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This review is for the Blu-Ray edition of 'Battle of the Worlds' released by The Film Detective in 2022.
BLU-RAY: The Blu-Ray cover states that this release is made from a 4K scan of an original 35mm archival print
- Previous to this release, I had only seen this movie with prints from awful sources. In other words it always looked like crap.
EXTRA'S:
- Audio Commentary by author/film historian Justin Humphreys
- Featurette: 'A Cinematic Outsider: The Fantastical Worlds of Antonio Margheriti' - This is a Ballyhoo Production - This is an excellent 30 minute documentary narrated by film historian Tim Lucas. It's about what you would expect. The documentary tells the life story of Margheriti and it is narrated with lots of film clips from movies that Margheriti was involved with.
- Subtitles
- This release comes with a 10 page booklet on all aspects of 'Battle of the Worlds'. There is also a coupon but it would be expired if you picked up this release at this time.
*****WARNING - LOTS OF SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT*****
PLOT/SYNOPSIS: Dr. Fred Steele and Eve Barnett are planning on getting married, after having a transfer request from an astronomical observatory on an island, approved. Immediately after the transfer is approved it is put on hold. A rogue planet, called 'The Outsider', has entered the solar system and is heading straight for Earth. Professor Benson (Claude Raines), living in a green house next door to the observatory, does not believe the planet will hit Earth. Benson believes that 'The Outsider' will miss Earth by 95,000 miles. Benson gives Steele a message to send to Mars. Mars cannot observe 'The Outsider' due to magnetic interference. Commander Robert Cole and his wife, Cathy Cole, travel to observatory island.
Benson is proven correct and 'The Outsider' misses Earth by 95,000 miles. However, instead of going by Earth, it goes into orbit around Earth. Benson believes that the rogue planet is controlled by alien life. He is against Earth sending reconnaissance ships and says that 'The Outsider' should be destroyed. Alien spaceships are launched from 'The Outsider' and destroy the reconnaissance ships. Benson contacts Earth's leaders and tells them that they have a short time to destroy 'The Outsider' because it is tightening it's orbit around Earth which will be catastrophic. He believes that 'The Outsider' is a world that has conscious beings that came from a dying world and are attracted to the Earth's warmth. Benson offers to save Earth if he is put in charge of an expedition to 'The Outsider'. He is turned down but his work and ideas are accepted, mainly, his prediction that Earth has only 840 hours left.
Ultimately, Benson ends up going to 'The Outsider' with little time to spare. Once on the planet, Benson finds a long dead race of aliens that were looking for a new home. Benson is warned to leave when a nuclear attack is launched, however, he decides to stay on the planet to see if he could discover it's secret. His final words claim that he found the answer and could order 'The Outsider' away but it's too late.
PRODUCTION:
CLAUDE RAINES DOING IS IN THIS MOVIE?: Yes, indeed and he is the lead. The man who was the star of 'The Invisible Man' and featured prominently in Casablanca is the headline actor in 'Battle of the Worlds'. Amazingly, Rains gives it his all. It's an unusual performance by Rains and is atypical. And to think... he would shortly thereafter be cast in 'Lawrence of Arabia'!
-OTHER PRODUCTION NOTES:
- Th Italian translation of the original title is 'Planet of the Extinct Men'
- The movie is directed by Antonio Margheriti, using the pseudonym, Anthony Dawson.
- This releases audio commentary by Justin Humphreys says that he believes Claude Raines gives an excellent performance and did not 'phone it in' for a paycheck.
WHO IS ANTONIO MARGHERITI?: Antonio Margheriti was a top notch low budget ('B') Italian movie director. He made films in many different genre's but is best known for his Horror, Sword & Sandals and Science Fiction movies. Other science fiction movies directed by Margheriti are...
- Assignment: Outer Space (1960)
- The Wild, Wild Planet (1966)
- The War of the Planets (1966)
- Snow Devils (1967)
- Yor: The Hunter from the Future (1983)
COMMENTS:
NO LOVE LOST: I'm not sure what happened in the writers room but there were a bunch of love stories and potential triangles going on in this movie and none of them really went anywhere. It's as if, during filming, the production team said, "Let's scrap that angle and go with something else"... and then did this several times.
YADA, YADA, YADA: I don't necessarily think that movies that are very 'talky' are not good. I think it's better to have too much information as opposed to too little. In this movie's case, there is a lot of unnecessary dialogue because there are plot threads that are left unfinished and others that simply go nowhere important.
LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS: My expectations for this movie were zero, especially upon seeing it's ratings on various sites. Well... you know how it goes... when you set your expectations low, it's not hard to exceed them. This movie exceeded my 'zero' expectations.
RATINGS/CONCLUSIONS: ***Note*** I only occasionally put a category for 'Sets'. I did so because this film needed to differentiate from special effects.
-Excellent release for a mediocre movie. Excellent job by the Film Detective.
Blu-Ray: 7/10 - The picture isn't all that great and looks very soft. However, it's still much better than what I've previously seen.
Extra's: 9/10 - The only reason it's not a 10 is because there are releases that are better.
Plot: 5.5/10 - The plot is good, but the execution is not.
SFX: 5/10 - The effects were just OK.
Sets: 9/10 I think the sets were great for such a low budget movie.
Overall: 8/10 or 4 stars which I'm bumping up to 5 stars because it's unreasonable to expect that this movie will ever get a better release.
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A sci-fi spectacular from Italy's glory days
2001 and Star Wars were the death knell for most cinematic sci-fi produced before their release. Suddenly all the imaginative special effects used in films like Forbidden Planet just seemed hopelessly out of date. And “C” movies like Battle of the Worlds (1961) were relegated to afternoon nostalgia items sold to local TV stations. But, ironically, that sort of exposure created a fan base far beyond the film’s theatrical release, making Film Detective’s Blu-ray a welcome addition to the classic sci-fi home video library.Set sometime in the near future, Earth is threatened by a rogue planet from beyond the galaxy. But rather than colliding, this “outsider” settles into a stable orbit perplexing scientists across the globe…except for the lovably arrogant Professor Benson (Claude Rains) who sees the incursion as a precursor to something much worse. And he’s proven right when an exploratory mission to the orbiting body unleashes a fleet of death-dealing spaceships. The only solution is a mission into the heart of the “outsider” to unravel the mystery from the inside out.No bones about it, Battle of the Worlds is a talky affair. But luckily, it’s Claude Rains who does most of the talking. Colorfully cantankerous, his performance is miles above anyone else in the cast and keeps the plodding plot moving along by sheer force of will. Director Antonio Margheriti, a genre-hopping craftsman from Italy’s glory days, fills the screen with colorful ray guns, flying saucers, secret bases and at least two romantic subplots. Its inspiration is undoubtably the pulp sci-fi novels of the ’30 and ‘40s, which offer their own dated pleasure as well. But there’s something special about these now-quaint visions of the future, when cinema – and our own scientific achievements – seemed to have no limit.Another fine addition to The Film Detective’s burgeoning library, their Blu-ray has its share of audio-visual hiccups inherent in the archival print used to create the new 4K hi-def transfer. But the widescreen image looks miles better than anything released on disc before. And to sweeten the deal, historian Tim Lucas provides a 30-minute visual documentary to go along with an astute commentary track by Justin Humphreys.
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