The War of the Worlds - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The War of the Worlds or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The War of the Worlds

[toni]

The heat ray was burning welding wire with a blowtorch forcing the sparks off of it.

[toni]

The sound effects of the Martian war machines' heat ray were created from three electric guitars played backward. The sound of the Martian screaming after Forrester hit it was a mixture of a microphone scraping along dry ice and a woman's scream played backward. The former set of sound effects became widely used stock sound effects after the film was released. They are still in use.

[javier]

In an early version of the script, Dr. Forrester and Sylvia were engaged. In this version, according to Ann Robinson, there's no real romantic interest between them.

[kylie]

The Martian machines were models suspended from wires. For the final sequences where the machines die, they are shown crashing into telegraph poles - this allowed the filmmakers to hide the suspension wires with the telegraph wires.

[chad]

The disintegration of Colonel Heffner took 144 (a gross) individual mattes. Earlier in the scene, the stuntman who portrayed the soldier catching on fire was badly burned from the flames getting out of control.

[tom]

The name of the protagonist, Dr. Clayton Forrester, was borrowed by the popular series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988) to be the name of their villainous scientist.

[linda]

A figure of Walter Lantz's most popular character, Woody Woodpecker can be glimpsed in the branches of the tree the initial Martian cylinder meteor flies over. Lantz and George Pal were close friends and Pal always worked an appearance of Woody Woodpecker into each of his films.

[marc]

To create the mushroom cloud, a metal drum filled with explosive gas was detonated which blew colourful explosive powders resting on top of the drum 75 feet into the air.

[kenneth]

The scripture Pastor Matthew was reciting before being disintegrated by the Martians, is Psalms 23 of the Original King James Version of the Bible. (Before, different versions were created, replacing old English with 21st Century English. 4 SAMPLES: Thou = You. Yea = Yes. Wot = Know. Ass = Donkey.)

[beth]

In the theatrical trailer, when the first Martian meteor hits the Earth, there is a large explosion and a cloud of smoke. In the film itself, the same shot contains only a flash when the meteor hits.

[veronica]

The two Martian machines that crash in Los Angeles are really the same machine from a different angle with the film image reversed.

[wesley]

The prologue of the film shows paintings of the other planets in the Solar System, which the Martians examined and rejected as being unfit for habitation, finally selecting the Earth. The planet Venus, however, is neither shown nor mentioned (it would not be suitable either, as its surface is excessively hot due to an extreme greenhouse effect, is highly volcanic, and plagued by sulfuric acid rains). The paintings were made by Chesley Bonestell, as famous astronomical painter whose works were often published in books on astronomy and space travel in the 1950s.

[carl]

Cecil B. DeMille's personal choice to produce the film after Alfred Hitchcock declined to direct the film was George Pal, who was renowned for his Puppetoon animation technique and two earlier live-action sci-fi films: Destination Moon (1950) and When Worlds Collide (1951). However, DeMille gave complete control to Pal over the production, and Byron Haskin was ultimately chosen to direct the film, a decision with which DeMille was pleased.

[jim]

Lee Marvin was offered the male lead.

[dustin]

In the farmhouse, when the Martian fled from Clayton and Sylvia, Charles Gemora, who had to control the Martian by kneeling in the costume, almost fell out of the back of the suit when one of the workers pulled the platform on which the Martian was kneeling out of the shot, too fast. If you look closely at the scene, you can see the Martian is tipping over slightly.

[scarlett]

The sound of the spaceships shutting down was made by vacuum cleaners being turned off.

[russell]

Albert Nozaki based his designs of the Martian machines on the shape and movements of manta rays, cobras, and swans.

[bernice]

The images of each planet in the Solar System that appear at the beginning of the film are paintings by Chesley Bonestell which appear in the original 1949 edition of the book "The Conquest Of Space" by Willy Ley.

[chris]

Reportedly, George Pal wanted to do the final third of the movie in 3-D, starting with the sequence in which the atomic bomb is used unsuccessfully against the Martians.