Magnetic legs

[leatherhead]

In the 1953 movie, the fighting machined DID have legs. they were magnetic. I have often wondered:do these invisible legs move and bend like the fighting machines from the book, or are these legs just straight up and down? i know it makes no difference just curious if anyone has pondered this.

[Scifishocks]

Interesting question. No, I haven't really thought of this... before now!

[Thunder Child]

Sometimes you can see a "sparkling" effect on the ground, below the Fighting Machines. This effect is caused by the magnetic legs and are located below the main body, suggesting that the legs are actually beams of energy pointed straight down to the ground...

[Reppu]

Agreed. Not being mechanical devices there's no reason why they should move and bend. Besides, how could an energy beam behave like that?. I love how these machines are in fact tripods, even if the legs cannot be seen.

[Commandingtripod]

Yeah I think they cut back the amount of scenes that the 'sparks' would be visible in because it was just too dangerous.

I thought that the beams just simply pointed straight down and held the war machine in the air and something else pushed it along.

[Rob]

Maybe they only spark when they are fresh out of the cylinder, when they have run the legs in a bit maybe they run a bit smoother.

[Reppu]

commandingtripod said:

I thought that the beams just simply pointed straight down and held the war machine in the air and something else pushed it along.

Not necessarily something else. Think of a helicopter, you just pitch the body a bit forward so you create a small horizontal component in the lifting force. Simple physics.

[thedonal]

I know a couple of girls with magnetic legs....

[Lensman]

In Philip Francis Nowlan's classic novel Armageddon, 2419 A.D., which became the basis for the Buck Rogers comic strip, the Hans' aerial destroyers are held aloft with beams of force. These do go in a straight line down from the vessel to the ground, but can be swiveled slightly towards the rear to provide forward propulsion. The farther off vertical they are, the faster forward the vessel is propelled.

Pals' Martian war machines could be held aloft and propelled in the same manner.

That's almost but perhaps not quite the same thing Reppu said.

[Ashe Raven]

I heard a rumour they accidently blew up a studio trying to pull this effect off

[Lensman]

I believe a fire was started when filming the original effect, which is one of the reasons they abandoned it. I don't know how bad the fire was.

[Methos]

There is actually a scene where you can see the legs plainly as three green beams but the effect was too expensive and time consuming so they decided to do without for the rest of filming.

[malfunkshun]

maybe it was mentioned, but you can actually 'see' the leg beams in some scenes... duh methos just posted it