Every War Of The Worlds Adaptation: Ranked Worst To Best

6. The Polish Political Satire

Perhaps the strangest adaptation of The War Of The Worlds, indeed a film so far removed from its credited source that it might even be a bit of a stretch to call it an "adaptation", 1981's The War Of The Worlds: The Next Century from Polish director Piotr Szulkin features Martians arriving in a country which may or may not be Britain in the final years of its century (in this case the twentieth). That's where the similarities end.

In Szulkin's version, the Martians are outwardly friendly but secretly blood-sucking monsters (feeding on human blood is, at least, something that is also true of Wells's Martians) who use their control of the apparatus of the state and the media to force people to donate blood. The movie's hero is a news reporter who goes on a Network-style rant about how the media keeps people in thrall to the Martians.

Szulkin's film was able to get a release in Communist Poland on the assumption that it satirised Western consumerism, but in reality it feels more like a dig at the authoritarianism of his own failing government. As a satire it's more bitter than funny, and it is not really discernibly a version of War Of The Worlds, but it does provide an artistic and interesting counterpoint to similar movies coming out of the West in the '80s, such as Brazil.