The Night That Panicked America (1975)

Sadly Over-hyped

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

There's a lot I can say about this movie and it's all very good. First, it's amazing how erroneous information gets out and is plastered all over the place. Babe Hardy mentions in an earlier post that it was Art Carney who voiced the "Secretary of the Interior" on the broadcast. Carney NEVER was a part of the Mercury Players. The Secretary was voiced by Kenny Delmar, who is remembered by Old Time Radio enthusiasts as the announcer on the Fred Allen Show. He also played the role of the popular Senator Claghorn on Allen's program. Also vandino1 seems to be very down on this movie because it does not show Welles arriving in an ambulance at the CBS studios. He also claims Paul Shenar does not resemble Orson Welles. I completely disagree. Shenar played the Welles role brilliantly. Yes, he was close to 40 playing the role of Welles who would have been about 23 years old, but he does so very convincingly and does resemble him. And Welles did not always arrive at the studio in an ambulance at the last minute! Having gotten that out of the way, this is a fantastic movie for those who love old-time radio, and are interested in the power that radio once held. The storyline is very factual, showing how Americans believed the broadcast to be real. Those that tuned in late, and had been listening to The Chase and Sanborn Hour, missed the opening of the program introducing the show as the Mercury Theater. Others who first thought it was a play, later began having doubts as the action was very realistic. The nation was jittery, just having passed the Sudeten Crisis the month before. The public had grown accustomed to hearing programs interrupted for bulletins and the threat of war looming. Some people did think it was the Germans invading. Above all else, at that time radio was infallible. If you heard it on the radio it was true! It had to be true! The pacing of the movie is very good, speeding up as the action starts to take place. The studio where the program scenes were shot was very accurate, and look like the old CBS studios in New York. Observing the action in the studio, the actors working the microphones, the sound effects, and the scenes of production staff in the control room is very good and gives a glimpse of what a radio broadcast during that time period would have looked like. It is a fascinating story and is all very well depicted in this movie, showing the action at the studio interspersed with scenes of the other characters reacting across the country.The all-star cast is great! John Ritter, Meredith Baxter, Will Geer, Michael Constantine, Eileen Brennan, Vic Morrow, Tom Bosley, and Casey Kasem among them. I remember as a kid watching this movie on the ABC Friday Night Movie on October 31, 1975. Now the best news of all, this movie is available on DVD from Amazon! I have ordered a copy and watched it. It is uncut, original, and great quality. I was fortunate enough to have a recording of it I made from TV many years ago, but now with the DVD, it is available to everyone. There's been a lot of posts over the years on the Internet from fans of this movie anxiously waiting for it to come out on DVD. Now it's here and available! I highly recommend this great movie about a fantastic event that really did happen!

Today is the 71st anniversary of Orson Welles' radio production of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" as adapted by Howard Koch for the program "Mercury Theater on the Air". It's also the 30th of my first listening to it on WIBR-AM when I switched between the radio (which had a clear signal) to stereo (which had static making it impossible to hear) back to radio for the last news "bulletins" and the final monologue of Welles. So for the occasion, I decided to rewatch the telemovie, "The Night That Panicked America", especially after listening again to the original radio broadcast this morning. While Koch's script was indeed used for the movie there are some noticeable differences: Koch was not identified in the original radio broadcast, after the initial music of "Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra" the rest of it was not the same as on the program, and Orson here says the network's full name at the end instead of its initials. Anyway, the film goes from the behind-the-scenes before, during, and after the show at CBS to events at various places in the United States where the "invasions" supposedly took place. Much of it is pretty intensely dramatic but there are also some humorous scenes like when reporter "Carl Phillips" is identified as "burned", the person that played him (Granville Van Dusen) is seen looking at a crossword puzzle. That scene in San Francisco with that butler mocking his employer with his take on the Martians was also good for a laugh. Not to mention that water tower scene near the end. But there were some intense ones too like the scenes involving Eileen Brennan and Vic Morrow as a married Jersey couple who panic during the broadcast with their kids in tow or Will Geer as the Presbyterian minister who almost loses it when Cliff DeYoung-whose character is Catholic-rushes back in the church to frantically get Geer's daughter played by Meredith Baxter to marry him. It's also a hoot to see Tom Bosley, who's always Howard Cunningham to me, as a nervous network executive, John Ritter as a farmer boy anxious to fight the Germans, and especially, "American Top 40/America's Top 10" host Casey Kasem as many of the radio play's characters (of course, he introduces the band at the beginning). The same goes for one Burton Gilliam, who I recognized from Blazing Saddles, as a bar patron who knows it's a radio show initially before being fooled and getting arrested. Other nice touches are the way the "aliens" opened their hatch (a jar being opened inside a toilet bowl), seeing that farmer switch from the more popular "Chase and Sanborn Hour"-which starred Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy-because he didn't like the singer showcased, and seeing the "Secretary of Interior" sound just like Roosevelt! (Loved hearing the way the last one just stretch his words!) The best part, however, was seeing the way Orson Welles was portrayed by Paul Shenar as we see him directing from his podium, saying the lines Welles said, and arguing with Bosley about putting that disclaimer on the air during the station break (I happen to think the way they all got excited about where to put the disclaimer was contrived and was probably meant to be there even before the hysteria but it was still a dramatically compelling scene). I've probably said too much so I'll just say that "The Night That Panicked America" comes highly recommended to anyone who loves seeing a behind-the-scenes depiction of a radio program and the events that happened around it.

i really like the way this one was done have not seen it for a long time have a lot of war of the worlds stuff even corresponded a while with Ann Robinson

This film was an excellent portrayal of the radio broadcast and the actor who played Orson Wells did an excellent job. The sound effects at the radio station was unbelievable accurate as to the sound of an alien space craft both landing and the sound of the hatch coming off, very scare as was suppose to happen especially back in the 30's. The acting to go along with the radio broadcast was out of sight. This was a very entertaining movie and i wish it was also available on video as stated by Mike Spangler, if that is not possible than it should be made available to be shown on TV again, so people could record it as I did some years ago, but have a very poor copy of. If this is available to be replayed on TV, than this Halloween should be appropriate to re-broadcast this fine movie