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The War of the Worlds (1953) Full Length Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-24 01:21:28
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Another awesome classic sci fi! I really enjoyed this one, many goosebumps were had. It's very bleak and so much destruction! It helped that I couldn't remember the exact thing that brought down the aliens in the remake and also it's SO different, not even really comparable at all. Which one is closer to the book?

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Movie Runtime: 1:25:25

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Wa O T Wo 1953 Full Length Reaction

Download options: https://www.patreon.com/posts/update-on-full-99864012 Main Channel https://www.youtube.com/@jenmurrayxo

Comments

Bammer

I would be very much interested in your take on the sequel "The War of the Worlds" T.V. series from 1988, or at least the pilot episode "The Resurrection". Gene Barry (Dr. Forrester) and Ann Robinson (Sylvia) both made a cameo appearance in the Tom Cruise version. They were the grandparents at the very end of the film.

Geoff S.

Not sure which one is closer to the book but I believe the book has some big differences to either movie. It was written in the Victorian era and I think it has a more steampunk type of style I would guess. Someone else could say more.

Rob Nichols

The gist of the story is the same but set in modern (1953) times. The original was set in Victorian England and the Martian machines were walking tripods. George Pal updated the machines to hovering vehicles and gave them an awesome design. The filming models were about four feet wide and made from copper sheets. Most scenes had the landscape built as a miniature set with the machines suspended on wires, though there were some bluescreen composites as well. The evil Dr. Clayton Forrester in Mystery Science Theater 3000 was named for Gene Barry's character in this film. Stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen attempted to make his own version of WotW but only managed to make this test scene https://youtu.be/XbDwsrMVags?si=7nkThSz7v_-gh5B2

Celeste McAllister🍓

In H.G.Wells novel there's just one leading male character,humanity was nearly wiped out....Sylvia was 19 years old,Dr. Forrester was 31 not the first time a student gets smitten with a professor 🙄 BTW:You look great Jenny.🍧🍩🧁🍼

Geoff S.

Every time I drive in downtown LA and see the city hall building I think of this movie.

djKENTO

There is no good version of this that’s close to the book. The Book takes place in 1890s, when it was written. The movies tend to be adapted more from the 1930s radio show that Orson Welles did. There is a GREAT live reading of the radio version with TONS of Star Trek cast members including Leonard Nimoy, Brent Spiner, John de Lancie and Gates McFadden as a gender swapped lead. https://youtu.be/aSzHqqmjlcw?si=RGPbgpimncOqnbOC ENJOY!

Cinedazed

Between the two, the second half of Spielberg's version - where Cruise is trapped in a basement with Tim Robbins - is actually the most faithful adaptation of at least a chunk of the Wells novel. There's also a very low budget 2005 version directed by Timothy Hines that is apparently a very faithful, highly literal adaptation that I've never seen but I've heard cited as a prime example of why attempting a line-for-line adaptation of a novel for movies is actually a very bad idea, as apparently it's excoriatingly boring. I'm enough of a H.G. Wells fan (or at least was at age 11 when I ploughed through a bunch of Wells novels) that I've long been curious about it. I think this is overall the better of the two high profile versions of the story, though the Spielberg movie has some stretches that are superior to this adaptation - too bad it falls apart so badly at the end.

Alexis Vorian

Jen, maternity is doing its magic, you're looking radiant! <3

thansen

Great reaction to what I consider one of the best SF of the 50s, which can boast several genuine SF classics. I would put Forbidden Planet at the summit with this one and a few others like The Thing From Another World, Them!, The Fly, The Incredible Shrinking Man, When Worlds Collide, Invasion of the Body Snatchers not too far behind. I would love to see more movie reactions from the 30s to the 60s.

Matt

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1954 🙏🙏🙏

Geoff S.

I could not keep that movie download in sync with your video. Don't know if it was a frame rate issue or an editing thing. It was over a minute's difference between them. So, a comet is basically a rock covered in ice that when it gets pulled close enough to a star starts to melt and release the ice into a gas which is what the tail is. The first thing you see in the opening credits of DS9 is a comet. An asteroid is basically just a huge rock or planet like object floating around out there and a meteor is a rock or dust that enters the earth's atmosphere.

Major Peril

WAY TO GO BUCK! Slamming it with a shovel is always the first thing you’d want to do! 🤣 Jen, I have to say I am loving your enjoyment of these classic ’50s science fiction movies! Your willingness to view these ‘50s and ‘60s classics for us to enjoy is exemplary. You don’t see these very often on reactor channels. Keep it up, please! If you want to get more of your '50s classic sci-fi thang on, try some of these: * Them! (1954) * 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) * Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) * The Thing from Another World (1951) * 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) * Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) * Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) * This Island Earth (1955) * When Worlds Collide (1951) * The Blob (1958)

Kevin Sommerfield

Feeling iconoclastic here - the end states that God created microorganisms to protect Earth from Martians. But wouldn't God have created Mars and the Martians too? Guess he didn't care as much about them.

Jen Murray

Try adjusting playback speed on my reaction or the movie

Geoff S.

I got through it with a few stops and starts but it was so enjoyable regardless!

Thadman

"The Time Machine" was my favorite classic sci-fi movie. This one was number 2. My third one is the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I watched this every time it was on TV as a kid.

Mastervodo

This definitely needs to be on the old-timey movies list next for Jen!

Julian San

Anyone watch the War of the Worlds tv show in the late 80s? It scared the ever loving crap outta me as a kid 😂 It was a direct sequel to the 1953 movie, set in the 80s where the martians have woken up from hibernation after their defeat as seen in the movie. What freaked me out was that the aliens would take over the bodies of people and when they were done would leave just a mass of goo behind.

Rob Nichols

The Martian ships in that one were made from the models from WotW, with the head removed.

Rob Nichols

My copy synced perfectly. When they don't it's usually because mine has a longer or shorter distributer bumper at the beginning. Sync the parts where the movie actually starts and 9 times out of 10 it'll be fine.

Mastervodo

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) is my recommend for the next one! Everyone upvote it on her upvote movie page!

Over50Gamer

I think I remember that one! They started it with a bunch of realistic news broadcasts. The only thing that broke me out of the illusion was seeing John DeLancie as one of the news anchors, as I recognized him from ST:TNG!

Rob Nichols

That was a low budget syndicated show that bit off more than it could chew. We see one war machine for a few seconds in the pilot then never again. The Martians take human form so they didn't have to do creature effects. It felt too much like The Invaders from the 60's. But I did like their explanation that the Martians weren't really from Mars, they just used Mars as a staging area to launch their attack.

Major Peril

Not to change the subject but...I loved The Invaders (a Quinn Martin Production in COLOR) when I was a kid. So much so that I recently bought The Invaders: The Complete Series on Blu-ray just to re-capture that experience. Needless to say, re-watching the whole series again left me disappointed. 🙁

Geoff S.

Journey to the Center of the Earth!

Julian San

You might be thinking of Without Warning (1994) which was a fake War of the Worlds type news broadcast of an asteroid heading towards Earth. John de Lancie played like a news correspondent or something. That freaked me out, too 😂

Greg In East TN

One Halloween (I think it was) Orson Wells read the story on the radio (this was before TV) and people thought it was real. The northeast was in a panic. At the theater, before it crashed (a meteor is a rock, a comet is a hunk of ice, by the way), the guy with the brown hat was Mr. Kimball on Green Acres (a sitcom on during the 60s) The General (Les Tremayne) was a busy character actor during the 50s and 60s. He was on Perry Mason a lot. And he was also the voice of Dr. Benton Quest for a while on Jonny Quest (an adventure cartoon in the 60s). Why oh why do people do stupid things in movies? Good grief! Ironic how we always pictured Martians as green, and they see us as green! There really was a flying wing plane, several versions even. But it had stability problems and never was entered into service. However, our latest stealth fighters and bombers are based on it's design. LA would be much easier to evacuate than NYC. I guess it just depends on where you are. I watched this movie as a kid back in the 60s. It really scared me. I remember the evacuation scenes made me cry. I couldn't grasp all of it. The empty streets as Forrester was leaving remind me of Steven King's The Stand. That's a great mini-series you should see (if you haven't already) There's a thin line between society and anarchy. I noticed that during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. They did their best, but you could tell they used a lot of models, like model trees and model plane that crashed, and other parts. Gene Berry did a good job in this movie. It's old now and people don't watch it much, but it's still a great move to remember. Oh, I can watch it now without being scared. :) Thanks for doing these old movies. If I had to pick ONE old sci-fi movie for you, it would be The Blob with a young young Steve McQueen. It's a great old movie, and what's funny about it is that it has a happy theme song, which the movie is so not. I can't wait for Maverick! It's a great movie. I think you'll like it (of course you've seen it by now).

Java Man

This may have been the first use of "shields" in sci-fi. The sound effect used for the green Martian weapon was used for the sound of photon torpedoes in Star Trek TOS. They made the sound by hitting a high-tension steel cable with a sledgehammer. The novel by H. G. Wells is very different from both this movie and the 2005 remake. It all takes place in England. The machines are similar to the tripods in the remake. They have heat rays, but they also fire poison gas canisters. I haven't read the novel in decades, but I assume it also ends with the world being saved by microorganisms. If you think about it, any planet capable of supporting life will have a biome of microorganisms. Anywhere we go in the galaxy besides Earth, WE are the aliens, and the planet's microorganisms will attack us. Every other space-faring species would have the same problem as the Martians did on Earth.

Java Man

Les Tremayne also did the opening narration for Forbidden Planet.

Java Man

See my comment above. Any planet that supports life has microorganisms, even if there is no more complex life. They will eat whatever they can. Native life has defenses (immunity). Alien life does not. If Mars has microorganisms and humans go there, WE are the aliens and could be killed by them. If we're really going to send people to colonize Mars, it's something we'll have to take seriously, even if microbial life there is rare.

Kristin

Husband and I are really enjoyong these old sci-fi movies with you. Our suggestions are: When Worlds Collide 27th Day This Island Earth

Java Man

"...the guy with the brown hat was Mr. Kimball on Green Acres (a sitcom on during the 60s)" Edgar Buchanan, who was in the cast of "Petticoat Junction" in the 1960s, was in the square dance scene. I first saw this movie on TV as an eight-year-old, and it scared the crap out of me. Then it became one of my favorites. A decade later, I was accepted into the real "Pacific Tech" as a physics student, as I wanted to be one of those scientists I admired from the early to mid-20th century. "The Blob" is another good one from this era, but I would suggest "When Worlds Collide" first since it's more in tune with the space theme and the movie technology of the time. I'm glad that Jen can appreciate these movies as a product of their time and not criticize the special effects as being primitive compared to what we can do 72 years later. There are a couple of "Making of" and "Behind the Scenes" videos about this movie on YouTube.

hfs jfc

The goggles. They do nothing. Great callback to Rainier Wolfcastle's Radioactive Man. Up and Adum!

John DiGiantomasso

Adtronomy lesdon time! A comet, massively huge with a diameter measured in kilometers, orbits the Sun in long eliptical orbits. Made of rock and ice, the surface ablates away and gets illuminated by the Sun forming the tail. They don't come close to the Earth (so far) and we see them approach, loop around the Sun, and go back out over a span of weeks. Haley's Comet, a famous example, repeats every 76 years. An instant streak of light in the sky - a "shooting star" - is a small rock that enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up due to rock/atmosphere friction at high speed. The size here is usually measured in inches. The streak of light in the sky is called a "meteor" and they burn up and never make landfall. If they are BIG - measured feet/meters, they don't entirely burn up. When what remains hits the surface then they are called "meteorites." The actual rock itself (whether it burns up or strikes) is called a meteoroid. Asteroids orbit the Sun - "Aster" meaning "star" they are effectively "star orbit rocks. Most are found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Meteoroids encounter Earth's atmosphere, and are effectively "atmosphere burn-up rocks.")

Guybrush Threepwood

I first saw this when I was a kid and it blew me away, became a favourite sunday afternoon type movie!

No name

If you want you should listen and react to the Mercury Theater radio show version. Because the show was formatted as a series of news broadcasts a lot of people thought it was real and listening to it shows you why. ‘2X2L calling CQ… 2X2L calling CQ… is there anyone there? Is there anyone?”