Spielberg's War Of The Worlds imagery

When watching this new film, with tripods coming out of the earth (unlike in H.G. Wells's novel, where they fall down like meteorites), as well as looking somewhat like locusts,
I had to think about one of my favorite sci-fi series/films, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT / FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1958 BBC)(1967 Hammer). I'm sure film buff Spielberg knows this classic sci-fi story as well.

IMDB plot outline for the Hammer film: "An ancient Martian spaceship is unearthed in London, and proves to have powerful psychic effects on the people around."

The ship lies there for millions of years, and the horned locust-like inhabitants have projected their shapes upground all these years so that they became a Jungean archetypical memory in the human mind. The place where the ship is found is called Hobb's End, named after the devil. The martians are all dead, but the ship still works and causes great problems.

In CULT MOVIES, Danny Peary wrote: "Ironically, (Quatermass and the pit), far more intense and intellectually stimulating than its predecessors (Quatermass I and II), was released in America in the same year as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), the other major science fiction film to deal with the intriguing theme of 'race memory'. The blasphemous notion in (Quatermass) is: because our ape ancestors had contact with evil extraterrestrials who altered our evolution, we humans retain in our subconscious mind a concept of "Devil" - although we don't associate it with alien beings. (...)
"Kneale's decision to give his Martian insects three legs is a nod to H.G. Wells's Martians in his book War Of The Worlds."

Peary's synopsis: "Men doing expansion work at the underground station in the Hobb's End section of London uncover skeletons of ancient apes. Anthropologist Dr. Roney (...) wonders why these ancient apes have such large skulls. An assistant thinks she has found a pipe beneath the clay. Digging stops before it is unearthed because it may be an unexploded German bomb from World War II. Strangely, it has no magnetic hold, so it is not made of steel. (...) Now an intact ape skull is discovered. Quatermass realizes that since they were found next to the strange 'missile' they should have been destroyed when it hit the earth - unless they arrived WITH the object. But they are five million years old. (...) They investigate further and discover that there have been spooky happenings in the area dating back to Roman times - each time there was a digging. The object is uncovered. It is a large blue 'missile'."


As Danny Peary optioned that Nigel Kneale's television screenplay might have inspired Kubrick and Clarke for the 'race memory' idea (Clarke's original short story, The Sentinel, doesn't mention or hint to this idea), it's also thinkable that Spielberg, Friedman or Koepp were inspired by Kneale's work. They know of it, I'm sure.
But what counts for me, is the strong imagery connection between the 1967 film and Spielberg's WOTW.





"When there is no more room in the oven,
the Bread will walk the earth."