Goofs for
The War of the Worlds (1953) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: When they first investigate the crashed meteorite, Gene Barry looks at the camera while talking to one of the cops.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The reporter records a description of the events on magnetic tape, even though we know that the heat ray generates a magnetic field that would destroy the recording. But there's no reason to believe the reporter knew this, and no evidence that the tapes are ever played back.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the riot scenes, Dr. Forester's comments when he's pulled from the truck are dubbed over.
  
  

• Continuity: Blonde woman on top of the bus during the looting scenes is seen twice.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Forrester chops off the Martian electronic eye in the farm house, a wire can be seen pulling the neck through the roof.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Salvatore tips his hat back, one can see the line on his forehead where the make-up stops at the hat line.
  
  
• Factual errors: The sound and the flash from the atomic bomb explosion arrive at the bunker at the same time. The sound should have arrived several seconds after the light.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Forrester and Sylvia and are trapped in the farmhouse, he uses an ax to chop off the electronic eye, and the eye falls apart. However, a few seconds later, when Dr. Forrester lifts the eye, it's intact and clean again.
  
  
• Continuity: In the last scene, in the close shot of the war machine's open hatch, one clearly sees the Martian's arm creep slowly across the hatch itself. However, in the reverse angle wide shot through the underside of the war machine of people approaching the Martian, instead of creeping along the hatch, the Martian's arm and wiggling fingers are seen stretching straight out horizontally from the hatch opening, virtually touching the underside of the ship.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Modern viewers often complain that the wires used to suspend the Martian war machines are plainly visible throughout the film. The film was originally shot in three strip Technicolor, with prints made using a dye transfer process that resulted in very saturated colors but a slight reduction in overall resolution. This reduction in resolution "fuzzed out" the wires in original prints, making them effectively invisible. Later prints were made in Eastman Color, which uses a photographic process and yields sharper prints, but here had the side effect of making the support and electric wires plainly visible. (The models had electrical wires as the side pods of the machines really lit up green and the "cobra heads" lit up as well.) It is common practice in the film industry to take into account what details will be visible when a print is projected so as not to waste production time and money on details that will never actually be visible to a viewing audience, especially in the areas of effects and matte paintings. Thus the filmmakers never thought the wires would be visible and in fact they weren't until the first Eastman Color prints of the film were struck in the late 1960s, and they have become even more visible on modern video releases as there is no dye sublimation resolution loss when making video masters from the original negatives.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Martians are destroying the city, a blue-screen process can be seen reflecting off the War Machines.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Forrester finds the last church, the same corner of a building is sheared off twice by a Martian ship.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The Martian camera's lights die just before Forrester actually hits it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): One of the reporters refers to a Martian attack on Rangoon, India. Rangoon (now Yangon) is in Burma (now Myanmar), and while Myanmar had been governed as part of India under the British Raj, it achieved independence in 1948.
  
  
• Continuity: In the farmhouse sequence, when Syliva is cooking the eggs, the coffee pot is placed on the back left burner of the stove, when Clayton reaches for it a second later it has moved to the right burner.
  
  
• Continuity: After the army retreat from the first major Martian attack, Forester and Sylvia are running and find a plane in which they escape. When they enter the aircraft, Sylvia is carrying a purse that she didn't have anywhere else, before or afterward, in the film.
  
  
• Continuity: During the street-panic scene in downtown Los Angeles, as Dr. Forrester frantically inquires about the Pacific Tech trucks, his face is bleeding and bruised. After running across some deserted streets, another close-up shows his face is clear. Later on, he's shown with bruises on his face that aren't bleeding.
  
  
• Continuity: In the farmhouse breakfast scene there is a plate with four slices of toast on the table as she is cooking the eggs. When they sit down it has disappeared.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the radio reporter records his report on a tape recorder he says that radio doesn't work anywhere, yet the bomber's run is monitored on RADAR. RADAR uses radio to do its work. If radio doesn't work then RADAR would not work either.
  
  
• Factual errors: The narrator incorrectly pointed out that Jupiter is a rocky molten lava planet with extremely high atmospheric pressure. What he was actually describing was the characteristics of the planet Venus - Jupiter has no surface. And coincidently, Mars' nearest neighbor is actually Earth, not Jupiter.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In one brief shot, objects and trees are shown being blown around and over by the wind from the atomic bomb blast, but trees in the near distance are not affected.
  
  
• Factual errors: The radio reporter records his final lines into his tape recorder. Sylvia and Clayton comment to each other on what the reporter has just said. Yet they are 30 to 40 feet away from the reporter, nowhere near him. Additionally there is a lot of hustle and bustle going on between where Clayton, Sylvia and the reporter is standing. So they should not have been able to hear what the reporter said.
  
  
• Continuity: When the mob hijacks Forrester's truck, he runs over to a couple of MPs and says to the one standing, "They've got to be stopped. Those instruments!", then turns to go. As he starts to leave, the MP clearly begins to follow him, but in the very next shot of Forrester fighting his way back to the truck, not only is the one MP not behind him, but both MPs have completely disappeared from the scene.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the scene where the wild horses are running down a steep embankment, in the final seconds of the scene you can see men on horseback following the wild horses, raising their arms and causing the horses to stampede.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Forrester is flying the Army plane he and Sylvia found, he's shown (from the pilot's point of view) nearly hitting a tree. The camera then cuts back to him and Sylvia as he steers the plane, then again shifts to the pilot's view as he veers past a hill with the Martian machines suddenly on the right, then steers left toward another tree, which he crashes into - and which is obviously the same shot of the same tree he had been shown almost striking a moment before.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When the scientist are are about to project an image using the Martian lens there are two separate shadows from the boom and mike. As soon as the projector screen is pulled down there is a shadow from the boom that goes across the entire screen. At that same moment the shadow from the mike can be seen on the wall to the left of the projector screen.
  
  
• Continuity: After the heat-ray tries to shoot down the air force plane, it makes a sweep across the area clockwise. However, when everyone is jumping into the ditch, the fires are starting as though the heat-ray is moving counterclockwise.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When General Mann appears at the base the Colonel first refers to him as "Colonel".
  
  

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