The residents of a small town are excited when a flaming meteor lands in the hills, until they discover it is the first of many transport devices from Mars bringing an army of invaders invincible to any man-made weapon, even the atomic bomb.
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.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
8 Jun 2007
fresh:
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.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
8 Jun 2007
fresh:
Mind those heat rays!
– A.H. Weiler,
New York Times,
31 Oct 2006
fresh:
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.
– Douglas Pratt,
Hollywood Reporter,
6 Dec 2005
rotten:
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.