← Back to Reviews
in
#375 - Forbidden Planet
Fred M. Wilcox, 1956
A human starship dedicated to exploration lands on a planet that is inhabited by a scientist, his daughter, their robot, and a dangerous creature.
Forbidden Planet is a solid example of 1950s sci-fi with its high concept taking a team of 23rd-century astronauts (led by none other than Leslie Nielsen, whose youthful and dark-haired appearance here is certainly a surprise to someone who grew up knowing him as the white-haired buffoon from just about every movie he made from 1980 onwards) to the titular planet. There, Nielsen and co. find a scientist (Walter Pidgeon), who is investigating the technology left behind by an ancient alien civilisation. His daughter (Anne Francis) is also on the planet and she is accompanied by a robot ("Robby the Robot as himself", according to the opening credits) that looks like the platonic ideal for a 1950s robot. What follows over the course of the rest of the adventure is a cursory exploration of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know with a standard romantic sub-plot thrown in between its male and female leads and an interesting choice for a monster whose true nature constitutes the heaviest of spoilers for the film.
Forbidden Planet has aged reasonably well as far as sci-fi films from the 1950s go, though it doesn't exactly pull off a lot of surprises. It does play out like an extended episode of Star Trek: The Original Series only without that show's crew, which does add some stakes since there's not much guarantee who will make it out of the venture alive. Aside from the shiny futurisitc designs on everything, there's also the effects work that looks like it was hand-drawn onto every frame but I don't consider that to be a slight against the film; if anything, it makes for an interesting aesthetic to witness, especially in Technicolor. The performances are serviceable. It's a fundamentally good film, but as far as science-fiction goes it's not overly entertaining or thought-provoking.
Fred M. Wilcox, 1956
A human starship dedicated to exploration lands on a planet that is inhabited by a scientist, his daughter, their robot, and a dangerous creature.
Forbidden Planet is a solid example of 1950s sci-fi with its high concept taking a team of 23rd-century astronauts (led by none other than Leslie Nielsen, whose youthful and dark-haired appearance here is certainly a surprise to someone who grew up knowing him as the white-haired buffoon from just about every movie he made from 1980 onwards) to the titular planet. There, Nielsen and co. find a scientist (Walter Pidgeon), who is investigating the technology left behind by an ancient alien civilisation. His daughter (Anne Francis) is also on the planet and she is accompanied by a robot ("Robby the Robot as himself", according to the opening credits) that looks like the platonic ideal for a 1950s robot. What follows over the course of the rest of the adventure is a cursory exploration of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know with a standard romantic sub-plot thrown in between its male and female leads and an interesting choice for a monster whose true nature constitutes the heaviest of spoilers for the film.
Forbidden Planet has aged reasonably well as far as sci-fi films from the 1950s go, though it doesn't exactly pull off a lot of surprises. It does play out like an extended episode of Star Trek: The Original Series only without that show's crew, which does add some stakes since there's not much guarantee who will make it out of the venture alive. Aside from the shiny futurisitc designs on everything, there's also the effects work that looks like it was hand-drawn onto every frame but I don't consider that to be a slight against the film; if anything, it makes for an interesting aesthetic to witness, especially in Technicolor. The performances are serviceable. It's a fundamentally good film, but as far as science-fiction goes it's not overly entertaining or thought-provoking.