Poll Position: Forbidden Planet (1956)

Last week's winner of the 50s Science Fiction poll was the classic Forbidden Planet! I can't tell you how long I've wanted to see this movie! I've always seen pictures of the big robot and always wondered what it was from. I'll be honest, this is the film I was hoping would win, so thank you to all those who voted for it. But it was a close race with It Came From Outer Space so I'll have to keep that one in mind for a future viewing. Judging by the poster, the robot is the villain of the film, but I know how deceptive old movie posters can be. Hit the jump for my thoughts! [Cue weird space music] oooooWEEeeeeOOOOooooo WaaaOOoooOOOeeeewwwaaaa


The United Planets Cruiser C57D is sent on a mission to investigate a colony around the star Altair. The Colony had failed to stay in contact, so Commander J.J. Adams is sent with his crew to find the source of the problem. When they arrive, however, the planet seems barren. There are no cities or ports or roads that they can see at all. Eventually they are contacted by one of only 2 survivors of the colony. It seems that a terrible "force of nature" killed all of the colonists save for Dr. Morbius and his wife. Now living only with his daughter, it's been years since the attacks, and "the beast" has never returned... until now!

This might look good now, you should see it in motion! The blue light is rotating!

First of all, I LOVED the special effects!! I can't stress this enough. I had no idea they could do effects like this in '56! In fact, I have a nagging suspicion that this was touched up later, and possibly they were updated. I say this because I think the movie is colourized, because I saw a picture of a scene where all the clothes and scenery were differently coloured from what I saw in the film. However it happened, I'm glad it did because it came out perfectly! To give you a rough idea, the effects almost look animated, and I suppose they would count as animation. The laser blasts and electric pulses remind me of the effects you might see in Ghostbusters or that movie I saw, The Philadelphia Project.

The sound effects, while fun for the blasters and whatnot, were definitely really strange. I don't even think you could say it had a soundtrack because all the background sound was just a Theremin device making all the crazy wacky sci-fi sounding noises they they always do.

Leslie Nielsen stars as the dashing Commander J.J. Adams

The acting was great too! Sure it had some of that 50s charm to it, but I still believed in these characters. Walter Pidgeon plays Dr. Morbius, and while I'm not familiar with his name or his work, I thought he was really good. Leslie Nielsen was the Commander, J.J. Adams, and I could tell it was him the second I saw and heard him. It was cool to see him in such a different role than I'm used to seeing him play. He was really great as the serious and dashing Commander. Lastly, if I'm going to talk about characters, I have to bring up Robby the Robot! He was the whole reason I wanted to see this movie in the first place! Robby had a surprising amount of personality and I'm quite certain the robot from the Lost in Space TV show was inspired by him. Not simply an automaton, he has a human voice and was sometimes a little witty. I particularly liked the scene where he snatches a bottle of booze out of a man's hands and drinks it himself. Yeah, you heard me!

Dr. Morbius shows how Robby can never harm a person, or he could fry his circuits

Oh, so about that poster! I was completely right in believing it wasn't true. As ominous as Robby seems at first, they go to great lengths to show how he could never be harmful, and by the end he's probably one of the best robots in all of science fiction history!

The other part of the movie I really liked was the exploration of the planet. I won't go much into what they find, but it's possibly some of the best Sci-Fi I've seen in ages! It lights the imagination up like a 4th of July fireworks show! They talk a lot of science, and it doesn't all seem like non-sense. Sure it's a little off, but point is that it's not all just gibberish made-up words. The implications of what we see and how they got my imagination going was fantastic!

Forbidden Planet still completely holds up as a great sci-fi movie, even 55 years later. Well, except for its silly background sound effects, but they were still fun. Besides that oddness, I think this is a MUST SEE movie to any fan of science fiction. If you've ever watched the original Star Trek TV show, then you'll adore this movie! Basically, if you've never seen Forbidden Planet, then rush to find it right now!