Odd no one else noted it: I remember the ending as an offhand precursor to
"War of the Worlds": the crystalline surface "windows" crashing down into
debris, and the old 1899 astronaut laughing darkly about Cavor having had a bad cold! Could I possibly be recalling a different film?
Dee4j
No, you're absolutely right. I have the Region One dvd and that's how it ends. Bedford watches on television as the astronauts (present day) explore the selenite city and it begins to crumble and he mutters how Cavor having a bad cold when they left for the moon. Then he looks through a telescope at the moon with the orbiter going around it.
shareThe "War of the Worlds" ending was added as a way to get rid of the Mooninites in the present day. The movie started and ended in present day 1964 during a current moon mission that find a note left by the astronauts in 1899. The had to explain why there are not aliens on the moon, whereas in the Wells novel nobody is going back to the moon because it's 1899, so the aliens living there aren't a problem anymore.
shareAnd the funniest part is, Cavor didn't sneeze once while they were on the moon! Funny sort of cold he had which didn't seem to have any of the usual symptoms!
Actually, Cavor begins coughing up a storm while helping Bedford and Kate restore the sphere for the flight back to Earth.
shareYes he does, he even gets his hankie out when they're getting ready to go back.
shareThe original novels "War of the Worlds"(1898) and "First Men in the Moon"(1901) were both written by H. G. Wells. The 1964 movie "First Men In the Moon" altered the story considerably, adding the sub-plot of the Selenites being destroyed by an earthly cold virus, which was not in the original book. It's impossible for this sub-plot to be a precursor to the film "War of the Worlds" (1953), because "First Men in the Moon"(1964) came eleven years later.
The original novel "First Men in the Moon" ends with the Sphere splashing down in the ocean and Bedford safely returning to earth. Cavor is left stranded on the moon, but is able to send radio messages up till his presumed death at the hands of the Selenites. There is no mention of the moon civilization being adversely affected by contact with humans.
Here's a link, to a complete text version of the original novel.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1013/1013.txt
P.S. The ending of the 1953 movie "War of the Worlds" was also altered from the H.G. Wells novel. The film narration gives GOD credit, for destroying the Martians with bacteria. Wells was an Atheist, who would have loathed the change to his story. Gene Barry’s last line states “We were all praying for a miracle.” The final narration ends with "The Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved, by the littlest things, which GOD in his wisdom had put upon this Earth." It’s rather ironic, that bacteria and viruses pose a constant danger to humans, and I doubt anyone has ever praised God for making us sick, disabled or dead from micro-organisms. With all the advances in medical science, we still can’t kill a virus without killing the host. Viruses mutate frequently, making it very difficult to immunize people. Here’s just a few “little things” we can thank God for.
HIV, SARS, Ebola, Cholera, Tuberculosis, Typhus, Polio, Anthrax, Rabies, Salmonella, Lyme disease, Hanta virus, Meningitis, Smallpox, Avian flu and Bubonic Plague, just to name a few of the deadliest.
Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths in the 20th century. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.
In 1918, the "Spanish flu" was first identified in Kansas, the virus spread into a worldwide pandemic on all continents. Within six months, 25 million people were dead; some estimates put the total of those killed worldwide at over twice that number. An estimated 17 million died in India, 500,000 in the United States and 200,000 in the UK.
The "Asian Flu” virus caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957. Worldwide fatality estimates vary between one and four million.
The "Hong Kong Flu" caused about 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the United States later that year. It’s estimated that over a million people were killed worldwide.
Thank you, scifiguy1-1, for pointing out these scientific facts. The 1950s WAR OF THE WORLDS, as great a film as it is, is definitely a by-product of the McCarthy era, with the Martians a handy substitute for the "godless communists" which we--over here in 'godly' America--were so terrified of. Ironically, the line about God creating the bacteria in WAR OF THE WORLDS does appear in the book, but earlier in the narrative. It definitely does NOT end the book. Ray Harryhausen has admitted lifting the 'germs-killing-the-aliens' idea from WAR OF THE WORLDS for the ending of FIRST MEN IN THE MOON as a convenient way to end the film. But as you correctly mention, this idea appears nowhere in the novel.
It amuses me to no end, how those who care nothing about the atrocities committed by Stalin and other Soviet backed regimes in this time period will always feel compelled to refer to the Cold War as the "McCarthy period" or use quotation marks to mock the way Americans of that time period felt concerning Soviet atrocities.
shareExactly. You wrote the same thing I was thinking. It does get tiresome.
But that is straight from the catechism that earns approval from the "history" teachers. Hard to blame the kid.
"It amuses me to no end, how those who care nothing about the atrocities committed by Stalin and other Soviet backed regimes in this time period will always feel compelled to refer to the Cold War as the "McCarthy period"..."
Erm... the 1950s WERE the McCarthy era, which is what the post you're referring to is pointing out. The author of that post is trying to explain that the movie War of the Worlds comes directly out of the period where blacklisting made Hollywood screenwriters and directors afraid to write anything other than thinly-veiled attacks on communism. The Cold War lasted from the 1940s to the 1980s - it wasn't only confined to the 1950s and McCarthy's witch-hunt mentality did not last beyond the early 1960s. And by the way, historically speaking, the extreme right (Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet etc.) is just as much to blame for atrocities as is the extreme left.
I guess you live in a neo-nazi fantasy world where the political right is always blameless and the left is always evil.
The proof of how stupid you are is to see you make the common mistake of linking McCarthy to blacklisting which he had NOTHING to do with. That was done by the HOUSE Committee On Un-American Activities. McCarthy's investigations had to do with disloyalty in the State Department.
Second, the Cold War was not about McCarthy it was about a right-wrong struggle between one form of government based on freedom, the other based on totalitarianism (that is how one should be characterizing the Cold War, not with a smarmy aside about how a parallel to "godless communists" is somehow just "evil McCarthyism" in action). And just FYI, I think I would point out to regarding your "extreme right" comment that the Nazi party stands for National SOCIALIST party, and Mussolini came out of the Italian Socialist party as well (They have ZERO in common with the tenets of American conservatism, let alone the concept of free-market capitalism). Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin more appropriately belong to the same category of totalitarianism that America stood up to and defeated. It's unfortunate though that when it comes to the struggle against totalitarianism that came directly from Marxism-Leninism, there's a perverse desire to twist that into an unjust struggle and create a phony picture of it completely that does history no favors.
When it comes to the Cold War, buster, the principled anti-communists were indeed the ones who were on the "right" side (be they conservatives or principled anti-communist liberals) and calling that a "neo-Nazi fantasy" is only proof of the shameful efforts the far Left will go to, to deny the fact that history has proved every one of their sacred cow conceptions of Cold War history wrong. If you want to say the film was a product of the Cold War era by giving us a blatant stand-in for Soviet style totalitarianism, go ahead. But saying it's part of the "McCarthy era" and making smarmy asides to mock the basic reality of what the Cold War struggle was all about is historically dishonest and is the kind of perspective the Left is renowned for.
Saying 'the proof of how stupid you are' is proof of how stupid you are.
I never said that McCarthy had anything to do with blacklisting - you infer that,but I did not imply it. All I said was that he and blacklisting existed at around the same time, which is undeniable.
Anyone who thinks the Nazis were socialists just because they use the word 'socialist' in their name is probably simpleminded enough to believe that the German Democratic Republic was really democratic.
In short, you're a dufus, and a right wing nutter to boot.
Oh yes you did, by using McCarthy's name (wrongly) when talking about blacklisting. You were the one who decided to defend the indefensible post that prompted my initial remark which takes to task those who whitewash the atrocities of Stalin and the truth of what the Cold War was about with their perpetual obsession over McCarthy and blacklisting as if that's the singular thing that defined the era. Maybe in the future we should then refer to World War II only as the time when Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps and forget all about the fight against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany? That's simply taking the logic of your side to its natural conclusion.
And when I refer to the Nazis by their proper name, I am merely noting how they (like Mussolini's fascists) have nothing to do with free-market capitalism which is a fact. They came out of the same totalitarian impulse of the all-powerful control of the state that also came out of Stalin's regime and are not a flip-side "right wing" to what left-wing extremism comes out of (when the state controls everything, that isn't "right wing" by the modern American definition, which of course is simply classical liberalism of the 19th century). If anything, they ultimately have a lot more in common.
As for who deserves the title of doofus, I'll leave that to the whitewashers of Soviet conduct like you and other denizens of the Loony-toon Left who trot out the term "neo-Nazi" anytime someone from the mainstream challenges one of their sacred cows. :)
The Nazis were socialist because they believed in government having control (not necessarily ownership) of the productive forces of the economy. Total control in fact.
Doesn't make them Maoist or Leninist or some other form of Marxist, doesn't make them Social Democrats. But socialist is an appropriate label to use to describe their economic policies.
Your all confusing the House Committee on UN-American Activities with Joe McCarthy. They were around since the 30s and gained momentum in trying to ferret out Nazi spies and German Bundists and Communist party members in the House of Reps. They were the ones who took the Artistic community to court and instituted the blacklist.
McCarthy focused on the Government Senate and Soviet infiltration in that part of the Govt. Then Venona papers bare out that at least there were mores spies and fellow travelers allegedly working for the USSR then previously known. Many are questionable. But the fact is, that McCarthy was right in trying to weed out the traitors and there were pletny. If the US dosent have plants in foreign governments then the CIA is not doing its job. Why would the Russians be any different.
Hell the Islamic Imperialist Religious Ideology scored the greatest coup when they got one of their own elected POTUSA. But the thing is, he is obvious and yet not impeached. Those in the Govt who wont deal with him per the Constitution are in themselves traitors and are subject to trial and summary imprisonment or exectuion.
"it is, is definitely a by-product of the McCarthy era, with the Martians a handy substitute for the "godless communists" which we--over here in 'godly' America--were so terrified of."
Hardly an unjustified fear. Stalin only died the year the George Pal version of "War of the Worlds" came out. He was responsible for the deliberate famine in the Ukraine ~ 1930 that killed several million, the Great Purge(s) of the later 30s that killed millions more and crippled the Soviet military, the invasion of Poland with Germany (funny Britain and France didn't declare war on the SU for that and in fact ratified it after the war, along with the SU gobbling up the Baltic states and parts of Finland) and installing brutal communist regimes in Eastern Europe after WW2.
Or is all that just malarkey and commie-fear-mongering?
On the other hand, there were numbers of films that criticized facets of the US establishment, such as government overusing force in the name of security and mass paranoia in "Day the Earth Stood Still", the greedy tycoon in "When Worlds Collide", etc., knee-jerk mob fear and racism ("It came from Outer Space" and "The Mole People") narcissistic control freaks ("The Creature Walks Amongst Us"), etc. etc.
The history of 1950s and 1960s Sci-Fi films is a little more nuanced than big bad Capitalists and Religionists producing stories beating up the oppressed, the minorities, and their liberators, the communists.
Just FYI Sci-fi Guy the film version of WOTW did NOT alter Wells in this regard. Wells might have been an atheist but the line about praising God in fact comes from the original Wells novel and it's also to be heard in the Orson Welles radio adaptation as well.
That will probably teach you to do your homework first before letting your rather warped anti-religious bigotry get the better of you.
Even an atheist author with common sense knows that to sell books to a predominately Chistian market it would be unwise to bad mouth the Holy Spirit.
Beside, "the smallest creatures that God, in his wisdom..." sounds much more poetic than "the smallest creatures that evolved...." whether you believe in God or not.
<<The ending of the 1953 movie "War of the Worlds" was also altered from the H.G. Wells novel. The film narration gives GOD credit, for destroying the Martians with bacteria.>>
I've heard that claim before. And it's wrong!
In reality that line in the movie you're alluding to--about "the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, had put upon this earth"--is not an invention of the moviemakers but pretty much straight out of Wells' novel:
Go check out the Gutenberg copy at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm
"And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians--dead!--slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth."
I guess it's a case of people confusing Wells with his own characters! Wells may have been an atheist but that does not necessarily mean his characters have to be! (Remember also that the novel "War of the Worlds" is narrated by one of the characters rather than being told in the third person.)
"I guess it's a case of people confusing Wells with his own characters! Wells may have been an atheist but that does not necessarily mean his characters have to be!"
Also, a phrase like "the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth" can be taken simply as a figure of speech. When we say "on God's green earth" or "as sure as God made little green apples" or "God bless you" when someone sneezes, or if an insurance policy mentions "acts of God," are we really invoking the Deity?
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
So how does it end in any of the NON-region 1 DVDs?
shareExactly the same way.
Why is Duct Tape like The Force?
Well let me ask the question differently then :-). What was the ending that dee4j saw that DIFFERS from the one with the crashing windows and the bad cold, and where does one see it?
shareIn the book, there isn't a film version that is any different from the one you've probably seen...it says all that above.
sharedee4j is talking about another movie First Men in the Moon. Which was written in short novel by the same author H G Wells.
share