FORBIDDEN PLANET (1958)

FORBIDDEN PLANET (1958)

Tagline: One Of The Greatest Sci-Fi Masterpieces Of All Time!

(Sci-Fi, Romance, The Subconscious Sucks) [G]

You're insane. How else would you have led it here, where Alta must see you torn to pieces?

In this one, man has already been exploring space for quite some time and when there is no response from a previous exploration that went out 20 years earlier, Commander Adams and his team are tasked with finding out what happened. When they get there they discover only 2 people are alive on the planet that don’t want Adams there, and they have no intention of ever leaving. What mysteries will Commander Adams unravel as it becomes more and more apparent that something sinister is ravaging the FORBIDDEN PLANET?

First off, I am not saying this to be contrary. I always try to give credit where credit is due but, I found a LOT of this movie pretty damn boring. I get that it’s a masterpiece and I will get into that, but there are a LOT of crazy scenes in this one (including a robot being tricked into making beer) that not only don’t make any sense but are just flat-out bad writing. You could go to the park on a Saturday and have some of these scenes written better by the 7-year-olds on the playground. 

What really works well in this movie is just the overall concept. I don’t want to ruin it for those who haven’t seen it, but this thing gets into the depths and dangers of the mind, ego, and isolation. It’s pretty well-done form a psychological standpoint and is one of the better sci-fi flicks when it comes to getting into the mind-bending sci-fi that sci-fi fans embrace. The other thing this movie did well was the effects. We’ve got a scene with an animated monster, another with a tiger that surprisingly doesn’t just eat Anne Francis, we also get cool sets and even a 3D-looking hologram. It’s pretty awesome for this time period and MGM certainly didn’t skimp on the budget. They pulled out all the stops. The acting in this thing was also superb.

Speaking of acting, this one starred Leslie Nielsen who plays Commander Adams and he does a pretty decent job. I barely recognized him, until he started losing his temper near the beginning of the movie channeling his inner Paul Jensen from NATURE TRAIL TO HELL, no wait…I mean DAY OF THE ANIMALS, and I was thinking…” there’s angry Leslie Nielsen. We also get a heavy dose of Anne Francis who plays Altaira Morbius and is amazing. She was an accomplished actress, but the only other sci-fi she has done was THE ROCKET MAN, a family comedy from 1954. We also get Walter Pidgeo who was great as Dr. Morbius. His only other major sci-fi flick was 1961’s VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 

So far so good right? Well, I just didn’t love this one as much as everyone else seemed to. This movie is 98 minutes long and for basically 85 of those minutes, there just isn’t much going on. We get a love story that feels nearly emotionless and in spite of having the premiere sci-fi robot of the time, Robby The Robot is downgraded to making dresses and beer for most of this movie. It’s just really weird. We are also subjected to long diatribes from Dr. Morbius that while interesting, it doesn’t move the movie forward, it’s basically the quicksand in the script. 

Overall there is a lot of great here and a lot of not great. Because of that, this didn’t hit the “masterpiece” level for me that it did for a lot of people. For that reason, I have to give this one a 5 out of 7. It’s still quite the cinematic achievement and the score is also very good, but it’s not better than films like THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD or THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER (MGM) AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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