“Forbidden Planet” exists in a peculiar dead-zone for famous Hollywood sci-fi’s. It’s too campy and stilted to be called truly great, but it’s also too grand and philosophical to belong to the McCarthy era B-movies of the period that in some cases have aged even better. It’s an imperfect film on numerous levels, but it works so memorably because “Forbidden Planet” is all about the pursuit for human perfection and the beauty in humanity’s flaws.
Though famous for its ahead-of-its-time special effects, Cinemascope aesthetic, high budget, early Leslie Nielsen performance and lofty ambitions, it’s actually one of the more subtle Shakespeare adaptations of its kind. Based on “The Tempest,” a group of soldiers hundreds of years in the future have ventured to the Earth-like planet Altair, where an entire colony had gone missing and never reported back. The one sole survivor is Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon in a steadied, but high in the clouds performance), who has since fashioned a comfortable life with a talking robot named Robbie and his short-skirted vixen of a daughter, Alta (Anne Francis). Commander J. J. Adams (Nielsen) is tasked with discovering what became of the colony just as his own crew is slowly slaughtered by an unknown, invisible force.
You can see how “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” could be quite literally lifted from moments of “Forbidden Planet.” The pseudo 3-D title card recalls “Star Wars'” iconic opening credits, a cleansing pod on Adams’s ship resembles the transport beams on the Enterprise, and at one point a crew member comments on the natural beauty of Altair’s two mooons. Even the bulbous, slow moving Robbie the Robot seems to be a direct ancestor of Marvin the Paranoid Android and The Robot from “Lost in Space.”But where “Forbidden Planet” feels most similar to “Star Trek” is in its bookish, procedural dialogue. Far from being a stagy film version of Shakespeare, it indoctrinates us with proof of a civilization far beyond man. The description of their superior technology and intellect inside an endless tower that is little more than a meaningless air shaft is dwarfing, and it presumes the inherit evil of mankind. “Let him be buried with the other victims of human greed and malice,” Morbius barks, and yet the only real acts of sinfulness on display are the cook who attains 60 gallons of bourbon and the crew members who try taking advantage of a clueless Alta.
It’s a film that talks and ponders more than it creates set pieces for sheer enjoyment and B-movie thrills, and yet it stuns with just how much there is to look at. Morbius’s palace home offers Earthly pleasures like a virtual disintegration machine, tigers as pets and unnatural red flowers and trees on this desert planet, but so few of these things have real bearing on the plot.
Occasionally, director Fred M. Wilcox lets go of his Cinemascope aspect ratio as a crutch and performs aerial tracking shots that effortlessly build suspense of the mystery demon’s attack.
Fans of this Old Hollywood genre might not cling to “Forbidden Planet” as strongly as they might something like “The Thing From Another World,” which I reviewed recently. It lacks the gimmicky thrills and knowingly campy charm of other B-movies in the period, and it has so much money on screen that it even starts to stink of Old Hollywood excessiveness.
But “Forbidden Planet” is specifically not a film of empty pleasures. It’s bitter, intellectual, philosophical and challenging. It engages our subconscious and intuition in a fascinating monster movie to boot.