The War of the Worlds: Critic Reviews

Mind those heat rays!

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.

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.

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.

Some grisly and scary parts. Not for young 'uns.

classic

Definitely a sci-fi classic from the 1950s...great George Pal effects.

Though it's bogged down by a stiff cast, a yawn-inspiring conventional romance, and a sappy religiosity, it remains a landmark in the history of special effects.

For a movie that already succeeded in scaring the Grape Nehi out of every ten-year-old in the audience, how disquieting it must have been for the Cold War-agitated grownups to witness U.S. might, tanks and A-bombs alike, brushed away helpless...

peculiarly fifties-bound

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.

This version has more soul than the remake.

...a so-called "classic" that couldn't possibly be more overrated.

This is vintage Cold War-era sci-fi, and one of the best films in the genre.

Incredibly overrated version of the Wells novel.

Well, it's not called a classic for nothing.

A great Cold War re-imagining of Welles' classic tale.

The acting was wooden, the romance was blah, and the religious messages tacked on were pathetic.

This is an imminently watchable film -- better than many other B-grade science fiction films with similar themes of alien invasion.