PodBill Just what I expected

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

davedb I found this movie in one of those Mill Creek 50-packs. It's a low-budget sci-fi film that works better with ideas than special effects. As a MST3K fan I found myself riffing some scenes out of habit. But as flawed as it is, trashing it outright misses the better points.I don't know what movie Claude Rains thought he was in, because he truly brings his A-game as a curmudgeon. He's the professor (often in a hammock) who the futuristic government doesn't believe. Stuck in his belief of scientific fact, he is not taken seriously.Does Rains chew the scenery? Yep, but it's fun and funny. I felt he probably enjoyed this character. He gives Prof. Benson mannerisms and tics that a lesser actor would not have bothered with. So he is 2 of my 5 points, because is so fun to watch.

rstory-3 The one good thing I can say about this film is the space travel scenes. The ships are well designed and reflect what you would expect of interplanetary travel. The film actually accounts for the effects of gravity and acceleration.Most films take dismiss these factors.The main plot is also worthy. We have our first war with beings from another world. Their approach to destroy us is convincing.That is why it hard for me to imagine how poorly this plot is carried out. Every actor, and this includes Claude Rains, goes over the top with their characters. It is like they all suffer from some rare ham acting sickness. Prof. Benson, played by Claude Rains, speaks of calculus like it is some ancient unheard of language, when every engineer has had to learn this form of math. And he repeats it so often you to tell him to put a sock in it.I would like to see this story remade by people with some talent. Starting with the people who wrote the dialogue. Then a good director and a cast that can act.If you are like me and enjoy science fiction, especially from the past like Forbidden Planet, then don't waste your money on this.One of the misfortunes of this film is the space battle scene is chopped up. I remember seeing this film years ago and the battle scene was far better than the edited version that is shown here. It actually is hard to tell what is actually taking place, it jumps forward without giving much explanation as to reason for the actions at the end of the battle scene. As I said earlier the space sequences are the film's best part and the to have them chopped up like this just ruins the entire film.

Andrew Leavold From Italian genre expert Antonio Margheriti, or "Anthony M. Dawson" as he was known to the English speaking world, best known for films about cannibals and killer fish. In 1960 he started an entire genre of spaghetti sci-fi films with Assignment: Outer Space. It was a typically Italian exercise in creating something out of nothing, and not surprisingly at a time when any film with Hercules in the title meant instant box-office, it was sold around the world. For his second space opera Margheriti was handed a bigger budget - which means he was given slightly more than nothing - to create an ambitious, not to mention enjoyable, effects-filled no-brainer: the 1961 Battle Of The Worlds.More moolah meant star billing for an imported American actor. So, almost 30 years after playing The Invisible Man, aging raconteur Claude Raines plays Professor Benson, a cranky, wordy, gas-filled yet sympathetic egghead in Mr Magoo glasses who detects a planetoid dubbed "The Outsider" heading for the pseudo-utopian community on Earth. Against Benson's advice the Army sends its spacecraft to knock it out but they're destroyed by a fleet of spinning flying saucers who emerge from inside the planet with jagged laser beams a-blazing. The fools! Benson then discovers the planetoid locked into an ever-decreasing orbit around the Earth, suggesting a super-computer from a dying alien civilization inside the planet; his missionary zeal for pure knowledge leads him to offer himself in the ultimate act of sacrifice, descending deep into the bowels of the runaway planet.And they really do look like bowels - glowing red and filled with plastic tubing, a triumph of low-budget ingenuity from the Godfather of Spaghetti sci-fi thanks to his resourcefulness as a special effects wizard, working miracles out of a few toilet rolls and a vacuum hose. Amidst the relentlessly talky script and the pointless romantic interludes, there's a strange, almost quasi-revolutionary thread against the military industrial complex, but that's the crazy Italians for you. So, from the man who would one day direct Cannibal Apocalypse comes an early one in the insanely huge Antonio Margheriti catalog: the 1961 Battle Of The Worlds.

march9hare Claude Rains stars as Prof. Benson, a cynical mathematical genius/recluse who must save the world from implacable aliens. The movie has an interesting premise - a planetoid enters into orbit around the Earth causing widespread upheavals of Nature, and turns out to be a sort of alien Noah's Ark - but is marred by a tiny budget, hambone acting (except for Rains), oafish direction, and really crummy effects even for 1961. This may not have been Rains' last film, but he certainly deserved better. Having said all that, for some odd reason this one remains a favorite. Guess there's no accounting for taste. Seriously though, there are worse. MUCH worse.