10.31.01

Ahhhh, Halloween, one of the last of the good holidays.

Christmas? Bah! We’ve totally distorted that holiday to the point it’s no more meaningful than Flag Day anymore. It’s just an excuse to help put stores in the black and to charge up more on your credit cards to keep you at your job for another year. Who needs it?

But Halloween, now there’s a cool holiday. One that rewards you for being ugly (if you don’t need a mask you’re even better off), rewards you for being creative (I’d love to meet the first guy who dressed as “white trash”), lets you be someone else for a day and completely forget about your mediocre life, you don’t have to be rich to be able to join in the fun and, finally, you get candy. Tell me that ain’t a perfect holiday.

Sadly, this year I had too much going on to really get anything planned, so my Halloween festivies were limited to watching “Ed”, “West Wing” and doing my stairmaster workout to the Down Under horror film classic, “Dead Alive” (called the goriest film ever and quite possibly one of the funniest as well). However, thanks to the wonders of IFC (Independent Film Channel) who has been running such great horror classics as “Night of the Living Dead”, it’s sequel, “Dawn of the Dead” and some amazing Italian films from the horror-masters Mario Brava and Dario Argento (“Suspiria” rules!), I’ve had my fill of Halloweenie goodness this year. And it all culminates in this evening’s midnight event on local talk radio station 97.1 – the rebroadcast of Orson Welles’ groundbreaking “War of the Worlds”.

In case you aren’t familiar, in 1938, Orson Welles was a director/producer at The Mercury Theatre and he had the idea to do a show depicting events from H.G. Wells’ classic story of Martian invaders coming to earth. However, he was going to do some…minor changes to the story. The main change was instead of using England, he made New Jersey ground zero of the alien landing, with astounding results.

The real genius of Welles’ telling was not the changes in the script, but the way the script was written and the story then presented on the air. If someone tuned in right at the time the broadcast began, they would have heard an announcer say, (essentially) “This is a fictional telling of H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’.” However, if they were a few minutes late, they might have only heard the sounds of a local band playing dance music, a perfectly normal night of radio entertainment.

Then, a few moments later, a newsman breaks into the song with an announcement of strange events occurring on Mars. Music plays again for a while and then someone else breaks in with more queer things happening on Mars. Next thing you know, after a few more songs from that local band, we hear of a meteorite landing in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.

Luckily, the radio station has a man on the scene to tell us about the meteorite slowly beginning to open up and something crawling out. Just as some men on the scene are attempting to make contact with “the thing”, a strange beam emanates from the opening, frying people as they stand. Then…the radio broadcast goes silent.

The story goes on to tell of the mobilization of the aliens, expecting them to wipe out most of the Eastern seaboard by the next evening.

Needless to say, those who tuned in late began to lose it. Police were inundated with calls. New Jersey was in chaos. People began to pack up their things to get the hell out of town to avoid the rampaging hordes of Martians that were soon to be making their way down their block.

The simple fact that a radio program could cause such hysteria was a true testament to the power of the medium – and the responsibility of those who deliver the message to the masses. Although he didn’t want to do it, Welles did apologize the next day for causing such a stir.

It seems fitting this week should be the anniversary of such an important media event. We think we’re so much more media savvy today, but all week I’ve heard many, many people say they weren’t going to allow their kids to go trick-or-treating this year. Anthrax, suicide bombings, riots in the streets, cats and dogs living together - it’s all going to happen to you and your pwecious wittle kids at any given moment by the invading Martian…er…Taliban hordes.

We aren’t any more media savvy today than those people in New Jersey were in 1938. We just have much more media surrounding us, telling us their side of the story, selling us their sensationalism - which is a hell of a lot more scary than Martian invaders if you ask me.

Space Monkey X