Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182918 in DVD
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Format: NTSC
• Original language: English
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
After the success of 1950's Destination Moon and 1951's When Worlds Collide, visionary producer George Pal brought the classic H.G. Wells story of a Martian invasion to the big screen, and it instantly became a science fiction classic and winner of the 1953 Academy Award for Best Special Effects. It's a work of frightening imagination, with its manta-ray spaceships armed with cobra-like probes that shoot a white-hot disintegration ray. As formations of alien ships continue to wreak destruction around the globe, the military is helpless to stop this enemy while scientists race to find an effective weapon. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson play the hero and heroine roles that were de rigueur for movies like this in the '50s, and their encounter with one of the Martians is as creepy today as it was in '53. It finally takes an unseen threat--simple Earth bacteria--to conquer the alien invaders, but not before War of the Worlds has provided a dazzling display of impressive special effects. As memorable for its sound effects as for its spectacular visions of destruction, this is a movie for the ages--the kind of spectacular that inspired little kids such as Steven Spielberg (not to mention Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, whose Independence Day cribs liberally from the plot) and still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Review for special edition: release 11/05
War of the Worlds has been on DVD before, but it's much better in this special edition, restored and presented, thankfully, in full frame, as it was shot. The print quality is just beautiful, and the movie looks as good as it's ever looked. Special features are also of a high standard: especially welcome are the commentaries by stars Ann Robinson and Gene Barry. Barry seems a little less in command than Robinson, but she graciously compensates, by eloquently describing her experiences, her affection for Barry and producer George Pal, and the film itself, with which she seems wonderfully familiar. Her insight is detailed, sometimes funny, exhaustive, and genuinely revealing--even down to the revelation of a cameo by Woody Woodpecker. Images are so crisp that the wires supporting the ships are sometimes sadly visible, but fans will be so caught up in the frightening story that this won't matter much at all. For those who love this film, I'd say get out there and pick this up: someone got it right, and went to the trouble to present this admired film in an edition that can really be called "special". What a pleasure to see old Technicolor the way it was meant to be seen! A great movie, and a great DVD.

DVD Does Justice to a SF Classic
Based on H.G. Wells' classic novel, George Pal's The War Of The Worlds is a classic in its own right. The movie transfers the story from England and the turn of the century to California and the 1950's. Some people see the paranoia of the '50s in the movie but the novel also had a strong theme of fear of things beyond our ken. Pal often included a religious theme in his movies and this film would have been better without it, but it does not detract from the movie enough to keep it from being a classic. The story is that of an invasion of Earth by coldly intelligent Martians. Told in clear, bold strokes with exceptional special effects (for the time) and fine performances by the two leads, Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, The War Of The Worlds should be in every collection of science fiction movies.

The DVD transfer is excellent. The picture is sharp and clear. The color is strong and rich, as Technicolor should be. Like most people, I had only seen this movie on television and it never looked as good as it does on DVD. The picture resolution is so good that you can easily see the wires supporting the Martian war machines. The sound does not measure up to the standard of the video. It is mono and there are cracks and pops on the sound track during the early part of the movie, though I didn't notice them as much in the later scenes (but that may simply be because I was caught up in the excitement of the story). The disk provides only a trailer as supplemental material (I don't consider scene selection to be a special feature, it should be standard on any DVD). The disk is formatted in TV standard but that is not significantly different from the movie's original ratio, since it was not shot in what we now call widescreen.

Although I would have liked to see more supplemental material, this is still a fine DVD of a nearly fifty year old movie that has not received the special treatment of movies like The Wizard Of Oz.

The Grandfather of all Science Fiction Movies in the USA
The War Of The Worlds DVD

The War Of The Worlds is based on the story by that name by the , Father of Science Fiction, H.G. Wells, at least in the english language. It's about an invasion of Earth by what is thought to be Martians with superhuman talents and weapons. This story was made famous by Orson Wells on his Halloween special on October 30, 1938 when he reenacted it on a CBS radio show as if it were true, using actual street names and place names to make it more realistic. People panicked grabbed their guns and hid their children. Gene Barry plays the protagonist in the movie with Ann Robinson as his "love interest" (got to have a pretty girl).

Highly recommended for fans of science Fiction, both books and movies, to see the roots of what is coming out even today See A Hymn Before Battle (Posleen War Series #1)John Ring's Posleen War series beginninig with
A Hymn Before Battle



Gunner March, 2008