Ulla! (1)
Today, a quick pictureless rant on one of the greatest stories ever told, Jeff Wayne's "The War of the Worlds". Hm? Whats that you say? H.G. Wells wrote "War of the Worlds"? Oh, yes, well, if you're going to get snippy about it, okay, Mr. Wells wrote it. It's still the greatest story of the 20th century. What other story can you think of that a hundred years later it has not one, not two, not three, but four major retellings / reworkings, all of which are classics in their own right? Astounding.
The original, of course, is another Wells masterpiece, and one can only imagine how terrifying it was to Victorian England to read of giant, three-legged Martian machines striding up the Thames, knocking down bridges and setting London afire; malignant red weed growing over everything in its path; no hope, no defense (or "defence") until the tiniest of things, the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water, defeated the ugly, drippy, leather skinned Martians by catching them a good dose of the flu or something; the Martians, able to leap the depths of interplanetary space, had not thought to immunize themselves before departure.
In '38, of course, another upstart Welles, Orson, scared the living crap out of America by doing the War as a newscast, and created a legend for this Welles he only barely eclipsed with the release of Citizen Kane. Every Halloween since, and probably forever, the story of the Night that Panicked America will be told as a metaphor for something -- communist and/or Nazi fear, something -- and so the second great War of the Worlds became legend.
In the '50's, the genius of George Pal recast the War in "modern" America -- complete with the trashing of Los Angeles and the dropping of The Bomb. As a kid I think I saw the movie about fifteen times, every time it was on TV, and it is suffused with the creeping terrors. I find the ruined, abandoned L.A. sequence compelling to this day, and the menacing flying "tripods" (look for it, they're there) flying out of the ineffective mushroom clouds like the most menacing dinosaurs you've ever seen. It is one of the best of the nuclear nightmare horror films of the decade -- we have this immense power, and we cant control it -- in fact, even more chillingly, the fact is the only thing that can stop our destruction at the hands of this unleashed power is another thing we have no control over -- disease. If the nukes dont get us, the microbes will.
Finally, though, the War of the Worlds that has captivated me for years (by the way, I havent seen the Spielberg one yet, because, well, I'm still mad at him for setting it in the present day and not making the aliens Martians somehow) is the aforementioned Jeff Wayne version. I'm still not entirely sure who Jeff Wayne was, but he created the weirdest hybrid album that works I have ever heard: an 80-minute, rock/disco opera featuring members of the Moody Blues and Thin Lizzy, narrated by Richard Burton, telling the original late-Victorian War of the Worlds -- the Wells version, which I hope that somebody in the next 20 or 30 or so decides to make into a film, cuz it still hasnt been done -- it shouldnt work, but it does, and almost 25 years after I first heard it, I still love it.
The night I first heard it is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. This is one of those stories, children, in the days before the internet, before CD's, before MTV, before cable, before even most video games. This was 1978 (or so). There was one shopping mall in Portland -- it's no longer there - known as Eastport Plaza.
There wasn't much there to hold my interest, except maybe HK Limited, a bookstore / office supply store where I might score some decent sci-fi paperbacks on occasion. There was also one of those weird little record store-cum-head shop places called "DJ's Sound City" in and among the Hallmarks and whatever else was there. On this particular night, we went to do, oh, heck, I dont know, and I went along because, well, that's what you did with your parents back then, you went along.
I was always just a tad scared when I would venture into DJ's -- there were records there with names and covers that I knew I, as a young Church of God boy, should not see (anybody remember the Ohio Players?), and there was an air of menace among the probably harmless teenage and young adult staff that I probably largely created because, well, they worked in a place with blacklight felt marijuana posters on the walls.
This night was different; tonight there was Something Going On; a hustle and bustle around the front of the store, and (whoa!) posters in the windows of some record called the War of the Worlds with the whole tripod thing blowing up a ship and holy moley maybe they're going to do something with this....
Next: Hippies and Martians
The original, of course, is another Wells masterpiece, and one can only imagine how terrifying it was to Victorian England to read of giant, three-legged Martian machines striding up the Thames, knocking down bridges and setting London afire; malignant red weed growing over everything in its path; no hope, no defense (or "defence") until the tiniest of things, the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water, defeated the ugly, drippy, leather skinned Martians by catching them a good dose of the flu or something; the Martians, able to leap the depths of interplanetary space, had not thought to immunize themselves before departure.
In '38, of course, another upstart Welles, Orson, scared the living crap out of America by doing the War as a newscast, and created a legend for this Welles he only barely eclipsed with the release of Citizen Kane. Every Halloween since, and probably forever, the story of the Night that Panicked America will be told as a metaphor for something -- communist and/or Nazi fear, something -- and so the second great War of the Worlds became legend.
In the '50's, the genius of George Pal recast the War in "modern" America -- complete with the trashing of Los Angeles and the dropping of The Bomb. As a kid I think I saw the movie about fifteen times, every time it was on TV, and it is suffused with the creeping terrors. I find the ruined, abandoned L.A. sequence compelling to this day, and the menacing flying "tripods" (look for it, they're there) flying out of the ineffective mushroom clouds like the most menacing dinosaurs you've ever seen. It is one of the best of the nuclear nightmare horror films of the decade -- we have this immense power, and we cant control it -- in fact, even more chillingly, the fact is the only thing that can stop our destruction at the hands of this unleashed power is another thing we have no control over -- disease. If the nukes dont get us, the microbes will.
Finally, though, the War of the Worlds that has captivated me for years (by the way, I havent seen the Spielberg one yet, because, well, I'm still mad at him for setting it in the present day and not making the aliens Martians somehow) is the aforementioned Jeff Wayne version. I'm still not entirely sure who Jeff Wayne was, but he created the weirdest hybrid album that works I have ever heard: an 80-minute, rock/disco opera featuring members of the Moody Blues and Thin Lizzy, narrated by Richard Burton, telling the original late-Victorian War of the Worlds -- the Wells version, which I hope that somebody in the next 20 or 30 or so decides to make into a film, cuz it still hasnt been done -- it shouldnt work, but it does, and almost 25 years after I first heard it, I still love it.
The night I first heard it is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. This is one of those stories, children, in the days before the internet, before CD's, before MTV, before cable, before even most video games. This was 1978 (or so). There was one shopping mall in Portland -- it's no longer there - known as Eastport Plaza.
There wasn't much there to hold my interest, except maybe HK Limited, a bookstore / office supply store where I might score some decent sci-fi paperbacks on occasion. There was also one of those weird little record store-cum-head shop places called "DJ's Sound City" in and among the Hallmarks and whatever else was there. On this particular night, we went to do, oh, heck, I dont know, and I went along because, well, that's what you did with your parents back then, you went along.
I was always just a tad scared when I would venture into DJ's -- there were records there with names and covers that I knew I, as a young Church of God boy, should not see (anybody remember the Ohio Players?), and there was an air of menace among the probably harmless teenage and young adult staff that I probably largely created because, well, they worked in a place with blacklight felt marijuana posters on the walls.
This night was different; tonight there was Something Going On; a hustle and bustle around the front of the store, and (whoa!) posters in the windows of some record called the War of the Worlds with the whole tripod thing blowing up a ship and holy moley maybe they're going to do something with this....
Next: Hippies and Martians
Brought to light by JTK at 8:29 PM
2 Comments:
Uh...in reference to initial question: try Shakespeare!
THIS QUESTION: What other story can you think of that a hundred years later it has not one, not two, not three, but four major retellings / reworkings, all of which are classics in their own right?
Uh try Chaucer
try Conon Doyle
try Boccaccio
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