When I think of classic literature that really gets under my skin and leaves some scars, H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is at the top of the list. The many adaptations of Wells' timeless extraterrestrial tale are just one indication of the novel's enduring legacy, and that legacy continues to grow now that the first The War of the Worlds film is coming to the Criterion Collection.
Announced on Criterion's Twitter account, The War of the Worlds (1953) will join the Criterion Collection this July as a new Blu-ray featuring a 4K digital restoration and new cover art by artist Patrick Leger.
We have the full release details and a look at the cover art and images from the film below, and be sure to visit the Criterion Collection online for more information.
From Criterion Collection: "A mysterious, meteorlike object has landed in a small California town. All clocks have stopped. A fleet of glowing green UFOs hovers menacingly over the entire globe. The Martian invasion of Earth has begun, and it seems that nothing—neither military might nor the scientific know-how of nuclear physicist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry)—can stop it. In the expert hands of genre specialists George Pal and Byron Haskin, H. G. Wells’s end-of-civilization classic receives a chilling Cold War–era update, complete with hallucinatory Technicolor and visionary, Oscar-winning special effects. Emblazoned with iconographic images of 1950s science fiction, The War of the Worlds is both an influential triumph of visual imagination and a still-disquieting document of the wonder and terror of the atomic age.
Spine #1037
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, created by sound designer Ben Burtt and presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2005 featuring filmmaker Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns, and author Bill Warren
- Movie Archaeologists, a new program on the visual and sound effects in the film featuring Burtt and film historian Craig Barron
- From the Archive, a new program about the film’s restoration featuring Barron, Burtt, and Paramount Pictures archivist Andrea Kalas
- Audio interview with producer George Pal from 1970
- The Sky Is Falling, a 2005 documentary about the making of the film
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds from 1938, directed and narrated by Orson Welles
- Radio program from 1940 featuring a discussion between Welles and H. G. Wells, author of the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic J. Hoberman"
Our edition includes: commentary from 2005 featuring @joe_dante; a program on the visual & sound effects; a program about the film’s restoration; The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation from 1938, directed and narrated by Orson Welles; an essay by J. Hoberman; and more! pic.twitter.com/E79BfjicsO
— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) April 15, 2020
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
