle, all confused by the scene before them. Later, Martian ships
emerge from the site, and it is reported that similar scenarios are playing out
in other parts of the country. The United States military finds their weapons (even
atomic bombs!) to be of no use against the Martian invaders who employ the use
of the heat rays. Clayton and Sylvia make their way to a farmhouse and
encounter a strange looking electronic eye that the Martians use to investigate
the premises, but Clayton hacks off the electronic eye and manages to collect a
blood sample from the arm of a wounded Martian that we only see briefly. Their
blood proves to be the key to understanding them, as well as their undoing: Earth’s
bacteria is too much for the Martians and their supposed invincibility no
longer is an issue when then germs bring about their demise.
The
War of the Worlds has
been around for over one hundred years in various forms, beginning life in the
late 1890’s as a multi-part story published in Cosmopolitan if you can
believe it, then as a novel and, most famously, as a notorious radio broadcast emceed
by Orson Welles on the night before Halloween in 1938 that led to mass panic by
those listeners unfortunate enough to miss not only the program’s beginning
disclaimer, but the three mid-broadcast announcements emphasizing the play’s
fictional nature. Listeners actually believed it to be a real news broadcast!
The film opened in New York on Thursday, August 13, 1953 at the Mayfair on 7th
and Broadway on a panoramic screen with stereophonic sound. It was nominated
for three Academy Awards: Film Editing, Sound Recording, and won by default for
Special Effects on Thursday, March 25, 1954 because no other film was in the
category. Steven Spielberg directed a
very effective interpretation of this material following the 9/11 attacks; that
version was released in the summer of 2005 and featured Gene Barry and Ann
Robinson as Tom Cruise’s in-laws at the film’s end (love it!).
The
new 4K Ultra High-Definition release contains the following extras that have
been ported over from the 2005 Paramount DVD of the film:
There
is a wonderful, feature-length audio commentary with Gene Barry and Ann Robinson.
There
is a secondary audio commentary with Joe Dante, Bob Burns, and Bill Warren
which is very funny, anecdotal and engaging.
The
Sky is Falling: Making The War of the Worlds (SD – 29:59)
H.G.
Wells: The Father of Science Fiction
(SD – 10:29)
The
Mercury Theater on the Air Presets: The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from
1938 (HD – 59:30)
Original
Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:20)
When
Worlds Collide (1951),
released in New York on Wednesday, February 6, 1952 at the Globe on 46th
and Broadway, depicts the effects of a mob mentality when word gets out that
scientists have accurately predicted the end of the world but are shrugged off
as crackpot theorists. Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating) is given photographs
from a pilot, David Randall (Richard Derr), who has taken them on the sly.
Along with his daughter Joyce Hendron (Barbara Rush), Dr. Hendron’s fears
become a reality. A star by the name of Bellus is on a collision course with
Earth and disaster is only eight months away, proving that aside from one’s own
personal health the most important asset a human can possess is time. Young,
healthy, and attractive people are singled out to make a future trip to a
planet, Zyra, that is travelling in Bellus’s orbit for purposes of continuing
the Human Race. First, however, a spaceship needs to be constructed to do this.
Along the way, Joyce has to choose between her boyfriend Dr. Tony Drake (Peter
Hansen) and her attraction to Randall while a wheelchair-bound wealthy
businessman, Sidney Stanton (John Hoyt), demands to be saved in exchange for
money and also wants the right to choose who goes on the ship. A mad dash is
made to build the ship (other countries around the world follow suit) and
miraculously the feat is pulled off in record time. Just as August 12th
arrives, the doubting Stanton berates the doomsday predictors until the world
begins crumbling around them. He tries fruitlessly to make it to the ship until
the door closes and it leaves Earth’s atmosphere, rocketing itself to Zyra,
where the passengers make a smooth landing and are greeted with the prospect of
a new life.
Both
of these films are the brainchild of György Pál Marczincsak, better known as
George Pal, who is also known to American audiences for his earlier colorful Puppetoons
films, and the charming 1950 Jimmy Durante-Terry Moore outing The Great
Rupert (1950). He would go on to direct Russ Tamblyn in both Tom Thumb
(1958) and The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm (1962), the latter
in Cinemarama.
The
War of the Worlds was
released on standard Blu-ray in 2020 on the Criterion Collection which had features different from the one provided here.
Likewise, When Worlds Collide was released in a now out-of-print special
edition from Imprint that included a handful of extras, although the sole extra
on this Blu-ray is the film’s trailer.
Recommended
for died-hard Pal fans!
Click here to order the limited edition release from Amazon