Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com essential video:
After the success of 1950's Destination Moon and 1951's When Worlds Collide, visionary producer George Pal brought the classic H.G. Wells story of a Martian invasion to the big screen, and it instantly became a science fiction classic and winner of the 1953 Academy Award for Best Special Effects. 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. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson play the hero and heroine roles that were de rigueur for movies like this in the '50s, and their encounter with one of the Martians is as creepy today as it was in '53. 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. As memorable for its sound effects as for its spectacular visions of destruction, this is a movie for the ages--the kind of spectacular that inspired little kids such as Steven Spielberg (not to mention Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, whose Independence Day cribs liberally from the plot) and still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon

Rating : - The Vaporizers
Worth watching again and again, The War of the Worlds was a big budget SF thriller based on H.G Wells' work of the same name that had more than a few people fainting during its first run. The story though is pretty much linear and quite short (85 min). Comets hit earth, scientists examine them, aliens emerge and start attacking cities and people everywhere vaporizing them, scientist meets gal and they fall in love, they eventually see an alien in a house while the military is counting its losses against the invader before eventually a natural turn of events save the day. It is shot quite interestingly and the old Kodak color look makes you think that you wouldn't want to see it any other way.