I was presently overjoyed to see another most excellent well acted and cast SiFi jewel The Day the Earth Stood Still followed by a double whammy on TCM tonight The War Of The Worlds imma going to enjoy this one! Crashing in my robe and recliner with a Bloody Mary

I have a DVD copy of The Day the Earth Stood Still and re-watch it every few years.

I just finished watching a special DVD collector's edition of War of the Worlds and after watching the movie went back and re-watched it with commentary from the movie's main actors Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. She was one of the very young up and coming studio actors/actresses in "the Golden Circle" acting group and was all of 19 years old when she did WOTW.

She jokes about the fact that someone handed her a bra that was designed to greatly enhance her bosom. Also, she was forced to wear a 2 piece wig over her natural red hair to achieve the hairstyle they wanted for the movie.

The daughter of the SFX guy on the movie was interviewed for the commentary. She was a little girl at the time and she and her father worked all night long on the creature the night before the farmhouse scene was filmed in which the viewers can briefly see the creature. The creature was largely paper-mache and barely had time to dry before shooting and at one point when Ann Robinson fell back during the scene she stepped on a part of the creature and it almost fell over and was destroyed.

The scene in which the creature's veins are throbbing was nothing more than a hollow tube with a stage hand off screen blowing and sucking into it.

We can laugh at the SFX from that time period now but that was state-of-the-art SFX back then and it required a lot of creativity and "can-do" thinking to achieve the effect...so I don't care that you can see the alien ships hanging from wires.

There is actually some pretty good vintage WW I, WW II, and 1950's era stock military footage briefly shown in the movie. The scenes of the military arriving to establish a perimeter around the alien craft were filmed in the Arizona desert and they were given permission to film while the AZ National Guard was on maneuvers. Loved the old Flying Wing footage!

Brings me back to being a kid and watching these movies...classics for sure!

Forbidden Planet was on after War of the Worlds - also a great classic!

"Can I be of service sir?"