WAR OF THE WORLDS

   1) US RADIO play (30 October 1938). Part of the Mercury Theatre on the Air series of plays, WOTW was the most famous broadcast ever made; an adaptation by Howard Koch (1902-) of H.G. WELLS's 1898 novel, it was produced by and starred Orson Welles (1915-1985), who gained immediate notoriety when a huge number of listeners believed that the play represented a live newscast of an actual INVASION from MARS. The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic, with the Complete Script of the Famous Orson Welles Broadcast (1940) by Hadley Cantril (1906-1969) reports on a series of interviews begun by Princeton University a week after the broadcast, confirming that the panic was surprisingly widespread (Cantril estimates that well over a million listeners - more than 10% ofthe total audience tuned in - were actively frightened by the broadcast); but also demonstrates, by reprinting the original script, that neither Koch nor Welles could have intended to hoax the radio public. Though itwas indeed presented in the form of a series of emergency newscasts, dramatic devices (the passage of hours, for instance, in a few minutes of radio time) were conspicuous even during the first half of the broadcast, which caused the most panic; the second half, after a brief programme break, was set several days later. A made-for-tv movie giving a somewhat exaggerated account of the night's events is The NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA (1975), and what has become a national myth has been incorporatedin several other films, including The ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984) and SPACED INVADERS (1989). In 1991 the originalplay was broadcast on BBC radio.

   JC/PN

   2) Film (1953). Paramount. Prod George PAL. Dir Byron HASKIN, starring Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne. Screenplay Barre Lyndon, based on THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898) by H.G. WELLS. 85 mins. Colour.

   Few details of Wells's novel remain. Following the success Welles had had in updating the story in 1938, the setting is changed to 1950s California. The Martian war machines are altered from walking tripods to flying saucers shaped (rather beautifully) like manta rays. A stereotyped Hollywood love interest is substituted for the original story of a husband searching for his wife. Despite indifferent performances, the film is well paced and generates considerable excitement, partly through the spectacular special effects. The wires supporting the war machines are too often visible, but as awhole the effects - Gordon Jennings was in charge - are very impressive, especially in the final attack on Los Angeles: the manta-shaped vehicles gliding down the streets with their snake-like heat-ray projectors blasting the surrounding buildings into rubble are among the great icons of sf CINEMA. The dazed conservatism of the human response to the Martians is true to Wells, as is the subtext suggesting that a retreat into religious piety is also an inadequate answer, though here Pal has it both ways: we are told that it was "God in his wisdom" who created the microbes that ultimately defeat the invasion. WOTW is George Pal's most successful film production.

   3) US tv series (1988-90). Ten-Four/Paramount, for syndication. Created Greg Strangis. Executive prods Sam Strangis, Greg Strangis. Prod Jonathan Hackett, starring Jared Martin, Lynda Mason Green,Philip Akin, Richard Chaves. Dirs included Colin Chilvers, Herbert Wright, Neill Fearnley, Armand Mastroianni, William Fruet. Writers included Greg Strangis, Tom Lazarus, Patrick Barry, D.C. FONTANA, Durnford King. 2 seasons; 100min pilot plus 41 50min episodes. Colour.

   The pilot episode, The Resurrection, tells us that the events described in the 1953 film were followed by a government hush-up and the storage of Martian bodies in barrels at a military base. A terrorist attack on the base breaches some barrels, and the Martians (no longer identified as such, now just vague ALIENS) come back to life (the microbes did not kill them but threw theminto estivation, and have now been destroyed by radioactivity). They adopt the bodies of the terrorists. (Shapeshifting was not an alien skill in the earlier versions; WOTW borrows heavily from the tv series The INVADERS [1967-8], and the films of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS [1955, 1978].)Their human bodies damaged, so that they look like zombie refugees from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), the aliens again attempt to conquer the world, initially by jumping out at people and grabbing them with big flabby hands. Our heroes (male scientist, pretty female microbiologist, wisecracking Black man in wheelchair) have trouble convincing the powers-that-be that the aliens even exist, the destruction of Los Angeles three decades earlier having apparently gone unnoticed. The series had vigour if nothing else, and continued for 2 seasons with the usual variants on the INVASION theme. In season 2, now renamed War of the Worlds: The Second Invasion, the series eliminated some characters, addednew ones, introduced alien-human miscegenation and made moral distinctions between good and bad aliens, but sagged anyway.

   PN

   See also: PARANOIA.