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| Courtesy of Warner Brothers |
But in 1956 as the prospect of real-world space travel was
becoming more realistic, the face of American if not global science fiction
filmmaking changed forever with the emergence of the CinemaScope Oscar nominated
Forbidden Planet, a film whose far reaching influence on contemporary
fantasy fiction is still being felt today.
Nothing quite like it had come before let alone with real Tinseltown
money behind it. If nothing else it gave
American moviegoers one of the most original talking robot characters in cinema
history, one who was just tickled pink to make a cameo in Joe Dante’s Gremlins
at one point.
Based on an original screenplay by Irving Block and Allen
Adler written a few years earlier with subtle revisions by Cyril Hume and
directed by Lassie Come Home helmer Fred M. Wilcox, the 23rd
century set Forbidden Planet stars Leslie Nielsen as Commander John J.
Adams, captain of the United Planets starship C-57D. On a rescue mission bound for the planet
Altair IV seeking a missing expedition crew sent some twenty years earlier, the
starship intercepts a transmission from Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) who
warns them to avoid the planet which Commander Adams promptly ignores.
Landing upon Altair they’re met with Robby the Robot (voiced
by Marvin Miller), a sleek but snarky ball-like robot with a typewriter for a
face who then takes them to Dr. Morbius’ (not the one you’re thinking of)
secret headquarters where he lives with his attractive daughter Altaira (Anne
Francis). The doctor informs the captain
all the other survivors were killed by an invisible force which soon begins
picking off the captain’s own crew members one by one ala Mario Bava’s Planet
of the Vampires and later still Ridley Scott’s Alien.
One to do many things for the first time in American movies,
Forbidden Planet broke numerous barriers including but not limited to depicting
human characters in a manmade lightspeed intergalactic starship with crew
members that talk like they’re on an aircraft carrier. It was among the first set on another planet
away from Earth entirely featuring a sophisticated robot with an identifiable
personality behind it. More to the point
it was the very first original score for a film entirely composed
electronically by Bebe and Louis Barron with heavy use of the Theremin. Though the Theremin doesn’t always
necessarily sync up with the footage, instead offering ambience and
augmentation of particular visuals on the screen, the film inherits a unique
character and sense of alienation with the almost atonal soundtrack.
Though dated with a number of postwar 1950s dialogue and
more than a little chauvinism sprinkled in whenever Anne Francis shows up
onscreen scantily clad frolicking about, as a first real American studio produced
science fiction epic chock full of elaborate pioneering visual effects and
stunning set pieces Forbidden Planet is clearly iconic. The timeless Robby the Robot design itself at
the time cost a considerable chunk of the film’s budget to fully design and
operate. So beloved is this character he
even appeared as himself once again in the 1957 movie The Invisible Boy.
Story wise, Forbidden Planet loosely reworks William
Shakespeare’s The Tempest with its desolate planet setting, triangular
plotline involving an explorer, a sorcerer living with his daughter and a
raging monster stalking the area, making it kind of a Shakespeare in Space movie. The monster itself, an amorphous invisible
being of ferocious energy, was created by none other than Disney animator
Joshua Meador who was on loan to MGM for the project. The effects of the briefly glimpsed monster
picking up and attacking humans with static electric light beams remains a
striking, remarkable technical effect for its time, as are shots of invisible
footprints moving about the ground.
The ensemble cast is great though it essentially boils down
to the three main actors featuring Leslie Nielsen in a rare appearance in the
heroic male leading role rather than goofing around The Naked Gun style. Walter Pidgeon was already a veteran actor by
the time he arrived on the gargantuan sets for Forbidden Planet and he
winds up giving the Doctor Morbius (no relation to the Jared Leto film I
swear!) a kind of Wizard of Oz ‘man behind the curtain’ quality. Anne Francis’ role is somewhat thankless here
though she was already fresh off of Blackboard Jungle a year prior and
besides being in skimpy outfits serves as an intermediary between her father,
the rescue team and whatever is lurking about in the interplanetary darkness.
Released to enormous box office success in 1956 with some
prints utilizing six-track magnetic surround audio further immersing viewers in
the universe of the movie, Forbidden Planet is an almost instant science
fiction thriller classic with an inspired sense of humor amid the fears of the
unknown. In the years since the film’s then-snapshot
of the future it legitimized larger budgets for science fiction film projects.
Gene Roddenberry further noted Forbidden
Planet with its depiction of the ship crew dynamics in navigating the uncharted
depths of space led to a singular influence on the creation of Star Trek. Moreover, all the props built for the film
found themselves reused on Rod Serling’s hit science-fiction horror series The
Twilight Zone. Robby the Robot
itself became a hot commodity in 2017, eventually selling for a record $5
million to Feardotcom director William Malone.
Seen now, dated or not, Forbidden Planet is an
important forward moving chapter in science fiction horror film history which
took the genre seriously. Populating it
with characters that have a believably lifelike sense of humor and camaraderie which
unmistakably informed arguably the greatest science fiction television show of
all time next to The Twilight Zone, Forbidden Planet helped usher
in a then-new subgenre to the general public that has now become almost commonplace
in film. While the concept of the proverbial
“grandfather” of science fiction movies remains malleable and open to debate, Forbidden
Planet is one of the few to get there first.
--Andrew Kotwicki
