As its film series picks up speed into the darkening days of fall, the Kitsap Regional Library in Port Orchard is cranking up the reels for a six-week family-focused sci-fi/adventure session called Saturday Film Matinee.
And what brings families closer together than an alien invasion?
Saturday, series creator Wally Clark and friends will be opening the series with the science-fiction film revolutionary classic “The War of the Worlds” based on the book written by H.G. Wells, turned visual by director Byron Haskin, produced by George Pal, starring Gene Barry as Dr. Clayton Forrester and Ann Robinson as Sylvia van Buren.
“Everything is free … the films will be starting at 3 o’clock,” Clark said.
Before the film Clark is hoping to show an era cartoon, true to the day in which it was created.
For seniors it should be a trip back to the days when one used to be called in from playing in the yard for a TV movie matinee with the family. For kids, it can be a comedy. (Well, actually more like a history lesson in film, but don’t tell them that.)
The legendary producer Pal was a integral component to match with this movie.
It’s based on book written in the last years of the 19th century by a man esteemed to be one of the fathers of science fiction in literature. On the eve of Halloween later in 1938, Orson Wells sent listeners on the upper East Coast into a panic when he put out a radio drama adaptation of the book, eerily akin to an actual newscast.
Then in the 1953 Paramount picture, Pal took the paranoid space invaders theme to its extreme.
He created creatures that no one had ever seen. He took traditional “UFOs” and turned them into giant reptilian steel XBox controllers with red, blinking brains that look like brake lights with invisible, spiny giraffe legs. See kids, comedy.
“Every week I’m watching the newspapers (for new movies) where you open up yet another CGI-practically-based action movie — so many aren’t driven by plot and character anymore, but more the explosions and effects,” Clark noted. “I think it’s important to see the historical background, to see where (movies) have come from … There are just certain films you have to admire.”
“The War of the Worlds” is one of those.
In this town (Woking, England in the book, California in the movie), the townspeople are gathered in the streets after a community event when a star falls from the sky. Everyone assumes it, almost excitedly, to be a meteor. Right there in their own backyard! Upon examination of the smoldering hot, house-sized rock they even predict it will become the town’s next big tourist attraction.
When most everyone is gone and the last three cops are packing up, the meteor shakes and a circle starts to unscrew itself from the top. Cue what become the standard UFO sound effect (pioneered in this movie) and out come Pål’s fear-mongering creation.
They are the genesis of the aliens in the 2006 Steven Spielberg remake version of the “War of the Worlds.” So if you’ve seen that, you pretty much have to go see the original — 3 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Port Orchard Library at 87 Sidney Ave.
Also showing in the library’s “Saturday Film Matinee”
• All shows start at 3 p.m., free, refreshments provided at the Port Orchard Library — 87 Sidney Ave.
Oct. 6 “Beau Geste” (1939) An adventure in the desert with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston as the Geste brothers. Directed by William Wellman
Oct. 13 “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) famous for its stop animation work by Ray Harryhausen, directed by Don Chaffey
Oct. 20 “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) starring Errol Flynn, directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley.
Oct. 27 “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948) a comedic horror picture directed by Charles Barton.
