Everyone's heard of spaghetti westerns, but did you know there was also a genre of Italian sci-fi flicks as well?
If not, I point your attention to Battle of the Worlds, a 1961 entry by Antonio Margheriti that stars the late great Claude Rains, star of such legitimate classics as Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and so many others. Rains, near the end of his long career, is said in the essay notes that accompany The Film Detective's new Blu-ray, to have taken this role on the financial advice of his wife and, though he does tend to chew the scenery more than a tad in his portrayal of a somewhat mad (or at least antisocial) scientist, he definitely does not phone in the performance.
