Perhaps the best remembered radio dramatisation of all time (I can’t even think of what would be number two) – and even now it’s not hard to see why it was so impressive. The verisimilitude of the piece, mixing news updates and reports with “our regular programming” remains very effective. It’s still a jolt to realise that the reporter who we have been following is killed – and the ensuing disaster and terror is well conveyed, particularly the final cry for help. It’s actually Orson’s bits (he plays a scientist) which are least effective – I mean, he’s got the great radio voice, it’s just he seems a bit flowery and “radio adaptation”, whereas the other stuff is more realistic.Welles’ scientist has an encounter with a crazy military human who seems more interested in wishing he had Martian machines than the tragedy of it all – this seems to have inspired the Tom Robbins’ scenes in the Spielberg version – was it in the original novel? It has an anti-fascist bent to it which was presumably the work of Howard Koch, who wrote the script.
Structure wise the piece has the problem of the original novel – no real third act, just a deux ex machina. But there’s not much you can do about it with this because it’s such a famous deux ex machina.
NB Before anyone laughs at those ignoramuses of 1938 there were plenty of people who thought Blair Witch Project was real, and if they ever remade it on television with real life news broadcasts etc I think some people would be suckered in.
NNB A copy of the script is here.
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