Battle of the Worlds

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by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross

Battle of the Worlds (1961)

Professor Benson (Claude Rains) knows everything, lives in a greenhouse and does mathematics on the sides of his flower pots. He is the first to discover the Outsider, a moonlike object, entering our solar system and heading straight for Earth.

10:15
DR STEEL: Amazing. How did you do it?
BENSON: Young fellow. You and the others have to see and hear before you can know. I have one advantage over all of you---Calculus. However, I am glad to see that you at least know how to read it. In spite of the disdain in which I hold all your stupid and dull mechanical apparatuses, do you think that I don’t examine carefully the readings that you send me? The difference is that you accept those readings as results, whereas for me they are merely elements in a formula. I have been aware of this thing for the last five days and I’ve been curiously awaiting to see when the rest of you will discover it.
DR STEEL: It was just before dawn that we were able to…
BENSON: Oh, so you didn’t see it until just before dawn.
and didn’t anyone of you notice the change of position of the two outer planets.
Steel: Change of position?
BENSON: Infinitesimal! It merely heralded the arrival of the outsider.

1:00:06
Benson proposes to destroy the Outsider
COMMANDER COLE: Oh, I have faith in Benson, the mathematician, but Benson the cannon maker?

1:02:40
BENSON: Music is language. The language of the bodies in space. Have you never heard of Pythagoras? The harmony of the spheres? The language of numbers?
Nice mad look

1:03:48
After the Outsider and the Benson have gone up in smoke.

1:22:30
COMMANDER COLE: Poor Benson. If they opened up his chest, they’d find a formula where his heart should have been.