| Help

£

My Shopping Basket

Your basket is empty

DVD

The War Of The Worlds (1953): Special Edition
Enlarge Image

The War Of The Worlds (1953): Special Edition

Gene Barry, Ann Robinson & Les Tremayne

Customer rating on The War Of The Worlds (1953): Special Edition: 4.5 out of 5 stars ( 3 customer ratings )

£4.99 Free Delivery

RRP: £12.99 | You save: £8.00 (61%)

In stock | Usually dispatched within 24 hours

Related Promotions

 

Special Features

 

  • Audio commentary from stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson
  • Audio commentary from Joe Dante, Bob Burns and Bill Warren
  • 'This Is Only A Story' audio feature): `War of the Worlds' radio play, originally broadcast by WABC & CBS on Halloween night 1938
  • 'H. G. Wells - The Father Of Science Fiction': a featurette examining his life's work and lasting impact on literature and film
  • 'The Sky Is Falling': a 'Making Of' featurette
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • Trailer for Steven Spielberg's 2005 'War Of The Worlds' film

Review

 

Producer George Pal and director Byron Haskins' landmark adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic novel that focuses on the invasion of the earth by Martian war machines.

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.

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.

This is the kind of spectacular that inspired kids such as Steven Spielberg and still packs a punch - delivering eye-popping thrills and unrelenting, edge-of-your-seat suspense.

Winner of the 1953 Academy Award for Best Special Effects.

Customer Reviews

 

Customer rating on The War Of The Worlds (1953): Special Edition: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Average rating (3 reviews)

Customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars Great film + Arguably the Best Print!

Coolwater | 09/03/2008 | See all Coolwater's reviews (82) »

Top 100 DVD Reviewer

Which version Haskin or Spielberg? A meteor lands in the hills of a small town. Unknown of its origin or contents, Dr Clayton Forrester is called in to investigate.

Machine like beings then begin to wreak havoc on not only the town but all the cities around the world with only one thing on their mind...world domination!

The army do everything in there power to stop the onslaught but who will come out on top in the end?

This is for me the definitive version, with the remake being somewhat of a disappointment.

This is not my favorite 50's science fiction film but is still considered by most as one of the best of its kind.

Film Quality 10/10; Picture Quality 10/10 (Digitally Remastered)

Customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars What heappened to the trailer

jules63 | 24/06/2007 | See all jules63's reviews (1) »

great can only say I needed the trailer of the 2005 to go with all the extras and it is not on the disc as advertised. really disappointed and now need a full screen version of spilebergs trailer which is imossable to ind

Customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars Another stunning DVD collectable!

WiLFreD68 | 13/05/2007 | See all WiLFreD68's reviews (66) »

Top 100 DVD Reviewer

Surely everyone knows this movie, and if you don't you should, it's still far superior to the remake in my opinion, and this digitally cleaned up version does wonders for it, although there's a lot more strings on show than you will recall noticing before, but the effects, and in particular the sounds, still make this movie really work!

Of the extra's there are many, and they provide a good and fascinating insight into the ideas, designs, and building teams who put this movie together, including why the alien has such disproportionately long arms, and what the space ships were inspired by and built from, and the commentary from the two lead actors is wonderful, although it is mainly carried by the female lead Ann Robinson, as Gene Barry apparently has trouble figuring out where he is and why!

In all though, a truly marvelous DVD and I thoroughly recommend it!

Related Items - DVD

 

Related Items - Books

 

Related Items - AudioBooks

 

Technical Details

 

Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite, Sandro Giglio, Lewis Martin, Paul Frees & William Phipps

Byron Haskin

PG

1953

Fullscreen 4:3

English - Dolby Digital (2.0) Stereo

Arabic ; Danish ; Dutch ; English ; Finnish ; French ; German ; Italian ; Norwegian ; Spanish ; Swedish ; Turkish

1 hour and 52 minutes (approx)

Region 2 - Will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players.

Customers who bought The War Of The Worlds (1953): Special Edition also bought

 

Other DVDs By the same director

 

Other DVDs featuring Gene Barry

 

Other DVDs featuring Les Tremayne

 

Other DVDs featuring Robert Cornthwaite

 

Other DVDs featuring Sandro Giglio

 

Other DVDs featuring Lewis Martin

 

Other DVDs featuring Paul Frees

 

Other DVDs featuring William Phipps