THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) 4K UHD + WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951) Blu-ray / Review
A George Pal Double Feature
Two of renowned producer George Pal’s Technicolor science fiction spectaculars came to 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Paramount in November. The War of the Worlds (1953) is his classic production of the H.G. Wells novel transposed to ‘Atomic Age’ Fifties America, and given a welcome 4K UHD upgrade. Almost as an afterthought, it has been packaged with a Blu-ray of Pal’s earlier, somewhat lesser regarded, disaster yarn When Worlds Collide (1951). However, the upshot is that beyond the stateside Criterion and Australian Imprint Blu-ray releases, neither film has received such high-definition upgrades here in the UK until now.
With When Worlds Collide basically deemed a bonus feature, the focus here is on Pal’s The War of the Worlds, with the film deservedly winning an Oscar for visual effects and nominations for Everett Douglas (film editing) and the Paramount Studio Sound Department and Loren L. Ryder (sound recording). However, Pal’s work on When Worlds Collide is of some relevance to the development of The War of the Worlds at Paramount studios.
“… killing my neighbours in painful and eccentric ways”
The War of the Worlds has had, and continues to have, a huge influence on popular culture, with its depiction of a Martian invasion sparking a multitude of adaptations — radio dramas, several films and television shows, comics, games, musicals and immersive experiences. These often reinterpret, in contemporary settings, Wells’ reflections of his own Victorian times and experiences and the book’s engagement with global colonial power, scientific advancement, human evolutionary theory, race and religion. Hence, in Pal’s 1953 film version the story shifts to California and emerges during a science fiction film boom when many films were using the genre to comment on the science of the ‘Atom Age’ and the fear of communist infiltration.
Wells first serialised The War of the Worlds in 1897 and prior to its publication he wrote to former fellow student Elizabeth Healey in the Spring of 1896: “I’m doing the dearest little serial for Pearson’s new magazine, in which I completely wreck and sack Woking — killing my neighbours in painful and eccentric ways — then proceed via Kingston and Richmond to London, which I sack, selecting South Kensington for feats of peculiar atrocity.” This celebrated scientific romance, published as a novel in 1898 and one of the first narratives about extra-terrestrial invasion, captured the anxieties of the fin de siècle in Victorian England. It was a realistic depiction of complacent suburbia under attack from foreign forces where, as acclaimed author and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair indicates, Martian War Machines march across “railway towns surrounded by golf links, tame heathland” that were “synonyms for everything that is safe and benign and slightly boring. The heartland. The ancient dream of Englishness.” It was a metaphor for reverse colonisation, too. The Martians, technologically superior, undertake a rout of humanity, reflecting the British Empire’s own project to dominate and rule the subcontinents of India and Africa through science, law and Christian beliefs.
It is a first-person narrative, a reportage from a journalist that tracks the arrival of the Martians and their devastating progress in destroying all that the Victorians deem civilised. The irony is that the Martians also dismantle the newly developed forms of communications that have been overlaid on this green and pleasant land, with Sinclair acknowledging that “The War of the Worlds happens in the world of fast news, telegrams, electricity.” Wells’ journalist goes on the road, crossing the blasted heaths and city streets left behind by the Martians as a parasitic red weed, fauna from their home planet, starts to choke the apocalyptic remains of suburbia. Similarly, Pal’s 1953 version would adopt a reportage aesthetic, complete with doom laden headlines, voice overs and newsreel footage.
“… planet against planet, deeds of courage and terror beyond the wildest imagination”
Paramount’s first involvement with Wells’ book began in 1925, when it purchased the film rights on behalf of legendary silent film director Cecil B. DeMille, entertaining it as a follow-up to his phenomenally spectacular The Ten Commandments (1923). According to The Times, a German technical expert was busy devising extraordinary visual effects for the film that would “make Wells’ Martians walk and spray death around the world.” A Paramount release book of 1926 describes the proposed two-strip Technicolor silent epic thus: “Mighty dramatic spectacle that depicts the clash of planet against planet, deeds of courage and terror beyond the wildest imagination and photographic effects that will astound audiences. With a golden romance of youth and love by one of the great masters of literature.” DeMille left the project when, seemingly, the script hadn’t turned out to his liking. Wells remained “intensely interested in filmmaking” and he journeyed to Hollywood in 1935, after working on the British production of Things to Come (1936). He was introduced to DeMille at his Tujunga Canyon ranch. While DeMille had, by then, lost interest in making The War of the Worlds, the director would continue to be consulted on attempts to revive the project.
In 1930 a film of The War of the Worlds was one prospect offered to Russian director Sergei Eisenstein through his association with British socialist filmmaker Ivor Montagu. Montagu, having befriended the Russian director, was aware of his ambition to make films in Hollywood and would eventually cultivate the right connections. With H.G. Wells’ son Frank, Montagu had set up their small production company Angle Pictures through the backing of an American investor. This was on condition that H.G. Wells would write original stories for a projected series of three slapstick comedy short films — The Tonic, Daydreams, and Bluebottles (all 1928). Wells, keen for his son to forge a career in the film business, only agreed to this if the films starred Elsa Lanchester (prior to her iconic take on the ‘bride’ of Frankenstein for director James Whale). Her husband Charles Laughton also joined this company specifically established to make these films.
Financed by his uncle to find work in Hollywood, Montagu also attempted to realise Eisenstein’s own dream. Well acquainted with both Wells and playwright George Bernard Shaw, he was encouraged when both authors offered options on their work to Eisenstein, including Wells’ The War of the Worlds, along with letters of introduction. However, Eisenstein and Montagu discovered they had no claim to Wells’ book, the rights having already been sold to Paramount. Keen to work with Eisenstein, the studio thus lured him from Paris with a film contract. The War of the Worlds was one of several scripts presented to him by producer Jesse Lasky but, four months into pre-production on the film, the Russian director seemingly lost interest and instead plunged into the making of ¡Que viva México!, his unfinished film about Mexican culture and politics.
The War of the Worlds, as a film project, was briefly revived in 1932 at the behest of assistant director Robert Fellows, who consulted his former colleague DeMille when Ivor Montagu and Frank Wells proposed the film to him at Paramount. It again fizzled out, primarily because Fellows was offered the role of unit manager and became a producer at rival studio Warner Bros. Wells himself was approached by Alfred Hitchcock about the rights to make the film, as they dined on the luxury express Le Train Bleu during Wells’ trip to Nice in 1930. Despite Hitchcock’s assurances, he was unable “to convince the elderly writer that the story could be modernised.”
The first-person, eyewitness reportage of Wells’ book would become the inspiration for Orson Welles’ celebrated 1938 Mercury Theatre CBS radio adaptation, simulating the Martian invasion as a live news broadcast. It supposedly instilled public panic and hysteria but, ironically, the impact of Welles’ fake news was itself an effect of media exaggeration. While one of his listeners included Byron Haskin, who would direct Pal’s film version of 1953, Welles was also briefly pressured by Paramount to make The War of the Worlds as his next film but he was already committed to Citizen Kane (1941) at RKO.
“once you bring it into the present you run into the problem of the atomic bomb and other modern weapons, which had started to become cliche”
While The War Of The Worlds went into suspended animation at Paramount, animation of another kind was providing the impetus for two exceptional creatives: Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013), born in California, and Hungarian George Pal (György Pál Marczincsak, 1908–1980). Harryhausen, a fledgling stop-motion animator working in his parents’ garage, was greatly inspired by Willis O’Brien’s groundbreaking stop-motion work on King Kong (1933). O’Brien eventually met and became a mentor to the 18 year-old Harryhausen, encouraging him to study graphic arts, sculpture, editing and photography at Los Angeles City College and, later, University of Southern California.
One of Harryhausen’s first professional jobs was working on several of George Pal’s Puppetoons, a series of films made with a crude stop-motion technique, known as replacement animation, using carved wooden puppets. Pal had studied architecture before becoming a set designer at the UFA studio in Berlin. He first began making animated shorts and advertisements in Europe until the Nazi party rose to power in 1933. While on a lecture tour at Columbia University, he was approached by Paramount Pictures and, after emigrating to the US, made the Puppetoons for the studio between 1940 and 1947. They garnered him several Oscar nominations and an honorary Oscar in 1943.
Pal then shifted to making live-action films. In a two-picture deal with Eagle-Lion, he produced the Jimmy Durante comedy The Great Rupert (1949), featuring an animated, dancing squirrel and, as a greater indication of his intentions, Destination Moon (1950). A science fiction film that appeared at the start of the Fifties boom, Destination Moon strove for accuracy in its Technicolor speculation about a manned mission to the moon, complete with spacewalks, lunar orbit and landing. The screenplay had significant input from noted author Robert Heinlein, a number of scientists and engineers, and used a series of matte paintings by astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell. Pal established himself as a pioneer in the science fiction genre, particularly lauded for his work with special effects.
Harryhausen had himself entertained the idea of making The War Of The Worlds after the award-winning success of Mighty Joe Young (1949), on which he had worked with O’Brien as assistant animator. Wanting to stay true to Wells’ book and its “huge walking machines and the cylinder that opened to reveal the octopus-like creature”, he attempted to interest producers in the project by producing a series of concept drawings, continuity sketches and colour 16mm animation test footage depicting one of the Martians emerging from a cylinder. Harryhausen kept “it in the Victorian period, because once you bring it into the present you run into the problem of the atomic bomb and other modern weapons, which had started to become cliche.” He touted the project to several studios and to his former employer George Pal but to no avail, accepting that the studios deemed the cost of mounting a period film was prohibitively expensive.
The paths of George Pal and DeMille first crossed when Pal opted to make When Worlds Collide in 1951. Paramount had picked up the rights to Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer’s 1933 science fiction novel and its 1934 sequel After Worlds Collide, first published as a monthly serial, when DeMille was planning a disaster epic,The End of the World, partly based on their novels. The End of the World was, ironically, stopped in its tracks — despite a number of memos and proposals suggesting there was material for making two films, back-to-back — when the similarly apocalyptic RKO production The Deluge (1933) got to theatres first. DeMille sold the rights to Wylie and Balmer’s novels to Pal, who set to work developing a script in collaboration with Jack Moffit.
It tells the story of Earth’s collision with the rogue star Bellus, and the preparations to construct a space ark for a selected, elite few to escape the disaster and settle on a new world, Zyra. Directed by Rudolph Maté, it was a popular success and added momentum to the genre’s boom. Climaxing with elaborate visual effects, Tim Baar’s miniature work in the film included six-foot high models of New York to depict the tidal-wave destruction of eight blocks of the city centre, erupting volcanoes, quaking oil fields and the space ark’s launch track. The space ark miniature also incorporated live action using mattes. Gordon Jennings and his effects team at Paramount took home an Oscar for their efforts and fueled what was a growing cultural fascination for destruction in an age of nuclear anxiety.
While the extensive visual effects of When Worlds Collide were being completed, Pal dug through the various treatments and scripts for The War of the Worlds languishing in Paramount’s archives. He commissioned a new script from British novelist, playwright and screenwriter Barré Lyndon, who had just co-scripted Cecil B. DeMille’s circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) for the studio. Lyndon was best known for scripting the noir films Hangover Square (1943) and The House on 92nd Street (1945), and for his play The Man in Half Moon Street which was eventually filmed twice, in 1948 and 1959. He was also a collector of Wells memorabilia and knew the material well.
“a piece of crap”
Pal, Lyndon and the director Byron Haskin, mindful of the cost of making it a period picture, opted for a contemporary version of the story, set in present-day California, with Pal feeling that “with all the talk about flying saucers, it had become especially timely.” The script also set out to reflect scientific terminology and military hardware and the three of them wanted a realism where “we could make the audience feel they were actually witnessing an attack” and, despite the studio’s demands, they were determined not to “show the point-of-view of the Martians.”
The film also tapped into the increasing interest in space travel and the Cold War paranoia about Communist infiltration and nuclear war. Haskin was a former visual effects director and he seemed an appropriate choice for such an effects-heavy film. Pal attempted to push the envelope in terms of the theatrical experience and wanted the film to incorporate a sequence in 3D (allegedly the moment when the military instruct those watching the atomic bomb drop on the Martians to wear their protective goggles) and a stereo soundtrack. Sadly, these elements were never fully realised but some theatres did play the film with a pseudo-stereo track. Ben Burtt, restoring the sound for this edition’s 2018 4K remaster, created a new 5.1 mix using the original sound elements to create a more immersive sound field.
Lyndon’s June 1951 treatment, superbly researched and analysed by Cinefantastique’s Steve Rubin, was structured with an opening narration to capture the spirit of Wells, which eventually became the film’s opening tour of the solar system, narrated by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and rendered by Chesley Bonestell’s astronomical paintings and visual effects from Gordon Jennings and his team. However, Lyndon’s original main character Greg Bradley was a macho pilot (similar to David Randall, the lead male character in When Worlds Collide) who first witnesses the arrival of the cylinder in California. Pal decided that a scientist should be the central character, to reflect what he saw as the wonder of science rather than aggressive militarism, and Lyndon came up with nuclear physicist Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry).
Bradley’s snooty, blonde female counterpart, named Sylvia Ashton, was transformed into small-town girl Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) at the behest of the studio. Pal had hoped to retain the married man searching for his missing wife approach of Wells’ original novel but studio exec Don Hartman pushed for a box office friendly “boy-girl interest”, as audience identification figures during the colossal battle between the Martians and Earth’s military forces. Wells had not shied away from depicting the death and destruction of the invasion in his novel and nor did Lyndon’s treatment but Pal apparently toned these aspects down in the script.
There are several sequences that were ultimately lost from Lyndon’s screenplay, one of which was an attempt at a contemporary remount of an iconic scene from Wells, where the steam-powered ironclad warship Thunderchild skirmishes with three Martian machines while protecting the evacuations on the Essex coast. Lyndon had Greg Bradley, in his plane, observe Navy destroyers fighting a Martian machine while attempting to destroy a beached cylinder. Wells’ scene of the curate and the narrator, desperately trapped in the ruins of a house and unable to move as the Martians, in their nest, construct their machines and devour their human captives, is translated to a degree into Pastor Matthew Collins’ (Lewis Martin) quest for peace with the Martians and, later, the farmhouse scene where Clayton and Sylvia encounter the Martians’ strange mechanical eye roving the ruins and come face-to-face with one of the invaders.
This brief glimpse of a Martian concludes in the original script with Greg Bradley shooting it and chopping off its arm with an axe. In the finished film Clayton has a scientific curiosity about the Martians and the Martian is rendered as less of a threat to them. Unfortunately, Lyndon’s script did not meet with the approval of exec Don Hartman. Although the film had already been announced by Paramount in May 1951, he and Pal “simply didn’t see eye to eye” about the project. Hartman thought the script was “a piece of crap” and, in front of Pal, threw it in the bin. It took studio president Y. Frank Freeman, after taking DeMille’s advice about how capable Pal was, to intercede in the resulting fracas between them and to get the film green lit. Hartman remained as a thorn in Pal’s side throughout production.
“flickering eyes, pulsating veins, and operational gills”
The depiction of the Martian war machines stayed true to Wells in Lyndon’s script and he describes them emerging from the cylinder in the Californian gully “on three legs. The glistening metal has a rare strange green blue tint. The spider thin legs are vivid red.” This changed when the agreed script was passed to special effects supervisor Gordon Jennings. He realised that it would be complicated and expensive to attempt to retain the tripod leg arrangement and, even though early production designs had shown the Martian machines walking over rubble-strewn terrain and crashing through buildings, Pal and Jennings agreed that doing this with miniatures or stop motion would “run into definite problems.”
Chesley Bonestell’s early concepts for the Martian machines and creatures featured a suggestion of the ‘cobra head’ design attached to the machine’s body, one without the three legs of the novel, and a more anthropomorphic-looking Martian. One painting depicts “two vane-like structures descending from the machine’s underbody.” Pal turned to art director and former architectural engineering graduate Al Nozaki to resolve these ideas.
Nozaki was the “only art director of Japanese descent to occupy a major art directing position in the American film industry during its Golden Age.” Although he had started as a draughtsman at Paramount in 1934, he spent the Second World War in an internment camp. Forbidden to work in California, he eventually found employment as an industrial designer in Chicago. Paramount rehired him after the War and, a keen science fiction reader, he found Pal’s imaginative projects to his taste. As Andrea Kalas notes on Criterion’s ‘From the Archive: 2018 Restoration’ documentary (not on this 4K set) his involvement with The War of the Worlds, and its themes of invasion, may have resonated with his own experiences in the Second World War as a Japanese civilian ‘othered’ by the country he had worked and lived in since the age of three.
Nozaki developed “something like the Manta Ray” with the cobra-like heat ray, first positioned like a tail at the rear of the machine and then moved front and centre. He also designed many elements of the film by storyboarding several sequences from the script. The vane-like supports were reformulated as “three discrete energy beams” that Pal and his team struggled to produce on film. Pal even hired the legendary Kenneth Strickfaden, supplier of all kinds of wonderful electrical gizmos for Universal’s horror films of the 1930s, to experiment with electrical discharges, fed down wires, to render the three repelling legs but this method was abandoned after safety concerns. There are some examples of how this looked in the film as the Martian machines first emerge from the gully, with the film’s hero noting it as some form of “magnetic flux.” The rest of the film suggests the impact of these legs with a progression of small, sparking ground fires.
The finished machines, their 42-inch span manufactured in copper and packed with electronics to move the cobra head, light up the heat ray and the green plasma disintegrators (known as a ‘skeleton-beam’ in the script), were suspended on a series of fifteen wires and run on tracks connected to generators in the studio’s rafters. They were guided through huge miniature California landscapes and recreations of Los Angeles city blocks, including a six-foot tall plaster model of City Hall spectacularly destroyed with layers of explosive charges filmed at high speed. The Martians’ protective force fields were created with glass jars rigged with dozens of explosive squibs photographed as a separate element and composited with the disintegrator pulses and the effect of the heat ray (an acetylene cutting torch blown by a fan) into the film. Craig Barron and Ben Burtt, ILM alumni who consulted on the 2018 restoration of the film, unearthed and recreated many of the film’s visual and sound elements in the Criterion edition’s ‘Movie Archaeologists’ documentary (sadly not on this set either), and demonstrated that Strickfaden’s experiments with electrical pulses were the source for the optically printed ‘skeleton-beam’ plasma bursts.
Another notable aspect of the film are the Oscar nominated sound effects for the Martians and their machines. A very experimental effects track, constructed over a period of three months by Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren, Walter Oberst, Don Johnson, Tommy Middleton and Howard Beal, utilised a number of techniques. The pulsating thrum of the Martian machines “was achieved with a tape recorder echo machine which feeds back output to input, producing a truly unusual tone of oscillated echoes.” Throw in electric guitar chords played backwards for the heat ray and the scrape of dry ice mixed with human screams for the Martian screech, after Clayton Forrester hurls his axe at it, and you have some very creative solutions.
Talking of Martians, director Byron Haskin planned an ambitious ‘Goblin Dance’ featuring several Martians and recalled: “I had originally intended to use many more of these creatures but Charlie Gemora (make up artist and sculptor tasked with creating the Martians) had tied up more than sufficient time and expense with his one Martian.” Nicknamed Louis Lump Lump, the only Martian ‘suit’ made was a “papier-mâché, wire, and sheet rubber stretched over a wooden frame” creation that Gemora installed with a Martian hand and arm that worked using ring pulls, “flickering eyes, pulsating veins, and operational gills.” The costume was still wet when he brought it onto the set and he had to kneel unsteadily inside it, his arms inside the Martian’s, on a dolly tugged across the set. Despite this brief appearance, the creature’s close encounter with Sylvia remains a classic shock moment of Fifties SF cinema.
“humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth”
The War of the Worlds is a rare Technicolor, big-budget example of the Fifties boom for science fiction, where many highly-regarded examples were made in black and white. Much of the $2 million cost can be seen on screen in the vivid global destruction unleashed by the gliding, implacable Martian machines. The invasion reflects the decade’s milieu of McCarthyism, Roswell and the escalating Cold War, overturning the apparent security of homespun, small town American life and its accepted codes regarding religion, identity, media and science. The Martians are the paranoia and fear churning away in a post-Hiroshima America, unleashing an atomic war from outer space, as evidenced by the ashes remaining of the first three men who approach the invaders in the gully. It is an attack that forces the film’s characters to question their faith in technology, democracy, and, ultimately, God.
Pal’s film takes us from home invasion, which upsets the suburban setting’s status quo of daily life, to a global catastrophe that questions our reliance on the powers and influence of the state and its institutions. The film also portrays the post-war re-affirmation of men’s roles as breadwinner, protector and moral compass and women’s return to their former passive, emotional and subservient state, having enjoyed a brief independence during the Second World War. There is a yearning for security throughout the film as the military, scientific and religious leaders prove ineffective during the onslaught.
Sylvia, for example, evokes this in her memory of when, as a lost child, she found security and protection in a church while hoping for someone to find and rescue her. This need is threaded throughout the film, particularly when Clayton is reunited with her as she shelters in a church in the film’s seemingly apocalyptic conclusion. Figures such as Pastor Collins and Major General Mann (Les Tremayne playing an appropriately named character) are representative of the way certain male roles were being reinforced by Fifties America, as emblems of that post-war retrenchment. Sylvia, even in the midst of chaos and destruction, merely hands out coffee and pastries before the Martian blitzkrieg and, in its aftermath, fries eggs in an abandoned farmhouse after she and Clayton find shelter there. It is a temporary return to suburban/rural calm, a fleeting breakfast before Martians come crawling through the farmhouse window.
Wells also originally set up a contrast between his worldly, modernist, Darwinist writer and the religious mania of the curate in his novel, to suggest our faith in God was misplaced and that through a secular, rationalist way of life humanity might survive such an invasion. Pal’s film has a scientist as its hero rather than a knowledgeable writer and portrays him as more of a realist than Pastor Collins, who naïvely wanders out into the gully to try and communicate with the Martians because, from his faith’s perspective and by dint of their advanced War Machines, they are “nearer to the Creator.” In the end, neither religious nor scientific dogma saves the day. Pal’s armies throw atomic bombs at the Martians to no avail and survivors pray in ruined churches, oblivious to the answer already suggested by Forrester upon his return from the farmhouse with a sample of Martian blood. Not only does this hint at the film’s conclusion that disease on Earth might affect the Martians but it also avoids the very gruesome aspects of the Martians’ need for sustenance in Wells’ novel, where they transfuse into themselves their victims’ blood and, therefore, expose themselves to the harmful bacteria that eventually kills them.
Technology and science are rendered redundant and prayers are misinterpreted, because, as Barry Forshaw concludes, it is the natural world that kills the Martians, an effect of that “unspoken unity between the human beings that scrabble across the surface of the earth and every form of life (even down to the most infinitesimal microbes) which might possess a semi-relationship to the planet.” While Cedric Hardwicke paraphrases Wells’ novel in his concluding voice over, intoning “humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth”, it acts more as a restatement of the religious tones in Pal’s film rather than a re-reading of Wells, where “nature and biology have irrupted into what we assumed was our impregnable domain, forcing us to recognize the tension between our biological and cultural selves.” Here in 2022, this reflects how Covid has “shaken our assumptions” about our own immunity.
Sources: Barson, Michael, Encyclopedia Britannica: George Pal, (published March 2013) • Beck, Peter J., The War of the Worlds: From H. G. Wells to Orson Welles, Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond, (Bloomsbury, 2016) • Birchard, Robert S., Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, (University of Kentucky, 2004) • Criterion The War of the Worlds Blu-ray edition (2020) • Di Fate, Vincent, ‘Life Stirs on the Blood-Red Globe: The War of the Worlds’ on Tor.com (published 30 October 2011) • Edwards, Phil, ‘Science Fiction Classics: War of the Worlds’, in Starburst, Volume 1, Number 4, (Marvel, November 1978) • Eldridge, Alison, Encyclopedia Britannica: Ray Harryhausen, (published May 2011) • Flynn, John L., War of the Worlds: From Wells to Spielberg, (Galactic Books, 2005) • Forshaw, Barry, BFI Film Classics: The War of the Worlds, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) • Hankin, Mike, Ray Harryhausen — Master of the Majicks Vol. 2: The American Films, Volume 2, (Archive Editions, 2008) • Jay, Mike, ‘The Virus and the Martians’, in Epidemic: Lapham’s Quarterly (Volume XIII, №3, Summer 2020) • Johnson, John, Cheap Tricks and Class Acts: Special Effects, Makeup, and Stunts from the Films of the Fantastic Fifties, (McFarland, 1996) • Maronie, Samuel J., ‘George Pal 1908–1980: From”Puppetoons” to “The Power”, in Starlog, Number 38, (O’Quinn Studios, September 1980) • Rogers, Tom, ‘The War of the Worlds’, in Starlog, Number 2, (O’Quinn Studios, November 1976) • Rubin, Steve, ‘The War of the Worlds’, in Cinefantastique, Volume 5, Number 4, (Frederick S. Clarke, Spring 1977) • Sinclair, Ian, ‘An Introduction to The War of the Worlds’ on British Library, (published 15 May 2014) • Smith, David C., The Correspondence of H.G. Wells: Volumes 1–4, (Taylor & Francis, 2022) • Warren, Bill, Keep Watching the Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, The 21st Century Edition, (McFarland, 2017).
Note: All screen captures are from the Criterion Blu-ray edition of the film, which utilises the same 4K restoration.
About the presentations
The film was shot in the 35mm, three-strip Technicolor format film by cinematographer George Barnes and presented in 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Paramount undertook a 4K scan of the three-strip Technicolor negative in 2018 and a restoration and re-grading. This included some significant work re-registering the three separate Technicolor passes to fix past errors and some digital grading to eliminate the appearance of the many wires holding up the Martian machines that became more evident in the raw footage of the 4K scan. This restoration also counters the poor quality Eastman prints that were in circulation for decades where the degraded quality of the image consequently supported the critical opinion that the visual effects were poorly done.
It’s a handsome, clean, and colourful restoration, certainly a huge improvement on older DVD editions and in 4K offers a slight upgrade on the Criterion and Imprint Blu-ray editions. It evidences deep contrast and pops of primary colours, particularly the vivid reds and greens that George Barnes exploited in his photography. Detail is good in most instances, particularly in clothes and faces, but be prepared to expect some softness to the image, perhaps inherent in the Technicolor format and via the use of optical printing and blue screen for many effects sequences. There have been some comments about the presentation of a blue-looking planet Mars in the opening prologue (Criterion re-graded the colour to properly depict the red planet of Bonestell’s paintings on their Blu-ray release). According to Paramount, the blue Mars was a choice made when matching its restoration to original IB Technicolor prints. It’s a minor blip that does not distract from what is, overall, a very satisfying presentation.
This 4K edition has an excellent 5.1 mix produced by sound effects wizard Ben Burtt and he expertly widens the original mono sound field and ramps up the low frequency end, especially for explosions and falling debris, while respecting the ingenuity and integrity of the original signature sound design. Unfortunately, there’s no option to hear the restored English mono soundtrack on the 4K. An omission by Paramount that might put you off double-dipping if you already own either the Criterion or Imprint editions.
Special Features
Apart from the bonus Blu-ray of When Worlds Collide, it’s disappointing that Paramount chose to replicate the archive features first released on the 2005 DVD version and that have been included on many editions since. It would have been appreciated if the Criterion or the Imprint features had also been presented here.
- When Worlds Collide (1951): Pal’s storytelling template for The War of the Worlds is established in this Technicolor classic, with its boy-meets-girl relationship as the emotional centre of a story about humanity’s last days on Earth. A dry opening, with scientists bickering about an impending collision with the star Bellus, eventually builds into an effective disaster film and race against time to evacuate the chosen few in a space ark, with spectacular miniature effects and matte shots amid the personal conflicts. The authenticity of the colour in Paramount’s own restoration has been contested in some quarters. The HD presentation is very welcome but the restored 1.33 aspect ratio’s picture grade has a dominant shift to brown, presumably intended to reflect the original Technicolor prints. While it may not be to everyone’s taste, it remains a very enjoyable viewing experience and offers beautifully detailed textures, good contrast and pops of primary colours.
- When Worlds Collide original trailer
- Commentary: Actors Ann Robinson (still with us at the age of 93) and Gene Barry (1919–2009). 2005's gentle chat between the two stars is a treat. Robinson gamely takes on the main job of providing bits of trivia and relating her personal experiences of making the film. She begins by referring to the newsreel opening to the film as an indication of the film’s reflection of the Cold War, then the influence of Cecil B. DeMille on the film, and working with director Byron Haskin. She recollects how she came to be cast and screen testing with Barry, seeing the effects being filmed, and working with Gemora on the encounter with the Martian. Barry sporadically interjects, asks questions and provides some of his own background as an actor and experiences on the film.
- Commentary: Director Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns, and Bill Warren, author of Keep Watching the Skies!. This 2005 commentary, originally appearing on the DVD release, is also on the Criterion and Imprint Blu-ray editions. They cover much ground, the history of the project at Paramount, Pal’s production and its fidelity to Wells, the performances and cast, how the award-winning visual effects were achieved, the use of Bonestell’s artwork, and director Byron Haskin’s commitment to the film. The good-humoured chat is packed with trivia and well worth a listen.
- The Sky Is Falling: Making The War of the Worlds: A 2005 making-of style documentary that covers the history of The War of the Worlds as an ongoing project at Paramount, related through many anecdotes from the cast, including actors Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Robert Cornthwaite, production personnel and industry figures such as Ray Harryhausen. It includes Harryhausen’s test footage of a Martian emerging from its cylinder. It’s gratifying to see art director Al Nozaki and Martian-maker Charles Gemora given the spotlight here, too.
- H.G. Wells: The Father of Science Fiction: Nicholas Meyer, John Partington, and Forrest Ackerman briefly profile the celebrated writer.
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air Presents The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast: If you’ve not experienced it, the 1938 Orson Welles radio version is available in its crackling glory and provides an interesting comparison to Pal’s version in its use of the contemporary setting and reportage.
- Original Theatrical Trailer: ‘Human beings cower before the onslaught of these unearthly enemies!’
- The 4K collector’s edition includes The War of the Worlds (1953) 4K UHD, When Worlds Collide (1951) Blu-ray, 8 photo cards, 5 art cards and 2 magnets.
The War of The Worlds and When Worlds Collide — A George Pal Double Feature
Paramount Pictures
The War of the Worlds (1953): 1.37:1 / English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (French and German Dolby Digital Mono) / 2160p HEVC / H.265 Dolby Vision HDR / HDR10 / Subtitles: English, English (SDH), German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch.
When Worlds Collide (1951): 1.33:1 / English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (French, German and Spanish Dolby Digital Mono) / 1080p / MPEG-4 AVC Video / Subtitles: English, English (SDH), German, Spanish, French, Japanese.
Paramount Home Entertainment / 4K UHD + BD (Region A, B & C) edition released 7 November 2022 / Catalogue 5320387 / Cert: PG
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