War of the Worlds, when read aloud on the radio by Orson Welles, created mass hysteria for listeners. Why? The masses knew that stories were read aloud all the time. They knew that the radio was used for entertainment.
The main reason for the mass hysteria was the skill and the emotion wrought out only by the radio medium in 1938. The talent of Orson Welles depicts, so realistically, how one would actually react to a martian invasion. By listening to the actual broadcast, it's easy to see why people reacted so dramatically when this was the only immediate mass medium available. The sound effects draw the listener into a new reality.
When the movie was created and re-created, it was still impossible to instill the same fear that struck broadcast listeners in 1938.
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