"The Night That Panicked America" (1975) dramatisation of orson welles broadcast.

[Antaletriangle]

"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA" (1975) 92 minutes -- Starring Meredith Baxter-Birney, Tom Bosley, Eileen Brennan, Vic Morrow, Will Geer, Michael Constantine, and John Ritter. Music by Frank Comstock. Directed & Produced by Joseph Sargent.

PLOT: "The Night That Panicked America" is a made-for-TV movie that originally broadcast on the ABC network on 31 October 1975. The movie dramatizes the events surrounding Orson Welles's (in)famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast of 30 October 1938.

The movie tells the story of the 1938 broadcast from the point of view of Welles and his associates as they broadcast live. The film also presents the points of view of a number of different fictional U.S. 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.

INFO: For about a dozen years following the movie's release, numerous local stations across the United States replayed "The Night That Panicked America" every Halloween. The film gradually faded from popularity, and has rarely aired on U.S. television since the late-1980s.




Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast -- upon which this movie is based -- frightened thousands of listeners in the United States who actually believed a Martian invasion was underway. Welles immediately apologized to the public, but expressed great surprise at the "misunderstanding" since his actors explicitly stated several times during the broadcast that their play was based on H.G. Well's fictional book of the same name. Furthermore, other radio stations did not "report" on the Martian invasion by interrupting their regular programming ... a simple twist of the radio dial should have clarified the situation for any panicked listener.

Some listeners who believed the 1938 "radio invasion" told newspapers the next day that they thought the Martians were really Germans. Scholars who analyzed the public's reaction to the 1938 broadcast have concluded in recent years that the looming spectre of World War II, coupled with the ongoing stress of the Great Depression, quickly pushed normally rational persons to believe that an invasion -- be it Martian, German, or other -- was truly taking place.

The U.S. government subsequently implemented guidelines to help reduce the possibility of widespread panic when fictional radio (and later TV) broadcasts appear "realistic." Periodically updated and revised, the same essential guidelines are still in effect today. Legislators and media scholars occasionally comment that these types of guidelines demonstrate how a government may be compelled to protect the less-intelligent from themselves.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=W6zIPF...e=channel_page part1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vMexHs...eature=channel part2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Elbo...eature=channel part3
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xHdbCY...eature=channel part4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VqIbld...eature=channel part5
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L6B556...eature=channel part6
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_rIxdN...eature=channel part7
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=afF4E1...eature=channel part8
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gHQSRZ...eature=channel part9

[Antaletriangle]

The next scenario will be a little more convincing with holographic technology/bluebeam and suchlike!lol.