Forbidden Planet ***** (1956, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen) – Classic Movie Review 2555

Director Fred McLeod Wilcox’s 1956 sci-fi version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a genre classic, haunting and beautiful looking, gaining an immense amount of other-worldly mood and atmosphere from being all artificially filmed in the studio. It is the first film to be set entirely on another planet. All the many outdoor sequences are shot on an MGM studio sound stage, while exterior landscape shots are detailed colourful matte paintings.

Leslie Nielsen stars in Forbidden Planet as Commander Adams, the leader of a crew of a flying saucer who are sent to investigate the silence from a planet inhabited by scientists. They set off to the green sky-ed planet of Altair IV to try to rescue the members of the space mission but once there they find only two survivors, the grim and grave old Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his attractive, skimpily clad daughter Altaira (Anne Francis).

The two have somehow survived a hideous monster that roams the planet. Dr Morbius has made a discovery and has no intention of sharing it. In fact Morbius tries to stop Adams and crew coming, and then makes it very clear they are not welcome.

Commander Adams’s crew are played by Warren Stevens as Lieutenant Doc Ostrow, Jack Kelly as Lieutenant Jerry Farman, Richard Anderson as Chief Quinn, Earl Holliman as Cook, and George Wallace as Bosun.

They do land, and Robby the Robot meets them and transports Adams and Lieutenants Jerry Farman and Doc Ostrow to the residence of Morbius, who reveals that the other members of his expedition were killed one by one by a planetary force and that their starship, the Bellerophon, was vaporised when the survivors tried to take off. Morbius, his wife and daughter Altaira were immune, but his wife died of natural causes.

Morbius offers to help the crew get ready to return home, but Adams says he must await further instructions from Earth.

Both Commander Adams and Lieutenant Jerry Farman are very taken by the lovely Altaira, and soon find themselves vying for her affections. This might be to do with Anne Francis’s miniskirt – the first worn in a Hollywood movie.

As a side issue, the film was banned in Spain and not shown there till 1967 as General Franco’s dictatorship considered it obscene that a woman would wear a miniskirt to show off legs.

Forbidden Planet succeeds on many levels thanks to the expert screenplay by Cyril Hume building on the quintessential structure of the story by Irving Block and Allen Adler, the dignified playing of the star trio, and the pioneering electronic tonalities music by Louis and Bebe Barron.

Studio boss Dore Schary discovered the avant-garde electronic music creators in a nightclub in Greenwich Village and hired them there and then. It is the first mainstream film to have the music performed entirely by electronic instruments.

Visually it is incredibly imaginative and quite splendid, thanks to the Oscar-nominated special effects (by A Arnold Gillespie, Warren Newcombe, Irving G Ries, Wesley C. Miller and Joshua Meador), George J Folsey’s Eastmancolor and CinemaScope cinematography, and to MGM’s gorgeously appealing sets (by production designers Cedric Gibbons and Arthur Lonegan).

Among the movie’s main attractions are the intriguing characters in cute Robby the Robot (played by Frankie Darro; voice of Marvin Miller) and the Id monster, and the highlight scenes of the tour of Pidgeon’s city and the laser battle with the monster.

Also in the cast are Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Richard Anderson, Earl Holliman, George Wallace, James Drury, Robert Dix [Bob Dix], Jimmy Thompson, Harry Harvey Jr, Roger McGee, Peter Miller, Morgan Jones, Richard Grant, James Best, and William Boyett, with Les Tremayne as the voice of the Narrator.

It was one of the first times a science fiction project got a large budget. At just under $2 million ($1,968,000), it was a costly movie to make, but it was a popular critical success and made a nice profit, with a near $3 million box office take ($2,765,000). This meant that now big-budget science fiction films could be possible.

It was filmed on the same sound stage as The Wizard of Oz in 1939, with the set of Altaira’s garden reusing the Munchkin Village. Wizard! Robby the Robot is now owned by director William Malone (feardotcom).

Bellerophon is a hero from Greek mythology whose greatest feat was the destruction of the fire-breathing Chimera monster.

Robby the Robot was reused by MGM in The Invisible Boy (1957) and then appeared in TV shows including The Gale Storm Show, The Thin Man, Columbo, The Addams Family, and Lost in Space.

The cast and characters are: Walter Pidgeon as Dr Edward Morbius, Anne Francis as Altaira ‘Alta’ Morbius, Leslie Nielsen as Commander John J. Adams, Frankie Darro as Robby the Robot, Marvin Miller as the voice of Robby the Robot, Warren Stevens as Lt. Doc Ostrow, Jack Kelly as Lt. Jerry Farman, Richard Anderson as Chief Quinn, Earl Holliman as Cook, George Wallace as Bosun, Robert Dix as Grey, Jimmy Thompson as Youngerford, James Drury as Strong, Harry Harvey, Jr. as Randall, Roger McGee as Lindstrom, Peter Miller as Moran, Morgan Jones as Nichols, Richard Grant as Silvers, Les Tremayne as the Narrator, James Best as a C-57D crewman and William Boyett as a C-57D crewman.

The characters and isolated setting are supposedly the connection to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, while the plot has certain resemblances to the play.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2555

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