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        The War Of The Worlds (Byron Haskin, 1953) (Remastered Version)
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                              General Information
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Type.................: Movie
Container file.......: AVI
Video Format.........: AVC - H.264
Total Bitrate........: 2391 Kbps
Audio format.........: AC3
Audio Languages......: English 2.0, Spanish 2.0
Subtitles Ripped.....: English, Spanish
Subtitles in Subpack.: Greek, English, Spanish, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian,
                       Nederland, Portuguese, Slovenian, Serbian.  Commentary
                       subtitles in English, Spanish and Italian
Resolution...........: 720x512
Color................: Color, 24 bits
FPS..................: 25.000
Source...............: DVD 4x3
Duration.............: 01:21:52
Original Format......: PAL
Genre................: Science-Fiction
IMDb Rating..........: 7.2
Movie Information....: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046534/
Filmaffinity.........: http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film888227.html
Allmovie.............:


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                                 Release Notes
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YEAR:                    1953 	 
COUNTRY:                 United States
DIRECTOR:                Byron Haskin
SCREENWRITER:            Barré Lyndon (Novel: H.G. Wells)
COMPOSER:                Leith Stevens
CINEMATOGRAPHER:         George Barnes
CAST:                    Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Henry Brandon, 
                         Robert Cornthwaite, Jack Kruschen
STUDIO/PRODUCER:         Paramount Pictures
GENRE:                   Sci-Fi / Thriller


SYNOPSIS/PLOT: 

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds had been on Paramount Pictures' docket since the 
silent era, when it was optioned as a potential Cecil B. DeMille production. 
When Paramount finally got around to a filming the Wells novel, the property was 
firmly in the hands of special-effects maestro George Pal. Like Orson Welles' 
infamous 1938 radio adaptation, the film eschews Wells' original Victorian 
England setting for a contemporary American locale, in this case Southern 
California. A meteorlike object crash-lands near the small town of Linda Rosa. 
Among the crowd of curious onlookers is Pacific Tech scientist Gene Barry, who 
strikes up a friendship with Ann Robinson, the niece of local minister Lewis 
Martin. Because the meteor is too hot to approach at present, Barry decides to 
wait a few days to investigate, leaving three townsmen to guard the strange, 
glowing object. Left alone, the three men decide to approach the meterorite, and 
are evaporated for their trouble. It turns out that this is no meteorite, but an 
invading spaceship from the planet Mars. The hideous-looking Martians utilize 
huge, mushroomlike flying ships, equipped with heat rays, to pursue the helpless 
earthlings. When the military is called in, the Martians demonstrated their 
ruthlessness by "zapping" Ann's minister uncle, who'd hoped to negotiate a 
peaceful resolution to the standoff. As Barry and Ann seek shelter, the Martians 
go on a destructive rampage. Nothing-not even an atom-bomb blast-can halt the 
Martian death machines. The film's climax occurs in a besieged Los Angeles, 
where Barry fights through a crowd of refugees and looters so that he may be 
reunited with Ann in Earth's last moments of existence. In the end, the Martians 
are defeated not by science or the military, but by bacteria germs-or, to quote 
H.G. Wells, "the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon the earth." 
Forty years' worth of progressively improving special effects have not dimmed 
the brilliance of George Pal's War of the Worlds. Even on television, Pal's 
Oscar-winning camera trickery is awesome to behold. So indelible an impression 
has this film made on modern-day sci-fi mavens that, when a 1988 TV version of 
War of the Worlds was put together, it was conceived as a direct sequel to the 
1953 film, rather than a derivation of the Wells novel or the Welles radio 
production.



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