I saw this movie once on early television when they were struggling to get anything to fill hours. Every decent station had its own musical groups performing live, with fill in material done by known singers such as Burl Ives and others. These were the first music videos.
The plot was pretty thin but still memorable for me. Suppose the mob wants to spoil the election and arranges for every station in town to play a live documentary or newscast about the tidal wave hitting New York. Everyone would be glued to the TV box and forget to go vote. Thus the ward bosses get out to vote against the mayor, district attorney? Whoever. Somebody with some alertness realized that a building which had gone down was still transmitting stock news on the ticker. Whoa, call New York, confirm,get the voters out.
The production period suggests to me that this was cheap science fiction using the tidal wave footage from another movie. It was obviously influenced by the great radio shocker which warned not to simulate live news in a fictional invasion from Mars story.
Another reviewer suggests this was all so poorly done it was among the most horrible movies made. Maybe so. I can't address the effete aesthetics of film criticism because it has been too long and I have never had another chance to see it. HOWEVER, nobody in 1939 had a clue about what television coverage would be like on a large scale.
Consider our real coverage in the last fifty years. Big news happens and all stations replay and analyze the three minutes of film everybody has. Experts are called in ad nauseum to analyze in microscopic speculation to fill time until there is real news. But, there have been some really momentous broadcast moments which were live.
The early space race could not have been done without Walter Cronkite and the other guys giving us the scoop from mission central. One morning in the sixties I was almost late to work because nearly live pictures of the moon were being broadcast as they came in, each one closer than the last. The final frame was only half a picture because the vehicle sending the pictures took processing time for each frame. Viewers knew when the impact was because the picture snowed out.
Even science fiction writers failed to predict the amazing coverage of the lunar landings. We were there on live television sent all over earth. (Right, all shot in a studio and faked.) Even O. J. Simpson's Mars mission (Capricorn One ?) couldn't make that wash.
Considering the magnitude of the impact live television coverage has had in the last sixty years, at least give the people who came up with the idea some credit. Think about the impact of all the drug money selling us prescriptions and tell me a "live" disaster broadcast on all stations would not do something. I have listened to Orson Welles Mercury Theatre Mars broadcast many times. I have talked to old timers who knew it was just a story and those who were fooled.
Spielberg paid tribute to the gullibility of television viewers in his Mars story. Picture Cruise ignoring the CNN coverage of what was going on in Europe because strange things were happening down the block. Schlock O Schlock Tidal Wave? Maybe, but it certainly predicted the influence television would have. Give it a break.
The plot was pretty thin but still memorable for me. Suppose the mob wants to spoil the election and arranges for every station in town to play a live documentary or newscast about the tidal wave hitting New York. Everyone would be glued to the TV box and forget to go vote. Thus the ward bosses get out to vote against the mayor, district attorney? Whoever. Somebody with some alertness realized that a building which had gone down was still transmitting stock news on the ticker. Whoa, call New York, confirm,get the voters out.
The production period suggests to me that this was cheap science fiction using the tidal wave footage from another movie. It was obviously influenced by the great radio shocker which warned not to simulate live news in a fictional invasion from Mars story.
Another reviewer suggests this was all so poorly done it was among the most horrible movies made. Maybe so. I can't address the effete aesthetics of film criticism because it has been too long and I have never had another chance to see it. HOWEVER, nobody in 1939 had a clue about what television coverage would be like on a large scale.
Consider our real coverage in the last fifty years. Big news happens and all stations replay and analyze the three minutes of film everybody has. Experts are called in ad nauseum to analyze in microscopic speculation to fill time until there is real news. But, there have been some really momentous broadcast moments which were live.
The early space race could not have been done without Walter Cronkite and the other guys giving us the scoop from mission central. One morning in the sixties I was almost late to work because nearly live pictures of the moon were being broadcast as they came in, each one closer than the last. The final frame was only half a picture because the vehicle sending the pictures took processing time for each frame. Viewers knew when the impact was because the picture snowed out.
Even science fiction writers failed to predict the amazing coverage of the lunar landings. We were there on live television sent all over earth. (Right, all shot in a studio and faked.) Even O. J. Simpson's Mars mission (Capricorn One ?) couldn't make that wash.
Considering the magnitude of the impact live television coverage has had in the last sixty years, at least give the people who came up with the idea some credit. Think about the impact of all the drug money selling us prescriptions and tell me a "live" disaster broadcast on all stations would not do something. I have listened to Orson Welles Mercury Theatre Mars broadcast many times. I have talked to old timers who knew it was just a story and those who were fooled.
Spielberg paid tribute to the gullibility of television viewers in his Mars story. Picture Cruise ignoring the CNN coverage of what was going on in Europe because strange things were happening down the block. Schlock O Schlock Tidal Wave? Maybe, but it certainly predicted the influence television would have. Give it a break.