George Pal's 1953 War of the Worlds

Found this classic movie on DVD at a market stall a couple of days ago, and couldn't resist adding it to my 50s sci fi collection.

Which I'd love to say is "Burgeoning" but really isn't.

I remember as a child I saw it for the first time as part of a wonderful regular weekly slot of sci fi films on BBC2, a halcyon time when I saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "It Came from Outer Space", "The Forbidden Planet" and many other classics for the first time. I loved watching every single one of those films, they thrilled me so much.

But somehow the War of the Worlds was a disappointment. It may have had an incorrect American setting, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was Jeff Wayne. Having been introduced to that classic album by my stepfather to be in about 1979, when I thought of Martians, I didn't think of Pal's cutesy ET creations with multicoloured eyes flying around in underripe bananas with a streetlamp stuck on.

I thought of terrifying, tentacled blood drainers destroying the best of Victorian England in their Mike Trim designed death machines, the fighting machines of legend. And the creations of Pal's movie just didn't measure up in the childish imagination.

But watching it again, it stands up well to the test of time, and certainly delivers a well placed Heat Ray blast to Spielberg's 2005 very silly effort with its hideous children, and Tim Robbins. Gene Barry with his glasses on makes a rather less obvious action hero than other movies of the time, and although the constant screaming of Ann Robinson is a bit of a cliche, and the religion and churches aspect a bit of a drag, the special effects aren't. The fighting machines, apparently based on manta rays, are a mile away from the usual flying saucers every movie of the time was chucking at the drive-in audiences, and the heat ray and "skeleton beam" weapons effects are far ahead of anything else that was in cinemas in the 50s.

The martians, although strangely cute, are more otherwordly than in other sci fi efforts of the period with exception of the single eyed horrors of "It Came from Outer Space", and I also like it because of the proto-geekery weight given to science, as opposed to military might.

If only the Priest had been played by Phil Lynott...

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 07.06.14