Forbidden Planet Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Trekweb ^ | 03/30/06

[KevinDavis]

The seminal science-fiction movie Forbidden Planet, starring Leslie Nielsen as starship Commander Adams and Anne Francis as Altaira, premiered on the big screen in March 1956 and celebrates its 50th Anniversary this month. In the movie, the crew of the United Planets starship C-57D goes to investigate the silence of a planet's colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has.

[Darkwolf377]

His score for Silent Running was a LOT more traditional, but not bad. I resisted some of the music you note for years, but over time have come to enjoy some of it a great deal.

You might enjoy some of the scores of Jerry Goldsmith--Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, Alien. Alien is a particular favorite of mine--he used digideroo, for example, but blown through in a way that's not traditional; in Planet of the Apes he used rub rods, mixing bowls, and blowing through the French horn without the mouthpiece in. He used so many synthesizers for his score to Supergirl that one overheated and caught fire in the studio. In later years (he died in 2004) he used fewer nontraditional techniques and used more synths, but some of his horror and SF scores used serial composing techniques and strange instrumentation (striking the wires in the piano in his Chinatown score, for example).

If you ever get your hands on Elliot Goldenthal's Alien 3, give that a try. he spent one full year composing it, and uses stacked brass clusters and all kinds of weird sythesized sounds.

[RhoTheta]

I think VI (Save the Whales), a personal favorite score.

[RhoTheta]

"I think VI (Save the Whales), a personal favorite score."

Sheesh! I meant Star Trek VI. I need coffee!

[Darkwolf377]

That would be Star trek IV by Leonard Rosenman, who wrote some of the earliest 12-tone-incorporating scores in movie history.

His theme for that was way too much like his theme for the cartoon Lord of the Rings, for me.

Trek VI, btw, was originally to be "scored" with Holst's The Planets, but they couldn't get the rights, so Cliff Eidelman got his first shot at a big Hollywood score, and did a good job, too.

[RadioAstronomer]

Did the Forbidden Planet robot show up on the Lost In Space TV series, or did Robby just look derivative?

Yes. But as an evil robot. It was cool seeing the two robots together in a LIS episode.

[antiRepublicrat]

Have you heard of a boy named Sue?

I freaked out a while ago when learning Shel Silverstein wrote that song, too. The guy was everywhere.

[RightWingAtheist]

The similarities were not coincidence; both Robby and the LiS robot were designed by Bob Kinoshita. Robby and the Forbidden Planet saucer also became regular guests on The Twilight Zone, produced at the same MGM studios (so did Ann Francis, for that matter).

[RightWingAtheist]

I'm just thirty, and have only seen Forbidden Planet on TV, but it's defnitely in my top 10 greatest SF films of all time. In fact, the overwhelming majority of my favorite such films are from the Fifties.

[RightWingAtheist]

The terrfic cast of Forbidden Planet is often forgotten. In addition to Nielsen, Francis and the great Walter Pidgeon (who gives a magnificent performance as Morbius), it also includes Warren Stevens, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman on the Six Million Dollar Man, but who also appeared in several Kubrick films), Jack Kelly (Maverick), and Commando Cody himself, George Wallace, who passed away only recently, and who appropriately enough, ended his career with a small but visible part in Minority Report. The only bad performace is Earl Holliman's ackward and embarassed (he really WAS embarassed while filming the movie), comedy-relief cook. Ironically, the same year, Holliman gave the best performance of his career in The Rainmaker.

[RightWingAtheist]

I freaked the first time I read a Playboy, and found a dirty cartoon by him in there! I was only eight or nine, and already knew him for The Giving Tree.

[RightWingAtheist]

Another classic SF film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, just celebrated its 50th anniversary as well. Star Kevin McCarthy is still alive and well and working at the age of ninety-two! I don't know if Warner Bros is gearing up for a 50th annivesary special edition of it...but they are preparing one for Forbidden Planet. At least they ought to be doing one; I'm still miffed that all they included in the 50th anniversary DVD of The Thing From Another World was a battered old trailer!

[RightWingAtheist]

Has anyone pinged you to this yet? :)

[asp1]

LOL! "THEM" is one of my favorites too! I have it and hundreds of other on DVD. I insist on buying only the original versions. I loved "The Thing." How about "It! The Terror From Outer Space." it's a classic? But, my all time absolute favorite is "The Crawling Eye." :o)

[NCC-1701]

That describes how the space shuttle/ISS astronauts get into the US made EVA suits. Both Robby and the EVA suits are modular in design. Well done to both.

[Phsstpok]

you did see Kevin McCarthy in the (less than memorable) remake/update of Body Snatchers? For me it was about the only redeeming thing in the movie.

I love his character in Inner Space ("Shut up Margaret, close the lid"). His part in Twighlight Zone: The Movie was a bit too strained for me, though.

[NCC-1701]

Does anyone remember "Caltiki"?

[Phsstpok]

I cannot believe we're up to 75 posts and no one has mentioned the Krell!!!!

 

There is so much more I want to know about them. I often assume that other SF plots are using the Krell as the "unknown ancient aliens" mentioned as having visited some distant planet (or Earth) and left behind some marvelous technology.  I've always assumed that there were Krell outposts out there that escaped the Krell homeworlds fate, just waiting for us to find them.

Cool! 

The picture is linked to the web site where I found it,  Science Fiction Film Site.  It's on their page Forbidden Planet: Images of Krell Technology.

[hattend]

Nope, not me.

[RhoTheta]

We got hooked on MST3K while Joel was there. One of our boys made a freize for the bottom of our TV to scotch tape in place with Crow, Tom Servo and Joel and the theater seats. Later, we discovered Sinister Cinema and get their catalog of cheezy SF (and other) movies. Great stuff, and a lot are being converted to DVD.

[chimera]

Anne Francis tells a fun story of how when they were filming this movie she would find a long-stemmed red rose on the windshield of her car every evening when the day's work was done. For years she never knew who was leaving her those roses until the cast met up once again for some kind of reunion or convention and she found out from the man himself it was...Warren Stevens. Who among the healthy male heteros out there would not have been smitten by the lovely and youthful Miss Francis? Evidently Warren was, the sentimental old romantic...

But it was a terrific cast and a wonderful story wonderfully told. Yes, Walter Pidgeon was great as the tragic and noble scientist who tries to do right but is done in by that malevolent power that lies within all of us, but only he was accidentally given the power to realize it. I still get goose bumps in the one climactic scene where the clear-thinking Commander Adams forces Morbius to confront the painful truth ("Here. Here is where your mind was artificially enlarged. Consciously it still lacked the power to operate the Great Machine. But your subconscious had been made strong enough!" Zowee!) And how about those audio effects? The credits call them "electronic tonalities" but it is really an early version of electronic synthesizers. And in the 1950s, no less. I remember trying to tinker together a home-brew version of the early "Theremin" device, and got it to make a few screeches and warbles, but nothing like the FP soundtrack. Some good stuff there.