We watched the 1953 movie “War of the Worlds” last night. I can vaguely remember seeing the remake starting Tom Cruise years ago. I ran across a free pdf of H.G. Wells novel “The War of the worlds, published in 1898 and quickly read it today for the first time. Apparently, it was a pretty racy book not suitable for children as this quote shows:
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells quote in Book One, The Coming of the Martians, Chapter 14 In London pg. 129: “He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating.”
You won’t see anybody ejaculating in this movie.
Contrast this with Book Two, The Earth Under the Martians, Chapter 2: What We Saw From the Ruined House, pg 202: “In the next place, wonderful as it seems in the sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex…” Apparently, they reproduced by budding.
I was surprised to see one of the main characters in the movie, the scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) square dancing with the other star Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson). That’s when I knew this was going to be a real horror flick, because I remember being required to learn how to square dance in grade school. What a nightmare! Anyway, in the movie they were do-si-dosing and allemanding left all over the joint. Check out the video of the scene below:
It quickly got scarier when the Martians arrived. The space ships were modeled by imitating the shapes of cobras and manta rays, but the actual Martians who drove them reminded me of little E.T. The Extraterrestrial in the movie of the same name.
By the way, Orson Welles was not related to H.G. Wells but he did perform the radio show adaptation of it in 1938, which led to many stories reporting that the listeners peed their pants in widespread panic, but that didn’t really happen. Most people didn’t listen to the radio and preferred to play video games on their cell phones. H.G. Wells met with Orson after that and taught him how to spell his name right.
The attitude in the 1950s toward women actors was atrocious and Ann Robinson was required to have two or three episodes of hysterics and at least one near-fainting spell per scene with Gene Barry. However, her hair was never mussed and her makeup never smeared, even after she beat the crap out of a Martian who tried to square dance with her.
The Martians were really out of shape and flabby so they used their technology to make copies of Chuck Norris, who round-house kicked the entire military force into next week. Of course, the Pentagon was still trying to back-engineer UFOs that crashed in places like Roswell, New Mexico so they were naturally ill-equipped when it came to battling the Martians.
However, what the Martians didn’t know about earthlings was the strength of our immune systems. In fact, they didn’t know what immune systems were (which even some earthlings don’t understand). They were unaware of the power of snot, which some people are able to focus, aim, and fire with pinpoint accuracy.
On the other hand, according to a reliable scientific opinion from a well-documented, unimpeachable source (Men in Black movie 1997): “Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies.” On the other hand, we can do-si-do when properly motivated.
I think this movie is OK, outside of square-dancing special effects. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 