Tonight's Friday Night Public Domain Science-Fiction Viewing isn't really a public-domain sci-fi movie at all: instead, it is a public-domain recording accompanied by a freely available film interpretation. It's Orson Welles and the Mercury Studios 1938 presentation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds... done entirely in stop-motion animation with plastic dolls by Toyman Studios.

I think it's amazing watching the Tripods land and destroy this Mattel version of Earth as Orson Welles smokily narrates and reflect on the fact that for 18 minutes in 1938 (between the 22 and 40 minute marks), over 1.2 million people in America were panicked into believing this was real.

The second part of Toyman Studios' War of the Worlds after the jump.