Don't listen to the negative reviews

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Blistering performances.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

On IMDb, a score of 4.0 is pretty poor, but STILL I think this is wild overrating this film. IL PIANETA DEGLI UOMINI SPENTI ("Battle of the Worlds") is a truly terrible sci-fi film with nothing to recommend it. A small part of the rottenness of this movie isn't the fault of the film makers. The DVD I just watched had one of the worst prints I have ever seen. The color was almost 100% drained out of the film. While there were some patches of the film that had very dull and muted color, other parts looked like the film was originally shot in black & white--it was that faded. However, the ravages of time cannot explain away most of the awfulness that was this film!For some inexplicable reason (it had to be money or they were holding a family member hostage), the well-respected British/American actor Claude Rains was featured in this film. This is pretty sad, as his part in the film was rather annoying and one-dimensional. He played a brilliant professor who seemed to have super-human knowledge and could use calculus to pretty much explain EVERYTHING. In addition, he had the social skills of a hyena and spent most of the film yelling at everyone and acting very, very superior. He didn't play a person, really, but more of a caricature. The plot involves some planet that just shows up in the solar system. Amazingly, no one seemed to spot it until it practically was ready to seemingly collide with the Earth. Now here's the stupid part. When the governments on Earth realize the collision is coming, they don't want to tell anyone because it will cause panic! What part of "giant planet colliding with the Earth" don't they understand?! If this IS inevitable, let the people panic--they're all going to die anyway in a few days! In the meantime, we are treated by lots of ground-breaking special effects such as the space station on Mars as well as the high tech rocket ships. I once saw similar effects--back when I had "Major Matt Mason" toys when I was a kid. I know this dates me, but for those in the 40-50 age range, you probably know what I am talking about here. In other words, these things all looked like very, very cheap toys...at best. Heck, in some cases, you can see the strings on the rockets and the explosions and lasers were so very obviously drawn in later. The folks at studios like American-International or Ed Wood would have laughed at the amateurness of the special effects.In addition to looking craptastic, the plot was amazingly dull and I had a hard time staying awake to see the movie to completion. The movie, in essence, consisted of toys flying about, Claude Rains overacting and embarrassing himself and a plot so amazingly uninteresting I just wanted to see everything collide and end the film...as soon as possible!Dull, dull, dull...and stupid. This one clearly has earned the lowest rating of 1.

Claude Rains' worst part?This flick is a strong contender!Like his compatriots Bette Davis and Joan Crawford,he tries his hand at camp!Overacting is an euphemism.Wearing horrible glasses ,writing mathematical gibberish everywhere ,lazily lying on his hammock in his greenhouse,and ranting ceaselessly about the power of the army. .A new war of the worlds is about to break out! The flying saucers are hardly superior to Ed Wood's stuff,but the "il pianeta degli uomini spenti" (Rains finds the place so fascinating he decides to stay there till he dies ,impending death anyway)shows painstaking film sets ,and there's a smart nod at Noah's Ark but the desultory script borrows a lot from the highly superior "Forbidden planet" .Claude Rains' fans?Do they really have to choose this,among all his other films around?

Claude Rains stars as Prof. Benson, a cynical mathematical genius/recluse who must save the world from implacable aliens. The movie has an interesting premise - a planetoid enters into orbit around the Earth causing widespread upheavals of Nature, and turns out to be a sort of alien Noah's Ark - but is marred by a tiny budget, hambone acting (except for Rains), oafish direction, and really crummy effects even for 1961. This may not have been Rains' last film, but he certainly deserved better. Having said all that, for some odd reason this one remains a favorite. Guess there's no accounting for taste. Seriously though, there are worse. MUCH worse.

The one problem with Battle of the Worlds is that it tries to be a lot of things and doesn't quite pull any of them off. It tries to be a regular Italian space opera. It tries to be intelligent science fiction. Claude Rains definitely tries to make it a monodrama. Unfortunately, the script doesn't let it be any of these things, and Claude's overacting makes you almost want to take a swing at the poor guy...I'm hoping that he had a good time while he did this movie (since it was really his last film), because it really was fun to watch him in this movie. His performance as a cantankerous, pajama-wearing, genius of a hermit who can answer any problem through calculus just didn't help things, and his character's attitude toward everything that wasn't math or himself make me wonder why his co-workers didn't lock him up in a rubber room.The effects are a little on the loq quality side, even considering the general quality of Italian Sci-Fi movie SFX, but they don't really detract that much from the movie.