One of my favorite examples of soundwork in a film was Haskin's
1953 take on War of the Worlds. The movie had a lot of money behind it, hired some good talent (Al Nozaki, Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren), and really went the whole nine yards in creating some A+ sci-fi sound effects for their awesome hovering swanship of death:
War of the Worlds (1953)The electronic eye housed the Martian "heat ray", pulsing, peering around and firing beams of red sparks, all accompanied by thrumming and a high-pitched clattering shriek when the ray was fired. The distinctive sound effect of the weapon was created by an orchestra performing a written score, mainly through the use of violins and cellos.
The machines also fired a green ray (referred to as a "skeleton beam") from their wingtips, generating a distinctive sound and exposing the interior of its target (in the case of humans, their skeletons became briefly visible) before disintegrating it; this latter weapon seems to have been substituted for the chemical weapon black smoke described in Wells' novel. The sound effect (created by striking a high tension cable with a hammer) was reused in Star Trek: The Original Series, accompanying the launch of photon torpedos.
The unearthly sounds of the Martian machines were produced by amplifying the sounds from three electric guitars played backward. The Martian's scream when Forrester strikes it with the pipe was produced by scraping dry ice across a microphone and mixing it with a woman's scream played backward.
They ended up using these sounds on basically every show and movie for the next 15 years, so well, I guess it's the industry's first Howie Long Scream.
