Here’s another Warner Bros. special edition of a classic film that turns out to be... well... genuinely special.
It helps that the movie is one of the few movies of its genre from that particular era that holds up. I really enjoy watching SF films from the ‘50s, but I’m perfectly willing to admit that they are silly. For the most part, they’re barely SF films. Most of them are lame monster movies set against the worst sort of cardboard backdrops and laughable spaceship interiors.
Not FORBIDDEN PLANET, though. This is a lush, beautiful film, packed with special effects that must have been genuinely special when the film premiered, and which are still quite sophisticated in both design and execution. If it were simply a pinnacle of design and craft, I would still recommend at least a viewing of the film. But this is much more than just how it looks. This is a film that offers a potent exploration of just what it is we really want from life, and what a world might be like where we were able to actually get it.
Yes, FORBIDDEN PLANET is a loose retelling of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST, but Cyril Hume’s screenplay has an identity all its own, and if there’s any fault I would point out, it’s that the film sets up some gigantic concepts that it just begins to address by the end of the film.
There’s a bit of a dated quality to the picture, but that’s part of its charm for me. The view of military life in outer space is definitely very 1950s, with a wise-cracking cook and a bunch of gun-happy goofballs. Leslie Nielsen plays the ship’s captain, and he’s solid. It probably didn’t help that I watched it right after I watched POLICE SQUAD: THE COMPLETE SERIES. Every role Nielsen ever played has been made funnier by virtue of his work with the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker guys. Have you ever seen him as the whore-beating freak in NUTS wearing that black bikini underwear? Hilarious.
Here, he’s the heroic lead of the film, the one guy who doesn’t try to birddog Anne Francis the moment they land on the planet. Not that I’d blame them. Anne Francis plays Altaira, daughter of Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), and the two of them are the only humans on Altair. They were part of an expedition, but everyone else died. Now, Nielsen’s ship has arrived to follow-up on that earlier expedition, and what they find is both amazing and deadly.
I love the use of Disney animators to bring some of the film’s most elaborate visual effects to life. I love the notion of the Krell’s civilization and their technology. I love the way the film establishes a myriad of story threads that it never quite resolves, and not because narrative sloppiness, but more because it’s too rich a mythology to resolve in one film. It cracks me up to see the cook use Robbie The Robot to make some bootleg hooch for the trip home. In fact, anything involving Robbie The Robot makes me smile. One of the great SF designs of any decade, Robbie is a deservedly iconic creation, and the film makes great use of him. He doesn’t overshadow the rest of the movie, but in every scene where he appears, he’s memorable.
What ultimately makes this film endure is the fact that it’s about ideas, the way great science-fiction should be. If you haven’t seen the film (and I'm sure there are many audiences that haven't), I don’t want to ruin it for you, because the story has some genuine surprises to offer, and the way it unfolds is creepy and compelling. Basically, it’s the story of the Krell, a race of people who once lived on Altair. They were incredibly technologically advanced, and they left behind giant machines... the size of cities... although to what purpose, Morbius seems reluctant to say at first. The Krell vanished, destroyed themselves somehow, and whatever they did has basically haunted Altair ever since. The film is scary in places, and there’s one scene involving a security fence that I watched through my fingertips the first time I saw it at age eight. I find the film just as beautiful now, if not more so, than I did back then.
Part of that is the clean-up that Warner Home Video did on the film. I had the Criterion laserdisc of this, and it didn’t look as good then as it does now. This is the definitive presentation of the film so far, and it’s amazing how well it holds up, how vivid and rich it looks.
Director Fred M. Wilcox didn’t exactly leave behind a long filmography, but his work here is so good that it makes me wonder what would have happened had he made more films. He was a guy who worked his way up through the studio system, working as an assistant director to some real giants before finally getting a chance to direct LASSIE COMES HOME and two sequels to the film. He directed the ‘40s version of THE SECRET GARDEN, too, a pretty classic picture in its own right. He only made one more film after FORBIDDEN PLANET, and it makes me sad. He was almost 50 when he made the movie, though. He just got a late start on things. Maybe all that experience he’d gained is what paid off in PLANET, though. Whatever the case, it’s impressive.
The disc features three documentary featurettes (one on SF in general, one on Robbie, and one about the film), as well as an episode of the THIN MAN TV series where Robby made a guest appearance and a film called THE INVISIBLE BOY that also used Robby as a way of cashing in on PLANET’s success. The show’s not great, and neither is the movie, but it’s nice they were included for Robby fans. There’s not much in the way of deleted scenes. You’ll see some effects tests and a few odds and ends, but not much else. That Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack mix is pretty sweet, though, and in the end, just having this nice a print of the film is reason enough to recommend this disc wholeheartedly.
The collector tin comes with a Robby toy, though. So splurge. More nerd furniture is always a good thing.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
