MOVIE REVIEWS ONLY.

[seniorfalcon]

Twice within the past week I watched the Pendragon Pictures version of The War of the Worlds. The first time I watched by myself; the second time was with my 14 year old son. I have been eagerly anticipating this movie since I found out about it around 8 months ago. Despite Pendragon's grandiose claims of a budget of 12 to 20 million dollars, it was obvious from the trailers and other Pendragon information that this movie had a much lower budget. I adjusted my expectations accordingly and considered it more like a sci fi movie from the 1950's.

Other reviewers have given long lists of problems with this film, ranging from excessive use of blue screens, too many walking scenes, bad special effects, uneven editing, etc. Different things bother different people, so I'll add a few of my own. As an amateur astronomer, it really bugs me when scriptwriters get simple scientific facts wrong. "Mars is 40,000,000 miles sunward" - Nope, more like 40,000,000 miles further from the sun. "That one that's twinkling is Mars - Can you see it?" - Sorry, but in general, stars twinkle and planets do not. (Tim Hines isn't the only one - In "Star Wars" George Lucas made similar errors.) Nobody expects a film maker to be an expert on astronomy, but goofs like this can be easily avoided by having an expert proofread the script.

This is not a great movie. There are simply too many things wrong with it. But despite its many flaws, I actually found much to like about this movie, and not just in a "Plan 9 from Outer Space" way. Following are some things I liked about the movie:

During the opening credits we first hear Jamie Hall's haunting and majestic opening theme. This sets a tough standard for the rest of the score to match. Fortunately Hall's musical talents are up to the task, as the score does a good job of augmenting the various moods encountered in the movie. Hall's score even made the lengthy walking scenes tolerable for me. I understand that this is the first score he has written for a full length movie. I expect to hear more from him, 'cause this young man has some real talent!

I liked Anthony Piana as the Writer. His role has the most depth of any in the movie, ranging from a devoted husband to a working journalist to a terrified refugee to a canny survivor to a man resigned to his own death. By and large Piana does a good job with his role. Sometimes his lines are a bit stilted, especially early in the movie, but that's more how they were written than how they were delivered. He brings a lot to his role, expecially in the scenes with the curate in the wrecked house and those that follow.

James Lathrop as the Artilleryman. We first meet him after the martians have routed his unit. I liked his flashback of the rout during initial battle with the martians where we get to see a fighting machine rise up from the pit; also his reunion with the writer towards the end of the movie was well done.

The scenes with the legs of the tripods striding along were good and very suspenseful. One scene that stands out is when a tripod is standing over the writer and curate and Piana says: "If the Martian looks down we will immediately perish" while the curate cowers and prays. (One of the things that lessens the suspense is that we all know how the book ends!)

I thought the entire ending of the movie was quite well done. The scene in the book where the writer prays that "the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and painlessly struck her (his wife) out of being" is handled much better in the movie. Piana is electrifying in this scene. The scene with the suicide victim, the scenes with the writer wandering among the wrecked martian machines with the voice over reading passages from the book, the scene where the "kindly woman" played by Sydney Folts is nursing the writer back to health. All of these are nicely written, well acted, and competently filmed and edited.

My son liked the scene with the writhing skeletons and the person being stepped on. (Remember, he's 14) Other favorite scenes for him were the writer's wagon ride through the thunderstorm where he first encounters the tripods and finds the dead innkeeper. (I also liked those scenes.) He liked the artilleryman's flashback and the ending where the writer was reunited with his wife. He felt the movie was more suspenseful and generally better than the 1953 version.

On my first viewing I was not happy with the device for generating the heat ray. Then I looked in the book and read: "afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion.." What's shown on the screen is exactly what's described in the book.

There's no question that this movie could have been better. The entire Thunderchild scene is terrible. The acting is bad, the filming is bad., the editing is bad, the special effects are bad. Even Jamie Hall's otherwise excellent score fails to come to the rescue. This mess should have been completely redone. Possibly a radio controlled model would have worked better than the CGI. Despite this my favorite line of the entire movie is during the Thunderchild scene - "Better to take our chances with the French than with the Martians."

The first half of the movie was much slower paced than it needed to be, and with many unnecessary scenes, while the last quarter didn't have enough footage. It seems as if Pendragon ran out of time, patience, or money before finishing the movie. The scene where the writer goes to visit Lord Hilton to ask about putting up a light railing does nothing to advance the story. Eliminate that scene, cut out some of the walking shots, and abbreviate others. At the end of the movie include more footage of the artilleryman talking about his grandiose schemes (I'm sure Tim Hines shot a lot more than the scenes he included.) and the movie would have had much better pacing. Another change might be to have a voiceover at some point explaining about the red weed. If you hadn't read the book you wouldn't have known what it was. With these changes the movie would be a decent 1950's style sci-fi movie.

Is it all that we'd hoped for. No. Is it a good movie? It depends on your definition of what a good movie is. To me a good movie is one that you're still thinking about a week later. By that standard this is a good movie. Would I recommend it? Yes, but not to everyone. If you feel that a movie has to be fast paced and with state of the art special effects you should pass on this one. If you like the book you will probably find more to like about the movie than if you love the book. If you can separate the movie from Pendragon's hype and judge it on its own merits, it has its good moments. Some people will enjoy it for what it is; others will despise it for what it isn't.

[HTT]

Thanks to the fickle finger of fate, I managed to find the time to watch the first 25 minutes of the movie this morning, so here's…

Hail The Tripod's review of the first 25 minutes
Before I begin, a quick recap of my stance on the movie and what I expected. I have been an ardent supporter of this movie for years, since I first heard of it. I felt let down at the delays, and based on the reviews my expectations were dashed and I was disappointed. So, I approached this film as a 'Plan 9'/'Killer Tomatoes' venture. No real spoilers here, as everything mentioned is in the book. So, with this in mind, I press Play….

Opening music over titles: Impressive. Nice tone to set the mood. Liked it a lot.
Opening sequence: Visually not bad - OK, the CGI shots stand out a mile from the stock footage, but played out quite well. If it was purely stock footage, the opening sequence would have been the perfect lead-in for the movie. The voice of The Narrator was like a poor mans Julian Clary - quite camp, but not too bad.
Obviously, we then get the sequences with Ogilvy. To get the background details in, a lot of the book is given to him to speak out - and he does so in great theatrical style! No ham actor this - nay, a whole pig! Elaborate movement and careful delivery of dialog - similar to a toned down Brian Blessed without the shouting.
Narrator and Wife - just as I expected from the book. I always got the impression that the writer treated his wife as being stupid - Goforth plays her as being thick as p1gsh1t. The stars in the sky sequence was OK (if unbelievable - a superimposed dusk sky with the land in daylight) - although the 'shining golden stars' bit that followed should have been left out (they look more like minature suns!).
The falling star sequence was well done - the shots from afar I liked a lot. The dirty great rock shot we saw in the trailer works well with what lands, but perhaps would have been better with just the green streak. One annying thing: Horsell is usually pronounced Horsle, but they really emphasize the "sell" syllable as "cell" - just doesn't sound right.
Ogilvy and the cylinder: Not too badly handled. "Where's the birds" - the old perv! Note how old and doddery he is - but he can climb out of a pit like Sebastian Coe! The cylinder itself was OK though.
Plan 9 moment #1: there is a long shot of Ogilvy running away to get help, not too much later we see the same shot flipped as he runs away from the potman!
After fleeing the pit, Ogilvy tries to raise the alarm with a wagoneer, followed by the potman. In conjunction with the music, the "Taproom" sequence ends up more comical than it should be. See how Ogivy carefully tries to break out without much effort or damage to the props!
After escape, Ogilvy goes to get the help of Henderson, and they go to the pit, bang on the cylinder, and shout about getting help. Not too bad, but Henderson could have been replaced with a plank of wood without much difference. Henderson's supposed to be deaf in one ear - but comes across as slow-witted.
The narrator then reads of the Cylinder in the paper (well, the cylinder wasn't in the paper, it was in the pit. The news was in the paper) and hurries on down to the Common. Quite well done I thought, with the kids playing, etc. I liked the sequence with the butcher (or is it Pinnochios's dad Gipetto?) ghoulishy looking for the charred corpses, with his ill-accented son ("Will there be a train set?").

Visually, it looks like a mid 90s PC game with video segments (eg The Beast Within, Phantasmagoria, 11th Hour, etc). Most of it (if not all) seems to be bluescreened, rather than shot on location (surely they could have filmed in a field, rather than adding a field later!).
Acting is pure AmDram. OTT, over theatrical, stilted, wooden, bad accents - mostly what I'd call acting for a theatre, rather than acting for film. Piana is not that bad actually, even if he does sound as camp as Xmas.
Sound: Musically, it's not bad at all. Some of the actors though, have cleary re-dubbed their lines...
FX are OK, but some are obvious, and look out of place with the surroundings (at times The Pit is obviously superimposed on a flat field, and wavers about a bit). It looks jerky in places - this appears to be because the background is composited in, but not in sync with the camera/actor movement. Some frame jumps also made me wonder if the film was meant to be finished in an old victorian style, poss. grainy black & white/sepia?
Authenticity and accuracy to the book: Excellent!!

The whole thing screams of Low Bugdet Cult Classic so far. I was loathe to stop watching it, as I was really enjoying it. Hopefully I can watch the rest this weekend, and have a full review next week.

Verdict on the first 25 minutes: It's not as bad as people have been making out - if you don't take it too seriously. If I hadn't read the reviews, and was expecting a proper authentic version of WOTW, I would have been up in arms at this travesty. However, knowing what to expect, I ended up really enjoying it. Very entertaining - It made me laugh, smile, and held my attention. BUT - it will NOT appeal to the majority of people. For those who like film as an art form - you will absolutely hate it. For those who want a serious WOTW film - you wil also hate it. Those who want entertainment, there will be divided views. This film will mainly appeal to those with an particularly obscure sense of humour, esp. those who love the book. 8 out of 10 so far. Roll on the next 2½ hours (roll on deodorant...)

Sorry - a bit long winded for only 25 minutes viewing!

[MikeH]

My review of the film.

First off, let me make clear I don’t know much about the technicalities of film-making, so everything I say is really just my opinion on what’s good and what’s not… anyway…

Like many others here, I’ve been looking forward to this film for a long time, being a fan of the book for years. I’ve always wanted to see a “real” version of the story, after being a bit disappointed when I first saw the 1953 film, about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, as you have probably read countless times, the film fails in several areas… but it’s not a total loss.

Obviously the effects are very poor. There are hardly any that are believable really, they range from poor to absolutely awful in places. There’s too many CGI backgrounds and effects, such as the rain, and they’re not particularly well done anyway. The film looks like one giant cut scene from a computer game because of this…

I’m also not a fan of the locations used. Most of the film looks like it was all shot in the same bit of forest, there is nothing there to suggest that you are in a busy capital city, or it’s outskirts. A few bits DO look like England, I’ll give them that, but for the most part it’s just random forest, maybe with a badly modeled house stuck in the background. It could be anywhere really… there’s just no effort to make it look really, particularly with the horrible CGI skies, and buildings (when there are some!).

The Martian machines look OK, I’m not a huge fan of the design, but it’s better than some I’ve seen. However, they just don’t look fluid or smooth enough, the tentacles just stick out in midair, and they generally come across as rushed models. The handling machine I prefer to the fighting machine if anything.

The acting is sometimes good, sometimes bad. The Writers performance varies, sometimes he comes across very well, sometimes he is just an annoying little sod! The artilleryman would be good, if it wasn’t for his bizarre accent… Ogilvie is very wooden, and Miss Elphinstone sounds like a teenage American girl. Not bad looking though! 

The film starts off reasonably well, with a nice soundtrack, until you get to the first FX shot really… however, the first few chapters of the book are covered thoroughly, although it does get a little bit drawn out after a while. Because of this, you get to over two hours of the three hour running time, and only half the story has been covered. This means that the final few chapters seem incredibly rushed… Brave New World, Dead London etc., just don’t get the treatment they deserve. Dead London in particular could have been done so well, but there is hardly anything there. I picture a wrecked city, various martian machines scattered among the houses, and the writers sense of dread as night falls, but there is nothing like that really.

My favourite scene is probably the ruined house scene. The Curate is played quite well, enough that you actually have feelings about him, other than just “what a stupid accent!". The feeding scenes are pretty good, apart from the awful CGI, and a scene I liked was the writer and curate in the house listening to the screams of the victims. Quite a powerful scene I think, compared to lots of others that try, and ultimately fail, to be scary.

I’m not a fan of the editing of the film… particularly were some of the scenes with music playing just seem to cut off halfway through a piece of music. It’s almost as if they shot the scenes with the music playing in the background, and when the dialogue finished, it just stops… very obvious in some places.

So, the CGI is bad, there’s too much hanging round random forests, the editing is bad, the shots are all over the place, different filters, and different quality being used. Some shots are really graining, like they were filmed about 30 years ago…

So, I could go on, but you get the idea. I’ll be honest, this is a pretty bad film, but I’ll still watch it now and again. It only cost me a fiver or so, and it’s nice to see a version of the story, even if it is a bit rubbish.

But what has Tim Hines been doing? After all his promises, how could he put out something this bad? I can understand a few dodgy accents, a few bits not everybody will like, but it is so damn hard to find ANY bits in this film that make you sit there and go “wow, that’s really good actually”…

I’ll give it 4 out of 10. It’s rubbish really, but it follows the story well, and is OK for the odd viewing/laugh..

[dekeboy]

While I liked the attempt at bringing the book to the big..er small screen I had a hard time with the special effects and CGI (or should I say lack of). Anyway, getting over the FX and sepia (switched my monitor to B&W made a big difference for me) the movie was good enough to watch all the way through but not good enough to watch again! As a classic B movie SciFi fan I looked forward to this movie but given that this movie was made in 200x was a bit disappointed in the overall look and feel of the movie. The music was good, the acting at times was good, the FX were the worst, and too much walking, running, etc. Maybe the movie needed to have more narration that talked about the walking and running instead of actually showing (in real time!) the walking and running?

Anyway, I give it 1 popcorn box rating (out of a possible 5 popcorn boxes).

David A. Gonzales

[spelky]

Ok The DVD turned up Tues and Wed night was the the night, beers in, phone off, curtains drawn and sound up.

First the positives: It got made. It followed the book as closely as is practical in a film. Music, very good, atmospheric and complimented the scenes well. Opening scenes and narration, quite good, set the scene well, even the intercut b/w cgi

The negatives: Everything else really! The acting, the editing, the cgi, the accents (oh God the accents, obvisously the only British people to visit the US in the last 50 years have been the Queen and a band of cheerful cockney characters that Dick Van Dyke wouldn't be ashamed of oh and Scottie out of Star Trek)

It was awful, I have so been looking forward to this, ignoring all the previous comments that the trailers generated, waiting and seeing. well I waited, I saw, and I don't want to see it again.

My kids watched it, the 14 year old laughed like a drain, the 10 year old was sad to see Oligivie die and then laughed like a drain. My wife watched it, comments not printable.

For fans of the book it's maybe worthwhile to have but I wouldn't show it to anybody who doesn't know the story. What i don't understand is what review process did Pendragon follow, surley they must have realised that they had a turkey in the making as soon as the first few scenes were complete, I guess by then they felt they had to get something out to re-coup the investment

[Curate]

DVD arrived in the post yesterday and I watched it last night. It officially became the first movie to be watched on my new LCD widescreen tv... is that a bad omen I wonder?
First off, it wasn't half as bad as I had expected but then again, my expectations weren't exactly high to begin with.
I'll have to agree with what many before me have said already - the acting and special effects are dire with a capital D. The British accents were all over the place and I got a good laugh from the army guy who seemed to have modelled his vocal mannerisms on Scotty from 'Star Trek'. The style of filming was also very poor with inconsistent use of filters and what appeared to be many missed frames. At times the jerky motion became almost maddening and I have to wonder if this is down to an encoding problem with the DVD. Hines couldn't have seriously thought it looked good, could he? I'd be interested to hear if the same problem exists on the VHS version. Yet aside from these disappointments there were several positive points. The score was excellent for one, and it spoke of the film this could have been given a little more time and effort. The opening shots with the vintage footage were excellent and oddly reminicent of the opening of 'The Road Warrior'. The Artilleryman's flashback was well put together and I particularly liked the shot of the fighting machine legs as they strode towards a cannon and then kicked it aside. The ruined house sequence was suitably creepy, the Curate's demise in particular, and I found the red tint of the later scenes to be exactly in keeping with my mental pictures of the events. The Handling Machines were well designed and I liked the shot of one ploughing into a house, even if this moment deviated from the text. The lack of 'Dead London' was unforgivable though, as was the choice to film the entire thing seemingly in the same field.
I'll give the movie a 5/10 for effort, but hopefully next time the story is filmed the budget will be slightly more than a fiver.

[maniacs]

I finally caved to my craven desires. Despite the warnings from various parties I ordered my copy last Friday...

...and in tribute to how quickly amazon want shot of this film it came this morning. USA to UK in 5 working days. Admittedly I did pay extra for quicker post...

...anyway. Watched it this morning. Had a drink but didn't get drunk(in the morning? Xplain in a mo). You know about the bad side of it. Most reviews have focused on this.

I did enjoy the film. Not like I was watching my favourite novel come to life tho!

The FM ARE better than in the still images. In fact I thought the effects were better than the capture shots you can see on the web. However...the Big Ben scene is around about what you get(and the latest trailer) at it's best.

The thunder child is the worst bit of the film but it does have a wake as it moves. And the expression of joy(at the sight of thunder child, on the passengers face is 'ooh thats a big un, can I touch it!'. Sorry its true!!! The FX to this weren't helped by the break in the battle to go over to the house with the writer and the curate trapped beneath.

The heatray was done to the book except at first where Olgilvy, Henderson etc were reduced to skeletons. It was meant to be a swift death and it took a while for them to burn. And they do writhe about! WOW!!!

Later the heatray strikes people they just blow apart. Much better!!!

The artillary man took too long to tell his story, almost a film in itself, but there were some OK FX.

The guy locking Olgily in a 'barn like structure' was childish in it's conception. You will see.

Piana is not bad. Cut him some slack. Olgilvy came from the William Shatner school of over acting but I liked him, the curate was acceptable, maybe even good. The artillaryman had his rant but it was outside and rushed.

And where was snippet!
'Damn yer trenches snippet! You should have been born a rabbit!'

I did like the way Olgivy dictated the first parts of the book to the writer as though writing an article for the paper. The bit that explains Mars last stages of exaustion.

People have said theres no sense of danger to the film. I do agree. Without slagging of the writer I have to say I noticed the music didn't change tempo form scene to scene. It was constant. Ideally music should be added to a film after the final cut. It clearly wasn't. The music was good though.

Theres no contrast between daytime or nightime. Been said before I'll say it again. The night scenes should of been saturated or darkened to emphasize the time.

How good was the film. I give it 3 out of 5. If I'd seen it before the other reviews I'd have give it one because Hines blew his own trumpet far too much.

I'd just come off a hard night shift. If the film was no good I'd have fallen asleep! If your going to watch this film, reduce your colour, I did not watch in B+W tho and expect to watch an omnibus of an old 1970's BBC sci fi - same sophistication as Dr Who - and enjoy it as a close version of WotW. At least to the JW version is out.

Incidentally, I spent over £11.00(+ pp) getting this DVD and I don't feel cheated.

[obiwanbeeohbee]

I watched this film over two weeks ago, but haven't done a full review. Here is the one I finally did for Amazon and IMDB:

I've been a Wells fan and specifically a "War of the Worlds" fan since I got a vinyl copy of the Bell High-Camp Adventure version of the story for my eighth birthday. Since then, I've collected multiple versions of the story in book, audio and video formats. As bad as it is, from a film-making standpoint, this version will hold a special place in my collection for one reason. It is the first attempt to try and make a true Victorian era version of the novel.

Some parts of this film work rather well and should be noted. The opening of the film was well done using black and white archival footage and set the tone nicely. The scene where the narrator watches Mars with Ogilvy worked for me, also. I like how the dissertation of the first chapter was turned into a monologue by Oglivy and not voiced over by the narrator. It tended to flesh Ogilvy's character out just a bit. Most think Jack Clay over-acted here, but I thought he was dead on. He played Ogilvy as a pompous academician, just how I would have imagined him. I also felt the animation of the plume of gas coming from Mars in that scene had an almost Melles-esque feel like something out of "Le Voyage dans la Lune" - a sort of cartoony, fantasy feel.

I was pleased with the scene where the farmer tried to lock Ogilvy up in the shed. Granted, Wells only mentioned the incident in passing, but when you read the story, it conjured up a humorous scene that was fun to explore in a bit more depth.

I thought that Anthony Piana did a good job in a very tough role. He may act for many years to come and not get another role as dificult as this. Most of the narrator's references to himself in the novel are about what he was feeling or thinking while he was being made a refugee in his own land. Of course, he is not just a bystander, he interacts with many characters during his adventure and has some close scrapes with the martians, but on the whole, he is telling the story first person and internal motivations play an important part of the feel and pace of the story. Piana pulled the role off, but could have used a bit stronger direction in some scenes.

John Kaufmann was also very good in his role as the curate. The scenes with him and Piana in the destroyed house were very effective. He should have a long career as a character actor in films and television.

Now for some of the problems with the movie, which were mostly production-related. The special effects were very good in some places and absolutely bush-league in others. It was as if the crew looked at the first cut of the film and were afraid that there weren't enough effects. So, they went back and did proof-of-concept or storyboard animations for what they wanted to add, but didn't finish them and for whatever reason left them in. Compositing was over-used and poorly done. The coloring of this film was inconsistent and quite a distraction.

This film was also too long. Not because there wasn't enough of a story to make a three-hour movie, but because there wasn't enough well produced footage in this adaptation to make a good three hour movie. It's obvious that there was no real editing done on this film. Sadly, I could see enough good material to have made a very good 90-minute film here, by B-movie standards. (Perhaps a fan edit like the one removing Jar-Jar from "The Phantom Menace" is on the horizon?)

I have watched this movie once all the way through. I haven't worked up the desire to put it in my player and watch it again, whole or in part. But, I probably will watch it again after I watch the Spielberg and Asylum Studios versions when they come out later this summer. Until then Pendragon Pictures version of "H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds" will sit in it's own very unique spot in my collection of all things WOTW.

[Zoë]

Ok iv just finished watching it and thought id write my review with it still in my head. It wont be something long, not very good at that.
But after reading other peoples I was thinking, oo am I going to like this?
But after all that, I do really like it. Some of the acting was but i can get over that and still watch it again.
Some of the effects were aswell, the only one that got to me though was the Thunderchild, I thought they could have atleast used a real boat and imposed that on.
the soundtrack: I love soundtracks in general, and I buy them if i think they are decent, if i ever saw the soundtrack for this film for sale, i would buy it. I thought the music very good.
I liked the heatray design, but I wasnt that keen on the tripods... I liked it when there were shots of the legs of it, but the rest I didnt like because I felt there was too much leg not enough body.. but iv grown up with the Jeff Waynes versions tripod, so that probably clouds my judgement.
The martians: I like the eyes, but the way they were done made it seem that they were floating along.
another thing about the effects, mostly at the start when they were showing the images of big ben and all the building, reminds me of the ones in Moulin Rouge when they are on top of a roof..

See im not very good at writing reviews AT ALL, so all I can say is that yes this is a good film, and I WILL be watching it again.

Also question: what was the artilleryman accent meant to be? Im sure I heard like different bits of different accents in him?

[mctoddridesagain]

Well, this morning, much to my excitement, it arrived – my very own copy of Timothy Hines’s magnificent octopus, H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds!

After feeding my flatmate’s cat, I bunged it in my player (the DVD, not the cat), and away I went. First, I checked out the extras – H G Wells biog, and a trailer. Hm, which trailer is it… Ah, the one with that bloody woman caterwauling away. That can stop for a start. Now, for the film itself…

Ten minutes later I needed a wee. Twenty minutes after that, I wandered down the road to buy a paper and get some bread. I managed to get through the rest of this interminable film thanks to several breaks, including an extensive chat to a friend who’d phoned me up just as the first Martian breakdanced over the top of the cylinder.

Many, many people have already reviewed this film. Many, many more will review it in future. I hesitated to write a review, hoping not to add to the screeds of virtual ink spilled over it, but what the heck… Everyone brings something different, so here are my thoughts, some of which are general, some of which address specifics.

First, there is far too much dialogue. The scriptwriter has adapted great slabs of Wells’ descriptive prose and put it in the mouths of the characters. I can see what the intention was. It works reasonably well with Ogilvy – we get a nice background to the events preceding his vigil at Ottershaw. But there are inaccuracies – he speaks of Lavelle’s observation of a jet of flame bursting out from Mars ‘six years before’. But Lavelle’s observation took place mere days before Ogilvy’s vigil – there is a reference to ‘six years before’ in the book, but it means that the Narrator is writing his account of the War six years after the event. Ogilvy also mentions that Mars is ’40 million miles sunward’ of Earth – no, Earth is 40 million miles sunward of Mars. The scriptwriter has attempted to shoehorn all this exposition into the characters’ speech without actually paying close attention to what some of it means.

Later, this verbosity becomes more painful. There are occasions when the Narrator is trapped with the Curate, banging on about how many tentacles he can see; I half expected him to start giving a lecture on the physiology of the Martians. Much of this is needless. The audience should be able to see what is happening, yet too much dialogue is lifted straight from purely descriptive prose without any thought as to its original function.

I rather enjoyed Jack Clay’s performance as Ogilvy. Hammy, to be sure, but his mannered, staccato speech patterns reminded me of Peter O’Toole’s performance in ‘The Last Emperor’. Certainly, he was enjoyably dithery. The episode with the chap trying to lock him up was potentially amusing, but rather ineptly executed, the other actor’s performance not being up to light comedy.

Anthony Piana’s accent was fantastic, in the sense of ‘something redolent of fantasy’. He made Keanu Reeves’ accent as Harker in ‘Dracula’ seem like the RSC’s best. However, he did have to struggle against some appalling writing, so fair play to him. In particular, I must single out his moustache which, henceforth, I shall refer to as The Moustache, as it deserves a credit to itself. Against all the odds, The Moustache persevered. Whether confronted with the searing heat of a Martian cylinder newly landed, to total immersion in a boiling Thames, The Moustache coped with aplomb. Allied with Piana’s black eyeliner, however, The Moustache contrived to make the Narrator look like an evil villain from a silent film. During the meal at his cousin’s, he throws her such a malign leer that I half expected him to run off with her over his shoulder and tie her to the nearest railway track.

John Kaufmann was actually pretty good as the whining Curate (and I say that in all honesty, not simply because I think he’s rather cute). When the Narrator first encounters him sitting near him by the road, the Curate’s childlike disbelief at the awful events at Shepperton reminded me of nothing so much as the wounded expression Tony Blair assumes when he’s being roasted by some especially tricky questioning; he looks like a puppy that’s just been kicked. Kaufmann portrays the irritating sanctimony of the Curate quite well - maybe he studied the Reverend Blair? - and his descent into near-madness is reasonably well conveyed.

Anthony Piana’s performance as the Narrator’s brother was much like his performance as the Narrator. But without The Moustache, it lacked conviction, I’m sorry to say. Even though he still had his black eyeliner, at no point did I expect him to leg it with one of the Elphinstone ladies and tie them to a railway track.

Where did the Artilleryman come from? His accent seemed to roam across much of the English-speaking world, taking in not merely whole nations but different regions and counties too. His second encounter with the Narrator at Putney Hill, which took place at night but in the film is in broad daylight, is treated sketchily, which is a shame as it wouldn’t have taken much to simply film more dialogue. God knows they could have cut down on some of the excessive exposition to squeeze in genuine dialogue from the book. However, given James Lathrop’s eccentric range of accents, it may have been for the best. I could say more, but I think I’ll not, and much the same goes for the other performances, which were generally no better than amdram.

As for the visual effects, well, so much has been written. But I’ll try to pick out some elements few have noticed, or thought worthy of mentioning. First, though, I must take time out to mention the Martians and their machines, of which much else has been written. My complaints will sound very familiar – the Fighting Machines are simply awful. The design is too fussy – it’s actually difficult to understand what one is seeing, there are so many curves and odd knobbly bits and random shapes, that nothing coheres. They don’t look like designed machines, rather they appear to have been assembled from a random heap of scrap. Their scale is inconsistent – the hood, that awful strangled chicken-like hood, appears far too small in relation to the total height of the thing; when the ‘Thunder Child’ rams one, the hood appears tiny in relation to some quite small deck fittings. Yet near the end, in Dead London, a Martian is seen hanging out of the hood and appears tiny in relation to it – if the hood was as small as it always appears earlier in the film, the Martian must have been the size of a hedgehog.

As for their movements… Quite a lot of the time, when a Fighting Machine starts walking from rest, it does an odd, very rapid, moonwalk-like glide halfway across the screen before actually moving its legs. The Shepperton battle is especially amusing. I loved the little screaming chap briefly glimpsed in a close-up of the church steeple as the shattered Fighting Machine heads for it! Then, after the collision and another explosion, the Fighting Machine actually lifts off and flies through the air towards the river! There’s an amazing shot which appears to be taken from the vantage point of an aircraft about five hundred feet above the ground, showing the FM spinning through the air like a rag doll, before it hits the river! Truly amazing – amazing as in ‘WTF?!?!?!’ I think they took the line about it ‘whirling to destruction’ rather too literally…

The Martians themselves look like turds with worms. They are surprisingly light on their tentacles – someone, somewhere said they look like they’re inflated with helium! They appear to be completely CGI, which is a pity, as years ago a still appeared of a Martian creeping past a window (presumably of the shattered house) which was clearly a puppet but which appeared somewhat more effective. They should have stuck to that. The feeding scenes are hilarious – much has been said about the Weird Cow and the Singing Lady. Yup, it is the Singing Lady, the music (which, incidentally, is quite effective, and certainly one of the most professional things about the production) reflects quite skilfully her song in the music hall earlier. How she got from a music hall in central London to a Martian pit in Surrey in a matter of days is beyond me, but there you go. Maybe the Martians heard her singing, and this was their way of reviewing her performance – ‘Nul points’.

The Handling Machines are actually quite well done – well, in comparison with the Metal Chickens they are… In fact, had the design of the Fighting Machines been more in common with the Handling Machines, they would have been far more successful. As it is…

The ‘Thunder Child’ sequence is a travesty. A hell of a lot has been said elsewhere, the worst of it being utterly true. I shall confine myself to saying that in every respect it is a bad sequence – there is no dramatic build-up; the CGI is appalling; the movements are pathetic; there is no dramatic impact whatsoever. One gets no sense of the great throngs of refugees attempting to flee in what, in the book, reads like a dry-run of the Dunkirk evacuation. And why is a Mississippi sternwheeler operating on the Essex coast?

A big fault with the film is that there is no sense of place. Everyone wanders round and round the same bloody overgrown field. In fact, London, the capital of the world’s greatest empire in 1897, appears to be a small mediaeval city built on a hill, atop which stands Big Ben, overlooking all. As soon as anyone wanders any further from the few, rather sketchy, buildings clustered around Big Ben (which, incidentally, appears to have been divorced structurally from the Palace of Westminster) they find themselves in… that bloody field again, with the odd cardboard cutout house amidst the long grass and weeds. There is no sense whatsoever of a great metropolis abandoned. Putney Hill is just that, a hill. Overgrown. Where are the houses? Where is the sense that this is a suburb of a great city? There is none.

And the editing, the editing… The film utterly lacks pace. It looks like the producers simply threw in everything they had without regard to pacing and dramatic tension. It is amateurish in the extreme. Of production values there are none. I could go on and on, but frankly I already have, and others have written far more eloquently and in greater detail about technique, which this film lacks in spades.

For all that, I’m glad I bought it. It’s a curiosity. I doubt I’ll ever watch the whole thing again, unless fellow bad-film fan friends of mine come over for a drunken evening of mickey-taking. I’m saddened that such a great book, one of the towering works of science fiction and literature in general, should have been adapted in such a shoddy way. It is nothing more than a very long fan film. Had it been promoted from the outset as a fan film, we would all have been more forgiving. But it wasn’t, and we aren’t.

[obiwanbeeohbee]

I thought everyone might find this review interesting. If he isn't on one of the WOTW forums, he knows about them.

www.computercrowsnest.com/features/arc/2005/nz8272.php

[WaltP]

My wife summed it up best I thought. We just finished watching the movie and I point blank asked her how she liked it.
"Not too bad. When did it come out?"
"A month ago" I answered
"Oh" she responded as her eyes glazed and a grimace crossed her face. "I thought it was the 50's"

All in all, I really liked what Hines tried to do. The execution on the other hand needs a lot of work. My wife giggled when the writer said "[God] is not an insurance agent". So I checked. That's when I realized Hines really did follow the book well in many respects.

I liked the opening scenes with the opening words of the book. That was a good way to set the movie up.

The depiction of the Martians was interesting -- I think I liked them. The machines I thought were also nicely designed for the most part.

[HTT]

[glow=purple,2,300]Ao, I've now watched it all the way though, so how was it?

Not bad actually! For an authentic version, it was OK. It looks a lot better in Black & White though - it does look more like a movie in the vein of Tarantula or Them!, and as such works a lot better (you can forgive most of the FX)

High points:
# The alien machines in The Pit at the ruined house - several different types.
# Sue Goforth in Victorian undergarments
# The Cellar scenes
# Sue Goforth in Victorian undergarments
# Accuracy to the book (apart from the Heat Ray - the Spinning Disc is a separate device in the book, but TH has integrated it into the HR)
# Sue Goforth in Victorian undergarments
...did I mention the lovely Sue GoPHWOARth in her frillies?

Low points
# Timing
# Some Tripod FX (esp. the 'splash' as the tripod falls into the water at Weybridge).
# The meal at Leatherhead (Had they had a row, and he was trying it on with the Maid, as was the Masters right in Victorian England [allegedly!]?)
# The feeding scene - should have just shown The Writer looking through the hole, then turning away - leaving the feeding to the imagination. He does say that the 'cow' is some form of beast, so I assume Hines uses this as the aliens packed-lunch, rather than the bipeds.
# The 'crowds'...of 20 people. Would've been better if there had been costume and prop changes! Oh look, there's Boy in red waistcoat, Boy With Basket, Man with trunk, woman with baby, again...and again!

All in all, a highly enjoyable film - perhaps for the wrong reasons! Could have had a lot trimmed, and the latter half of the book expanded. Shame about the Drunken revellers and the Crescent battle line being missed.

Scriptwise, it starts of really well, then tapers off midway through - probably due to the lack of budget to get the FX needed for the second part of the book. Quite clearly, Hines started out with the best of intentions, but didn't have the resources to pull it off effectively.

This could have been excellent if budget and time had been spent on it. I note at the end of the movie credits there is a plug for Chrome, so perhaps all the money went on that instead.

On the back of the DVD it states "GUARANTEED SUPERIOR QUALITY".... true, this is indeed a superior quality bad movie!

As I said before, it needs to be viewed as piece of low budget "so bad it's good" theatre. I loved it, others won't.[/glow]

[David Faltskog]

Now if they had got Felicity Kendal to star in the movie and put her in Victorian undergarments then it would be the Greatest movie ever made...In my Felicity fetish ridden brain opinion of course.

I,ll get me strides. ;D

D.F.

[EvilNerfherder]

Movie reviews only on this thread D.F!

(Christina Ricci in frillies.. or better still, out of them)

[David Faltskog]

Ok...



10/10

Great movieish movie, lots of balls and balls to Evilnerfy.

Big-Balls

[EvilNerfherder]

I don't think I've seen that one.
And keep yer balls to yourself, thank you!

[FALLINGSTAR]

alien8 said:

Now if they had got Felicity Kendal to star in the movie and put her in Victorian undergarments then it would be the Greatest movie ever made...In my Felicity fetish ridden brain opinion of course.

I,ll get me strides. ;D

D.F.

I was never much of a Felicity fan but that blonde babe from ABBA. Nuff said!

[David Faltskog]

I was never much of a Felicity fan but that blonde babe from ABBA. Nuff said!

"Shall i kick Fallingstar up the ass or do you want too DF?"

;D

D.F.

[FALLINGSTAR]

Ok D.F. Felicity ain't too bad I suppose. She's improved with age!