War of the Worlds

In 1953, Earth experienced a War of the Worlds. Common bacteria stopped the aliens, but it didn't kill them. Instead, the aliens lapsed into a state of deep hibernation. Now the aliens have been resurrected, more terrifying than ever before. In 1953, the aliens started taking over the world; today, they're taking over our bodies! - From the opening narration.

War of the Worlds was a late eighties reimagining of George Pal's 1953 sci-fi invasion classic—which was, of course, based on H.G. Wells' 1898 novel of a Martian invasion, a concept foreign to readers at the time. The show starred Jared Martin as Harrison Blackwood, a scientist with a vaguely Billy Crystal–like hairdo and a notion that he was right on the money in his memories of an alien invasion that, seemingly, everyone else on planet Earth has conveniently forgotten ever occurred.

The viewer may wonder how this sort of titanic plot hole can so easily be swept over, but somehow, leaving the weird ambiguity of it in the background is really no problem, as the rest of the ninety minutes or so of WotW: Resurrection is so entertaining that the sheer titanic implausibility of this is just generally brushed to the back of the viewer's mind.

What we have left over is a seasoned-for-the-era sci-fi and horror mini epic, something that could have marinated between the drugstore pages of so many off-the-rack pulps, or a readymade template for any generic action comic book or graphic novel from the late Reagan era, or even thereafter. We have triple-fingered alien goop monsters bursting their creepy tentacled hands through zombified chests; we have eerie, echoey alien voices speaking from crustaceous, rotting faces running with bruises and open sores; we have slam-bang action with flying bolas and dudes getting dragged behind motorbikes in the dark California night. Verily, it is good. It is good. It is all very, very good.

What we don't have, unfortunately, is an update of the original special effects from the 1953 film, which thirty-five years on seems a sort of stylistic or cinematic cop-out. What, the aliens are resurrected and gloopy and bug-eyed with red glowy eyes that see in a rainbow trio of colors, and drip sugary snot and cause their human hosts to go straight-to-video Fangoria gloop when they breathe their Tom Savini last, but we still have the same stingray model, bulbous green dome and heat-ray beam on a flower-stem UFO Martian kill machines we had thirty-five years in the past?

Are you kidding me? Even their forcefield shields have roughly the same bell-shaped candy jar appearance as the original film's, upon impact. They may be a tad more illumined due to the cinematographic upgrade, but on the whole, they all look badly stock, you dig me? A techno-horror thriller letdown.

At any rate, this War has Martin, a professor of Big Ballsy Brainery working at the Pacific Institute of Technology or some such place that only exists in the mind of television scriptwriters, where he makes inscrutable pronouncements while pulling pranks on stuffy Ferris Bueller instructors with bad dandruff. He and gal pal Suzanne McCullough (Lynda Mason Green) get together for some wacky alien-hunting hijinks, much to the annoyance of Blackwood’s other gal pal, a rising socialite with uber-bitch 1980s fashion sensibilities that would put Louise Robey to shame.

They and wheelchair-bound Jamaican stereotype computer scientist Norton (Philip Akin) use the 1988 version of AI to track and crack the alien code, and the aliens here have taken possession of a group of Red commie terrorist bastards who get sores and scabs on their faces and speak in a hollow, echoey, reverbed vocalization that sounds like they were recorded through Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer. They send out Martian death signals using an umbrella device they borrowed from Elliott in 1982.

The Martians are only rarely glimpsed, but their three-fingered hands (much thicker and missing suction cups this time) are seen bursting from chests, and there is a fair amount of straight-to-video late eighties fried egg slime and snot grue lifted from recycled back issues of Fangoria. How they got this stuff on TV in that era is anyone's guess. (Who could tell you, but an alien invader from—get this: Planet Mor-Tax. Har-har.) Luckily for us, Lt. Colonel Ironhorse (Richard Chaves) is here to lead his comic book strike force to victory over the Sovietized Martian menace. We should also mention a guest appearance by the venerable late John "Animal House" Vernon as, you'll never guess, a green uniformed and fruit-salad sporting top Army general, or something. Imagine that!

Set the scene, thematically, for the later shows such as X-Files and Millennium, as Hangar 18 (here rendered Hangar 15) is name-dropped, but aesthetically those latter two shows ripped off the heavy, gloomy, dark ambient atmospherics of Werewolf, of course. Thirty-seven years later, and the whistleblower testimony of Major Grusch basically confirmed what eighties sci-fi already knew: we got us a UFO problem, ladies and gents.

As for this forgotten television chestnut?

It's pretty good.

Tom Boy sez, "Check it out!"

War of the Worlds - (1988) S01E01 - The Resurrection: Part I Remaster HD

War of the Worlds - (1988) S01E02 - The Resurrection: Part II Remaster HD

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