Too bad about the wooden cast, the tackily conventional romance, and a draggy religious message; but at least, given the time it was made, it isn't imbued with Cold War hysteria.
Comment
01/26/06
The War of the Worlds (1953)
85 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 22
Rotten:4
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Consensus: Though it's dated in spots, The War of the Worlds retains an unnerving power, updating H.G. Wells' classic sci-fi tale to the Cold War era and featuring some of the best special effects of any 1950s film.
Runtime: 88 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Synopsis: H. G. Wells' sci-fi classic about the invasion of Planet Earth by aggressive creatures from Mars. Arriving in green-glowing spaceships shaped like metallic stingrays, the Martians blast their atomizing death beams through most of the... [More]
Starring: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen
Director: Byron Haskin
Reviews for The War of the Worlds
Top Critic
As the perfect crystallization of 50s ideology the film would be fascinating enough, but the special effects in this 1953 George Pal production also achieve a kind of dark, burnished apocalyptic beauty.
06/08/07
Though it's bogged down by a stiff cast, a yawn-inspiring conventional romance, and a sappy religiosity, it remains a landmark in the history of special effects.
06/08/07
Top Critic War of the Worlds is a socko science-fiction feature, as fearsome as a film as was the Orson Welles 1938 radio interpretation of the H.G. Wells novel.
06/08/07
Top Critic
Top Critic For a movie that already succeeded in scaring the Grape Nehi out of every ten-year-old in the audience, how disquieting it must have been for the Cold War-agitated grownups to witness U.S. might, tanks and A-bombs alike, brushed away helpless...
04/05/06
A half-century after its creation, the film's best moments are still so enjoyably unnerving that they easily carry a viewer through the necessary but inevitably dated exposition.
12/06/05
Top Critic
This is vintage Cold War-era sci-fi, and one of the best films in the genre.
01/25/05
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July 03, 2006:
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