WAR OF THE WORLDS, 1953

Directed by... Byron Haskin

Starring... Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Lewis Martin, Robert Cornthwaite, Sandro Giglio

A large meteorite sails over a small California town and crashes into the ground.... Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) who is on a fishing trip in the area is contacted and goes to the scene... There he meets Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson) and of course the two are immediately attracted to each other... The meteorite is too hot to handle when first found so three men remain behind to watch it during the night... Suddenly a hatch starts unscrewing to the amazement of the three guarding it... They raise a white flag and try to communicate with the inhabitants but are evaporated for their trouble... At the same time all power and phone lines in the town go dead... From the crater rise three alien spaceships...

The army is called in to stop the the advancing alien attack to no avail... The first forces are evaporated by a heat beam... Later an atomic bomb is dropped on the aliens and has no effect whatsoever...

The aliens then head towards Los Angeles which is being evacuated and is in total panic... The scientists are trying to get their equipment up into the hills to carry on their research to defeat the aliens, but their trucks are stolen by a rioting mob and the equipment thrown to the ground and destroyed... Clayton and Sylvia are seperated and he goes searching the streets for her finally finding her in a church... The attacking aliens are destroying everything as they move along and are almost at the church when suddenly all goes quiet... Clayton goes out to discover why the aliens have ceased the destruction... Then do you know what happens? You'll have to get the movie to find out...

This is one of the better of the 50's sci-fi films... The effects are good, especially the alien ships, and there's lots of buildings being destroyed...