The second Space-Opera for Antonio Margheriti, again produced by his friend Turi Vasile, after the success of Antonio's debut entry "Assignment Outer Space" (1960) has a malicious spaceship threatening the Earth. On this his second film: "Battle of the Worlds", it is an entire planet that goes on collision course towards the Earth. A sort of "spaceship" planet controlled and piloted by a gigantic computer, programmed for the conquest of Earth. The aliens responsible for this plan, and of the voyage which has required decades in space travel, are by now extinct, and the planet is lifeless, make exception for the computer and thousands of radio controlled flying saucers under their control. The computer, unaware of the extinction of its creators, continues relentlessly with the plan of conquest in order to complete its mission. All attempts fail to arrest the menace with rockets and atomic missiles launched from spaceships. Only a few men, commanded by an eccentric but luminary scientist, may succeed in stopping the attack of the "Outsider"!, that’s how the scientist names the planet, and save the Earth by destroying the gigantic computer.
 
Antonio Margheriti has always declared his passion for comic books and in this film his inspiration came from "Flash Gordon" by Alex Raymond. He developed some situations and characters, like the eccentric Professor Benson (Claude Rains) who appears very similar to the insane Professor Zarro, and similar also is the initial structure of the story. For this film, Antonio had at his disposal a little larger budget, not much, but enough to hire an international celebrity in Claude Rains (Notorius, Casablanca, The Invisible man, The Phantom of the Opera). His involvement availed a very intense interpretation, rendering his character strange yet intriguing. In the cast there were also some other good Italian actors, whom became very famous in the years to follow, like: Umberto Orsini, Renzo Palmer and Giuliano Gemma, one of the stars of the decades in "Spaghetti Westerns", in his first appearance on film. Even with this his second film, Margheriti had great success all over the world, and he maintained the merits shown in his notable technical qualities through the years. So much so that the Production company made a re-rendering edition in 1978, entitled "Planetary Wars" following the extraordinary success and the return of Science Fiction movies with "Star Wars" by George Lucas.  

Title

Battle of the Worlds

Aka

Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti (Ita)

Director

Antonio Margheriti (Anthony Dawson)

Story by

Ennio De Concini

(Vassilji Petrov)

Screenwriter

Ennio De Concini

(Vassilji Petrov)

Photography by

Marcello Masciocchi

Art Director

Umberta Cesarano

Editor

Mario Serandrei

Music by

Mario Migliardi

Cast

Claude Rains

Role

Benson

Bill Carter

Bob

Maya Brent

Eva

Umberto Orsini

Fred

Renzo Palmer

Barryson

Jaqueline Derval

Evelyn

Giuliano Gemma

Story

The spatial observatories of the earth and those installed on Mars, register a terrible and unbelievable fact: a planet belonging to another Solar system has entered the cosmic fields near to our planet, with serious danger for the Earth. Planet Earth is under great threat and could be destroyed by the planet, which as it advances upsets the equilibrium of Earth’s gravitational forces. There is a man on Earth, who is alert to this very real danger and aware as to what is going to happen. Professor Benson, a peculiar scientist who has resolved some of the most difficult problems known to man remains closed off in his laboratory within a greenhouse. The Military, however, do not take into consideration the warnings from this scientist, and instead act according to their own ideals. They send a certain number of spaceships up against the planet, with the intent of destroying it. But from the surface of the planet in retaliation thousands of flying saucers take off to attack and destroy this assault armed with deadly rays. When the situation becomes overwhelming and the Earth is about to be destroyed by the planet, the Military turn to the science of Benson. He discovers that the flying saucers are controlled by a sort of acoustic signal which comes from within the interior of the planet, where rest millions of extraterrestrial laying dead, killed due to an unknown catastrophe. Establishing control of the flying saucers systems it becomes easy for the spaceships to destroy them. Still during the battle Benson and a group of scientists land on the mysterious planet, and enter the caves that go deep into the heart of the planet in order to observe with his own eyes. Deaf to the calls of his companion he refuses to return to the sanctity of the spaceship. Taken over by his compelling scientific hunger for knowledge, Benson remains on the planet while hundreds of nuclear missiles are flying towards the planet in order to destroy it !.

Curiosity

Even having a bigger budget in respect to his first film "Assignment Outer Space" the production struggled with economic difficulties, and Antonio had to face some big problems. The money for the constructions and special effects were too small to invent a realistic planet and the "Aliens", or the majority of the alien creatures that are seen in the film, come representative care of Antonio’s enormous imaginative creativity. 

His honest innocence along with rolls of transparent rubber tubes, illuminated with red or green lights was an idea in order to save money, we were forced by a congenital poverty because we did not have the monies to realize any sort of sophisticated planet construction. In those years the cheapest things we could buy were those rubber pipes, so we decided to use them for the set dressing. With the smaller ones we did the miniatures, and with the bigger ones we did the decor. Anyway, even if this "artistic" intuition of Antonio Margheriti did not result in being as great as it should have been, and he was absolutely unhappy about this. Even with such difficulties the results were that of the first "extraterrestrials" seen in an Italian Science Fiction movie.