FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)

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FORBIDDEN PLANET is a 1956 American science fiction film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on a film story by Allen Adler and Irving Block. It stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen. Shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, this landmark film is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s,[4] a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the plot contains certain happenings analogous to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation.[5]

Forbidden Planet pioneered several aspects of science fiction cinema. It was the first science fiction film to depict humans traveling in a man-made faster-than-light starship. It was also the first to be set entirely on a planet orbiting another star, far away from Earth and the Solar System. The Robby the Robot character is one of the first film robots that was more than just a mechanical "tin can" on legs; Robby displays a distinct personality and is an integral supporting character in the film. Outside science fiction, the film was groundbreaking as the first of any genre to use an entirely electronic musical score, courtesy of Bebe and Louis Barron.

Forbidden Planet's effects team was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Effects at the 29th Academy Awards. Tony Magistrale describes it as one of the best examples of early techno-horror. In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

PLOT:
In the 23rd century, after more than a year's journey, the United Planets starship C-57D arrives at the distant planet Altair IV to determine the fate of the ship Bellerophon, sent there 20 years before. Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the original expedition's scientists, warns the ship not to land for safety reasons, but Commander John J. Adams ignores his warning.

Adams and Lieutenants Jerry Farman and "Doc" Ostrow are met by Robby the Robot, who transports them to Morbius' residence. Morbius describes how all other members of their expedition had been killed, one by one, by an unseen "planetary force", with the Bellerophon being vaporized as the last survivors tried to escape. Only Morbius, his wife (who Morbius claims later died of natural causes), and their daughter Altaira were somehow immune. Morbius offers to help the starship return home, but Adams says he must receive further instructions from Earth.

Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet
The next day, Adams finds Farman kissing Altaira. Furious, he rebukes Farman and criticizes Altaira for wearing revealing clothing. That night, an invisible intruder sabotages communications equipment aboard the starship. The next morning, Adams and Ostrow go to Morbius' residence to discuss the intrusion. While waiting, Adams happens upon Altaira swimming. After she dons a new, less revealing dress, Adams apologizes for his behavior toward her, and they kiss. They are suddenly attacked by Altaira's pet tiger, and Adams is forced to disintegrate it with his blaster.

Morbius appears and tells Adams and Ostrow that he has been studying artifacts of the Krell, a highly advanced race that mysteriously perished in a single night 200,000 years before. One such device enhances the intellect, which Morbius had used. He barely survived, but his intellectual capacity had doubled. Another is a vast 8,000-cubic-mile (33,000 km3) underground machine, still functioning, powered by 9,200 thermonuclear reactors. Adams tells Morbius he must share these discoveries with Earth, but Morbius refuses, saying, "Humanity is not yet ready to receive such limitless power."

Adams erects a force field fence around the starship, but the unseen intruder easily passes through and brutally murders Chief Engineer Quinn, who was repairing the damaged communications equipment. Morbius warns Adams of his premonition of further deadly attacks. That night, the intruder is detected approaching. Its outline and features become visible when it enters the force field and blasters are fired at it, to little effect. The thing kills Farman and two other crewmen. When Morbius is awakened by Altaira's screams, the creature suddenly vanishes.

Adams tries to persuade Altaira to leave. Ostrow sneaks away and uses the Krell intellect enhancer but is fatally injured. Before dying, he informs Adams that the underground machine's purpose was to create anything by mere thought, anywhere on the planet. However, he tells Adams the Krell forgot one thing: "Monsters from the id." The machine gave the Krell's own subconscious desires free rein with unlimited power, causing their own extinction. Adams deduces that Morbius's subconscious created the thing that both killed the original expedition members and attacked his crewmen; Morbius refuses to believe him.

Altaira tells Morbius that she is leaving Altair IV with Adams. Robby detects the creature approaching; Morbius commands Robby to kill it, but the robot knows it is Morbius and shuts down, being programmed to never kill a human. Adams, Altaira, and Morbius hide in the Krell lab, but the creature melts its way through the thick doors. Morbius finally accepts the truth and confronts and disowns his other self, but is fatally injured by the creature as it vanishes. Before he dies, he has Adams activate a planetary self-destruct system, warning them to be far away in deep space. At a safe distance, Adams, Altaira, Robby, and the surviving crew witness the obliteration of Altair IV. Adams reassures Altaira that in about a million years, the human race will stand where the Krell did. They embrace as C-57D heads back to Earth.

CAST:
Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Edward Morbius
Anne Francis as Altaira "Alta" Morbius
Leslie Nielsen as Commander John J. Adams
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 Crewman Grey
Jimmy Thompson as Crewman Youngerford
James Drury as Crewman Strong
Harry Harvey Jr. as Crewman Randall
Roger McGee as Crewman Lindstrom
Peter Miller as Crewman Moran
Morgan Jones as Crewman Nichols
Richard Grant as Crewman Silvers
Robby the Robot as Robby the Robot
Frankie Darro and Frankie Carpenter as Robby the Robot (uncredited)
Marvin Miller as the voice of Robby the Robot (uncredited)
Les Tremayne as Narrator (uncredited)
James Best as Crewman (uncredited)
William Boyett as Crewman (uncredited)

PRODUCTION:
The screenplay by Irving Block and Allen Adler, written in 1952, was originally titled Fatal Planet. The later screenplay draft by Cyril Hume renamed the film Forbidden Planet, because this was believed to have greater box-office appeal. Block and Adler's drama took place in the year 1976 on the planet Mercury. An Earth expedition headed by John Grant is sent to the planet to retrieve Dr. Adams and his daughter Dorianne, who have been stranded there for twenty years. In this version, there is no Krell or a monster from the ID. The invisible ape-like beast simply appears to be a native of Mercury. Hume's first story outline from November 1952 fleshed out and rewrote much of the original concept.

The film sets for Forbidden Planet were constructed on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) sound stage at its Culver City film lot and were designed by Cedric Gibbons and Arthur Lonergan. The film was shot entirely indoors, with all the Altair IV exterior scenes simulated using sets, visual effects, and matte paintings. As the art director of the film, Lonergan took the liberty to build sets that were much larger than the budget allowed. The sets were already half done when the budget department found out and it was too late to do anything about it.

A full-size mock-up of roughly three-quarters of the starship was built to suggest its full width of 170 ft (51 m). The starship was surrounded by a huge, painted cyclorama featuring the desert landscape of Altair IV; this one set took up all of the available space in one of the Culver City sound stages. Principal photography took place from April 18 to late May 1955.

At a cost of roughly $125,000, Robby the Robot was very expensive for a film prop at this time; it represented almost 7% of the film's $1.9 million budget and equates to at least $1 million in 2017 dollars. Both the electrically controlled passenger vehicle driven by Robby and the truck/tractor-crane off-loaded from the starship were also constructed especially for this film. Robby later starred in the science fiction film The Invisible Boy (1957) and appeared in many TV series and films.

The animated sequences of Forbidden Planet, especially the attack of the Id Monster, were created by veteran animator Joshua Meador, who was loaned to MGM by Walt Disney Productions. According to a "Behind the Scenes" featurette on the film's DVD, a close look at the creature shows it to have a small goatee beard, suggesting its connection to Dr. Morbius, the only character with this physical feature. Unusually, the scene in which the Id Monster is finally revealed during its attack on the Earth ship was not created using traditional cel animation. Instead, Meador simply sketched each frame of the entire sequence in black pencil on animation stand translucent vellum paper; each page was then photographed in high contrast, so that only the major details remained visible. These images were then photographically reversed into negative and the resulting white line images were then tinted red, creating the effect of the Id Monster's body remaining largely invisible, with only its major outlines illuminated by the energy from the force-field and blaster beams. The monster was considered so scary that in some states its image was edited out of the film so as to not frighten children. Meador was also responsible for the other visual effects, like the ray gun beams and disintegration scenes.

Although workprints of cinema films were normally destroyed, the workprint of Forbidden Planet was not destroyed, and was discovered in 1977. There are differences in characterization, dialogue and scenes between the workprint and the release print.

Reception
Forbidden Planet had its world premiere at the Southeastern Science Fiction Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 3 and 4, 1956. The film opened in more than 100 cities on March 23 in CinemaScope, Eastmancolor, and in some theaters, stereophonic sound, either by the magnetic or Perspecta processes.

At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 94% based on 51 reviews from critics, averaging 8.20/10. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that everyone who worked on the film certainly "had a barrel of fun with it. And, if you've got an ounce of taste for crazy humor, you'll have a barrel of fun, too." Variety wrote: "Imaginative gadgets galore, plus plenty of suspense and thrills, make the Nicholas Nayfack production a top offering in the space travel category. Harrison's Reports called the film "weird but fascinating and exciting", with "highly imaginative" production. Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film was "more than another science-fiction movie, with the emphasis on fiction; it is a genuinely thought-through concept of the future, and the production MGM has bestowed on it gives new breadth and dimension to that time-worn phrase, 'out of this world.'" John McCarten of The New Yorker called the film "a pleasant spoof of all the moonstruck nonsense the movies have been dishing up about what goes on among our neighbors out there in interstellar space." The Monthly Film Bulletin of Britain praised the film as "an enjoyably thorough-going space fantasy", adding, "In tone the film adroitly combines naivete with sophistication, approaching its inter-planetary heroics with a cheerful consciousness of their absurdity that still allows for one or two genuinely weird and exciting moments, such as the monster's first advance on the spaceship." The Philadelphia film critic Steve Friedman ("Mr. Movie") told interviewers that Forbidden Planet was his favorite film. He watched it 178 times.

According to MGM records, the film initially earned $1,530,000 in the U.S. and Canada[32] and $1,235,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $210,000.

Forbidden Planet was re-released to film theaters during 1972 as one of MGM's "Kiddie Matinee" features; it was missing about six minutes of film footage cut to ensure it received a G rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, including a 1950s-style muted scene of Anne Francis, which made it seem she swam without a bathing suit.[33] Later video releases carry a G rating, although they are all the original theatrical version.

The American Film Institute nominated the film as one of its top-10 science fiction films. The score was nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.[

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