I don't regret buying the Hines' DVD

Funny you should mention that. The Music was pretty good during the film. The music almost doesn't seem to fit in with the low budget acting and effects of the movie. An Excellent soundtrack none the less.

Everyone has different standards, mine are very high.

But if the acting, Directing, Editing and special FX are so bad... then I have to ask "why bother", I'll stick to the book and my imagination.

You say 'you don't regret buying It' but I bet you hide it behind the porno DVDs when someone visits

I took the plunge and bought the VHS version at Wal-Mart, and I've actually watched the thing several times already. Odd someone complained about the music; that was one of the best things about the movie.

Actually, I don't think it will be classed as the worst sci fi film in history, though it certainly won't be near the top, or even the middle section. My reasoning is this: the archaic aura the film gives off. This film gives one the general impression of having been made during the early decades of movie-making. For instance, the scenes that are mostly in one color remind me of similar scenes in old silent films, most notably the Willis O'Brien version of Doyle's "The Lost World". Even the cornball dialogue reminds one of bad Victorian fiction. The land battle sequences were fascinating, and give the impression of being newsreel films from some turn-of-the-century war. I think this film will survive through sheer quaintness. Heck, look at how popular the Godzilla movies were, and they were nothing but a man in a monster suit.

I'm actually watching the film again as I type this, and I'm at the part where the Martian comes out of the cylinder. Ironically, the special effects guys did too good a job with the creature, making it far too lively. Wells' Martians, after all, could only crawl slowly and painfully over the ground due to Earth's greater gravity. They would have done better to get a real octopus to come out of the cylinder model, particularly since there aren't that many scenes where we actually see the Martians themselves.

hell its a shame the man was ever born!

A little harsh maybe but I agree he couldn't organize a p*ss-up in a brewery.

Well, a REAL octopus would have been a sluggish crawler, and as for being all brain, it might interest you to know that the octopus is the most intelligent invertebrate known to exist today. Tests have been done on their intelligence, and they've even done such things as screwing off the tops of water-filled bottles with fish and shrimp inside to get at their prey. So a race of intelligent octopi is quite possible (yes, I remember that Wells' Martians were supposedly physically degenerate humanoids).

The land battle sequences, particularly the first, were pretty good, as was the destruction of Woking when the fighting started, and I always partially rewind the tape so I can watch them over again.

I can safely say that my partner and I (he's never read the book) were laughing so loud I neighbours knocked on the door to see if we were okay.

Ironically, the special effects guys did too good a job with the creature, making it far too lively. Wells' Martians, after all, could only crawl slowly and painfully over the ground due to Earth's greater gravity. They would have done better to get a real octopus to come out of the cylinder model, particularly since there aren't that many scenes where we actually see the Martians themselves.

They're smart, too, but since they're made solely for swimming (the octopus can crawl along the ocean bottom, go ashore, and come back out to sea again), they don't get much of a chance to utilize their intelligence and improve it. Since the octopus can lie around, it can use its tentacles to manipulate and examine items around it, in the same way that human brains were helped by the fact that we have grasping hands. Heck, even an elephant can do a lot of interesting things with its trunk, and they're about the smartest herbivorous mammals around today.