- The Night That Panicked America
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The Night That Panicked America Directed by Joseph Sargent Produced by Joseph Sargent Written by Nicholas Meyer Starring Paul Shenar Music by Frank Comstock Cinematography Jules Brenner Studio The Culzean Corporation Distributed by Paramount Television Release date(s) 
October 31, 1975Running time 92 min. Country USA Language English The Night That Panicked America is an American made-for-television movie that was originally broadcast on the ABC network on October 31, 1975. The movie dramatizes events surrounding Orson Welles' famous - and infamous - War of the Worlds radio broadcast (based on the novel of the same name by English author H.G. Wells) of October 30, 1938, which had led some Americans to believe that an invasion of Martians was occurring in New Jersey.
The Night That Panicked America tells the story of the 1938 broadcast from the point of view of Welles and his associates as they create the broadcast live, as well as from the points of view of a number of different fictional American families, in a variety of locations and from a variety of social classes, who listened to the broadcast and believed the imaginary Martian invasion was actually occurring, with some people even committing suicide.
The movie starred, among others, Michael Constantine, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Tom Bosley, Eileen Brennan, Vic Morrow, Will Geer, and John Ritter. Paul Shenar played Orson Welles.
Some local stations in various areas of the United States have annually rebroadcast this made-for-TV movie on October 30, the anniversary of the original radio broadcast or on October 31, which is Halloween. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praised the film's recreation of events in the radio studio, but was unimpressed by its depiction of the resulting panic, calling it "a routine disaster movie with hackneyed characters reacting in predictable ways."
The film has never been issued on home video in any format.
The Welles broadcast and the reaction to it had earlier been dramatized in The Night America Trembled, a live presentation that aired on Studio One (September 9, 1957). The cast of this top-rated TV recreation of Welles' radio broadcast included Alexander Scourby, Ed Asner and Warren Oates. James Coburn made his television debut, and John Astin appeared uncredited as a reporter. In one of his earliest acting roles, Warren Beatty appeared in the bit part of a card-playing college student.
External links
- The Night That Panicked America at the Internet Movie Database
- Illustrated summary of The Night That Panicked America
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Martians Radio - The War of the Worlds
- Grover's Mill, New Jersey
- The Night That Panicked America
- Orson Welles
Films - The War of the Worlds (Haskin, 1953)
- The War of the Worlds: Next Century (Szulkin, 1981)
- H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (Hines, 2005)
- H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds (Latt, 2005)
- War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (Howell, 2008)
- War of the Worlds (Spielberg, 2005)
- War of the Worlds The True Story (Hines, 2011)
Jeff Wayne - Musical Version
- Highlights
- 1984 video game
- 1998 video game
TV series Sequels - Edison's Conquest of Mars
- Killraven (Earth-691)
- Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds
- War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
- Rainbow Mars
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II
- War of the Worlds: New Millennium
- Scarlet Traces
- The Martian War
Miscellaneous - Adaptations and sequels
- HMS Thunder Child
- Doctor Clayton Forrester
- "The Crystal Egg"
- Comic
- The Space Machine
- Superman
- Arcade game
- Star-Begotten
- Scary Movie 4
- George Herbert
Films directed by Joseph Sargent 1960s 1970s Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) · Tribes (1970) · Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971) · The Man (1972) · White Lightning (1973) · The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) · Friendly Persuasion (1975) · The Night That Panicked America (1975) · MacArthur (1977) · Goldengirl (1979)1980s Coast to Coast (1980) · Nightmares (1983) · Memorial Day (1983) · Choices of the Heart (1983) · Terrible Joe Moran (1984) · Jaws: The Revenge (1987) · The Karen Carpenter Story (1989) · Day One (1989)1990s The Incident (1990) · Never Forget (1991) · Miss Rose White (1992) · Somebody's Daughter (1992) · Skylark (1993) · Abraham (1993) · World War II: When Lions Roared (1994) · My Antonia (1995) · Mandela and de Klerk (1997) · Miss Evers' Boys (1997) · The Long Island Incident (1998) · Crime and Punishment (1998) · A Lesson Before Dying (1999)2000s For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000) · Bojangles (2001) · Out of the Ashes (2003) · Something the Lord Made (2004) · Warm Springs (2005) · Sybil (2007) · Sweet Nothing in My Ear (2008)Categories:- American television films
- War of the Worlds films
- Films directed by Joseph Sargent
- Screenplays by Nicholas Meyer
- 1975 television films
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