''The Airship Destroyer'' (originally titled Der Luftkrieg Der Zukunft, also titled "The Aerial Torpedo", "The Battle of the Clouds" and "The Battle in the Clouds" ) is a

1909 Events January–February * January 4 – Explorer Aeneas Mackintosh of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition escaped death by fleeing across ice floes. * January 7 – Colombia recognizes the independence of Panama. * Jan ...

British silent

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

film directed by

Walter R. Booth Walter Robert Booth (12 July 1869 – 1938) was a British magician and early pioneer of British film. Collaborating with Robert W. Paul and then Charles Urban mostly on "trick" films, he pioneered techniques that led to what has been descri ...

Plot

A fleet of airships begin an attack on

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, bombing an armoured vehicle, a signal box and a town. An inventor and his assistant are preparing to launch a

missile In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocke ...

in defence. A biplane attempts to shoot down one of the airships, but is destroyed itself. One of the airship's bombs lands on the home of the inventor's lover, whose hand in marriage he had unsuccessfully asked her father for earlier in the day. The inventor rushes to the house and rescues his lover, although her father is dead. Returning to the missile launch site, the inventor successfully launches a surface-to-air missile and destroys the airship. The film ends as the couple embrace.

Production

, who had a background as a magician, was an early pioneer of special effects in film and also of animation. The airships were created using a mixture of

cutout animation Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's e ...

and models.

Release

''The Airship Destroyer'' was originally released in 1909. It was re-released in January 1915, during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, at a time when Britain was suffering aerial bombings from Zeppelins. The film is an example of

invasion literature Invasion literature (also the invasion novel) is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel first was recognized as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella '' The ...

. The Internet Archive has a full length version of the film available, as does, as of 2020,

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. Also released on Region 2 DVD.

Reception

Moria Reviews found the movie of interest as a historical curiosity, but found little more to recommend the movie. The effects are primitive and derivative of those by

Georges Melies Georges may refer to: Places *Georges River, New South Wales, Australia *Georges Quay (Dublin) * Georges Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania Other uses * Georges (name) * ''Georges'' (novel), a novel by Alexandre Dumas * "Georges" (song), a 19 ...

and that the plot and backstory were weak to non-existent. Further, the movie fails to account for how airplanes would advance. The review does note the Booth was often more interested in the special effects than in any other aspect of film making Included as one of the best examples of science fiction the silent film era.

References

External links

Full film
at

The Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...