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Director Fred M. Wilcox 's Forbidden Planet is
a combination of science, romance, comedy, and horror. The
basic story involves a space rescue to a distant alien world,
in search of a long-missing, previous expedition. They discover
an eccentric scientist, his beautiful daughter, a powerful robot,
and a horrible secret.
When communication from a space colony, formed by an expedition
of scientists, and located 17 light years away on the fourth planet
of the constellation of Aquilae, suddenly stops, a starship crew,
led by Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielson) travel through
space to this colony to investigate. They find only one scientist,
Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his daughter Altaira (Ann Francis),
who are the only ones able to escape a hideous, invisible monster
that lurks around the planet. Dr. Moribus is a gifted scientist
who has invented things from Robby the Robot to a mysterious project
in his Krell lab. It seems that the Krell
civilization had settled the planet 200,000 years ago. While the
people had died out, their system was still working underneath
the surface of the ground.
Much like Captain Kirk of the Star Trek series
and movies, Commander Adams continues with his investigation,
learning more about the monster as it attacks his men, and menaces
the group. After several incidents that give them clues, he and
his crew puts two and two together to come up with several plans
to combat with the hostile influences that are disrupting human
plans to colonize the planet, which leads to an exciting conclusion.
This suspenseful screenplay, that is way ahead
of its time, by Cyril Hume, (story by Irving Black and Allen Adler),
was a VERY LOOSE adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest,"
mixed with elements from Freudian psychology. These facts alone
catapult this film into a different category than most 50's Sci-Fi
flicks. Its underlying theme is that no matter how technically
advanced we become, we must still guard against our darker nature
that has been with us since the beginning.
One of the film's great delights is Robby the Robot, Pidgeon's
amazing mechanical helper. For many years Robby was audience's
favorite robot, challenged somewhat by the "Lost in Space"
robot, in the 60's. When "Star Wars" debuted in 1977,
R2D2 and C-3P0 became the public's favorite robots, at least for
contemporary audiences.
My favorite scene is an encounter between Nielsen, Francis and
a tiger. As the tiger suddenly leaps toward the two, Nielsen disintegrates
it, in mid-air, with his ray gun. The sequence involves good FX/animation
for the time. The scene really knocked me out as a five year old,
one of my first encounters with movie magic.
As the space mission commander, Leslie Nielsen gives the kind
of solid, serious, manly man performance he gave reliably for
years, until the "Airplane" and "Naked Gun"
movies gave him a chance to release his inner goofball.
Walter Pidgeon was convincing as Dr. Morbias,
a brilliant, eccentric scientist who is annoyed with all these
outside people interfering with his work, and the fact that his
lovely daughter and Commander Adams are becoming romantically
involved.
The beautiful Anne Francis is convicing as the
lovely, blonde, love interest Altaira, a type of role that she
became an expert at, as she was cast in a lot of films playing
a similar character. She is well known for her television career
in the 1960's, and for her many TV movies as being "a bright,
colorful, decorative, wise-cracking presence."
The young space crew was made up of up and coming
young actors, such as Jack Kelly (Maverick), James Drury (the
Virginian), Richard 'Oscar Goldman' Anderson from television's
Bionic Man.
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