Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Rabh17 Okay-- The Earth is threatened by an Outsider-- a dark world that comes out of the Intergalactic Depths to wreck havoc on the Earth. Attempts to investigate gives rise to a fleet of flying saucer ships that destroy all who approach!! DOOM!!!Yes-- this is 1961! This was not a movie of the Space Age-- but more precisely a Movie from the Age of Outer Space.And despite it being an Italian film, it is quite good, giving a strong nod to the basic lay science of Outer Space as it was known in that bygone era. So forget any descriptions such as 'Spagetti Space Opera'. They don't do justice to this film.For me as a kid in 1968 when I first saw it on TV-- in grainy Black & White -- it was merely an exciting film about space rockets and flying saucers. The dialogue outside of the spaceship scenes was gibberish and mainly ignored. And when I WAS paying attention, my mother kept calling to me from the kitchen to turn off the 'Idiot Box' and demanding if I had finished my homework like I was supposed to. Aaaaaagh!But Now as an adult, I hear the dialogue between "Dr. Benson" and his subordinates and the Council as rich in almost Shakespearean content as you listen to Dr. Benson excoriate his underlings and the Powers-that-Be about the power of calculation over the reliance on machines. "What's the purpose of Life, if you won't Know?" he demands in what seems to be a fit of madness. . . except he really isn't mad- just Misunderstood Genius.So when you watch this movie-- Pay Attention to Dr. Benson. He IS the center of this movie.And try to identify the classical string piece that always starts playing when Dr. Benson hits intellectual revelation!

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) Antonio Margheriti's Italian Spaghetti Space Operas are some of the most interesting science fiction from the 1960s. Starting with SPACE MEN (or ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE) and culminating with the brilliantly mod GAMMA ONE QUADROLIGY, Margheriti helped to shape the ultimate form of the genre -- Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY -- and gave it a truly modern ring (for the time) that was only bettered by the Soviet era science fiction like PLANETA BUR and MECHA NEVSTRACHU. A journeyman filmmaker with a background in production design, Margheriti was not as visionary in his approach as contemporary Mario Bava, who's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES remains the most impressive example of Spaghetti Science Fiction, but Margheriti had perhaps a more populist approach to his work that still endears forty-plus years later. His use of models, miniatures and pyrotechnics alone would have earned him a very respectable place in the annals of the genre by themselves.BATTLE OF THE WORLDS is his second trip into the galaxy for entertainment, and compared to the previous year's ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE, this movie is almost a quantum leap forward in terms of ambitions for his plot, characters and action sequences. And I suspect that as is the case with ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE a great deal of the critical responses this movie has accumulated ("Atsa one-a lousy meataball") has to do with the really crummy surviving prints of the film, or rather the surviving home video transfers available on public domain oriented DVD collections. BATTLE OF THE WORLDS was certainly a much more impressive experience when shown in it's correct original widescreen ratio, probably 2:35:1 Techniscope by the looks of the pan and scanning going on to condense the film for small screen. The color on the transfers -- which are likely traceable to the same early 1980s transfer to VHS -- are almost uniformly rotted nearly to sepia in spots, with plenty of surface noise & jumbled damage to individual frames. What most people are reviewing is the DVD they saw, not the film itself.I must admit that the first time I saw this movie I despised it, didn't understand it, and shelved the poor video for a few years until I sold it before realizing who director Anthony Dawson was. Now seeing it again a few years older and wiser I still must come clean and say I don't understand the plot, how the story gets from A to B to C, and have actually been paying attention just to figure it all out. From what I can gather, Earth finds itself under assault from a wandering "planet" that has come from another galaxy (a story idea Margheriti would later re-visit in his Gamma One project), ostensibly to conquer Earth as a new home for it's passengers. Only crazed astronomer/mathematician Claude Raines understands the phenomenon as what it really is: An attack, and urges the united Earth government bodies to act before it is too late.In pursuit of that end there are lots of frantic rocket ship battles, near collisions, big Margheriti explosions and of course a location shoot at a local power plant or electrical substation standing in for a spaceport. There is a base on Mars, guys in pressure suits doing stuff on the surface of the invading planet, a cute little puppy dog and even some romance. Including, oddly, old man Raines almost openly having a thing for his 20 year old assistant with her dark, fluttering eyelashes. Raines is easily the most impressive aspect of the film but mostly because he emotes such vigor in his role, and seems to be enjoying it so much, that you can't help but be charmed by the effort. Even if it's hard to understand what he's on about half the time. But like a Spaghetti Western what makes it "work" is the collection of individual moments that make up the film, some of which are actually very well done.5/10: Look fast for Spaghetti Western hero Giuliano Gemma in one of his first screen roles, and yes: We NEED a better print, badly.

scifiguy-2 I happened to see this many times in the 1960's, at kiddie matinees in the theater. Imagine 50 cents for a triple feature every weekend, for years on end. There were a lot of dog films, but this one stood out with decent f/x and unique sound effects. It's one of the earliest space-operas depicting dog fighting ships in space, preceded only by the 1959 Toho production of "Battle In Outer Space". Say what you want about the bad voice dubbing and the unknown Italian cast. Films like this were not being produced in the U.S. during this period, due to lack of effects technology, and budget constraints. At the time, it was a bold attempt in a genre that was just beginning. Jaded modern viewers should see this in context within the history of fantasy films. Pure science fiction was rare during this period, and a treat for fans at the time. Claude Rains has some very good dialouge, as a cynical mathmatician guiding efforts to thwart alien invaders. The ships are well conceived, with the footage re-used in later films. Unfortunately, the editing is choppy and the video transfers that exist are very poor. It would be nice to see a widescreen restoration.

thebigcube I'm very tired of Italian Science Fiction getting a bad rap for being dull films. Just sit back and let your self be hypnotized by the world that a film like BATTLE OF THE WORLDS creates and I guarantee you will find your self on a trip to the end of the universe. The sound effects and use of color alone will have you wishing this film will never end...and it almost seems it doesn't