The Night That Panicked America is an American made-for-television movie that was originally broadcast on the ABC network on October 31, 1975. The movie dramatizes events surrounding Orson Welles's famous - and infamous - War of the Worlds radio broadcast of October 30, 1938, which had led some Americans to believe that an invasion of Martians was occurring in New Jersey.
The Night That Panicked America tells the story of the 1938 broadcast from the point of view of Welles and his associates as they create the broadcast live, as well as from the points of view of a number of different fictional American 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.
The movie starred, among others, Meredith Baxter-Birney, Tom Bosley, Eileen Brennan, Vic Morrow, and John Ritter, all relatively well-known actors (though not all of them were famous at the time). Paul Shenar played Orson Welles.
Some local stations in various areas of the United States have rebroadcast this made-for-TV movie every year - or during many years - on October 30, the anniversary of the original radio broadcast, or on October 31, which is Halloween.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praised the film's re-creation of events in the radio studio, but was unimpressed by its depiction of the resulting panic, calling it "a routine disaster movie with hackneyed characters reacting in predictable ways."
The true story of the night that Orson Welles broadcast his version of H.G. Welles' classic ''The War of the Worlds'' on the radio. Designed to be as realistic as possible, many people were fooled into thinking that an alien invasion was actually taking place. Written by Murray Chapman
