Forbidden Planet a Groundbreaking Sci-Fi Classic
Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis Co-Star in Film That Inspired Star Trek
Nov 4, 2009
Forbidden Planet is not a great film. But it is an important and influential one.
This pioneering sci-fi picture originally was conceived as a B-movie. It ended up with surprisingly strong backing from MGM -- and helped inspire countless TV series and features, most notably Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Star Trek Connections Abound
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry openly admitted Planet was a key inspiration. It shows, too -- from the archetype characters, to the sets, to the story's humanistic vision.
In Forbidden's opening narration, the Star Trek connection comes early -- as we witness a spaceship from Earth on a mission representing the "United Planets." Sounds a lot like Star Trek's United Federation of Planets, right?
The Trek echoes continue:
The ship features a familiar looking bridge. There's a gizmo that looks a lot like a Trek transporter. There are also handheld computers, a TV-type screen monitor on the bridge, phaser-style weapons, and so on.
Oh, and there was the music, too -- called "Electronic Tonalities" in the credits. This was the first studio film to feature an all-electronic score by the husband and wife team of Louis and Bebe Barron. Pretty radical stuff for 1956.
It's also the first sci-fi film shot in color and widescreen, which help make the vistas of a barren planet that much more impressive.
Forbidden Planet Based on Shakespeare!
In terms of story, the film touches all the bases that studio executives thought necessary. Beyond the sci-fi story, there' s a hot babe, romance, thrills, state-of-the-art (for the time) special effects, comic relief and 23rd century characters spouting 20th century American values.
Forbidden Planet is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. In brief, Commander J.J. Adams and his all-male crew of United Planets cruiser C-57-D are bound for the distant planet Altair-4, to search for survivors of a previous spaceflight there two decades earlier.
Orbiting above, they contact a scientist on the planet named Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), who tries to shoo them away. But Cmdr. Adams has his orders and insists on landing.
Robby the Robot: Scene Stealer
They are greeted by the film's most original (and probably, most popular) character, Robby the Robot, built by Morbius and versatile beyond belief.
Soon, Adams and two senior officers are lunching with Morbius, who's been living happily alone there with his research. Well, almost alone. Just then, his drop-dead gorgeous daughter, Altaira ("Alta"), pops in to meet the guys.
All is not necessarily well on Altair-4. Morbius explains that a violent, mysterious creature killed all the others, leaving just the scientist and his daughter. (Morbius says his wife died years earlier, soon after the others.)
But since the mass killings years earlier, Morbius and Alta have lived in peace. By their very presence, could the unwanted visitors somehow capsize the calm? Hmmmm...
Anne Francis an Icon in Skimpy Skirts
The cast is an interesting mix of established, mature stars like Pidgeon as Morbius (the film's equivalent to Prospero in Tempest ) and younger studio players evidently cast to appeal to the 50s youth market.
Anne Francis -- later TV's private detective Honey West -- in unforgettable as Alta. Not for her acting. For her wardrobe. Francis' tight, often skimpy outfits launched millions of fevered male adolescent fantasies in the mid-50s. In fact, probably no one wore sci-fi skirts that short again until Persis Khambatta in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. (Yep, another Trek connection. Where will they end?)
Alta is the Tempest equivalent of Miranda. Except she behaves like a 50s American teenager -- even though she's never seen a man before, other than her father. Alta is boy-crazy without really knowing why (wink-wink). After she gets kissing lessons from some of the attentive male visitors, it takes Cmdr. Adams to show Alta how it's really done.
Naturally, that's when she "falls in love" and starts asking Robby to design and make her a new dress "with lots and lots of star sapphires" -- all this despite the fact she's never been exposed to issues of fashion, materialism or sex.
Leslie Nielsen Plays Man's Man Commander
Leslie Nielsen plays the Kirk-like Cmdr. Adams -- decisive, macho, but with a soft side for pretty girls like Alta. This was a quarter-century before Nielsen began a second career of self-parody with the 1980 comedy Airplane!
The colorless supporting cast includes B-movie stalwarts Warren Stevens and Richard Anderson (later Oscar Goldman on TV's The Six Million Dollar Man).
Robby the Robot was voiced by actor Marvin Miller. (Another actor actually manipulated Robby from inside.) Robby turned up the next year in The Invisible Boy, and clearly inspired the robot on TV's Lost in Space nearly a decade later.
Earl Holliman as the ship's cook is around strictly for comic relief. But his bits of business are so hokey, you wish they'd left Earl on Earth.
Freudian Theme Adds Gravitas to Film
Eventually, the evil force that killed everyone re-emerges and the story turns quite Freudian -- a sign psychotherapy was an emerging force in the mid-fifties marketplace of ideas.
Forbidden Planet was the pet project of writer Allen Adler and special effects wizard Irving Block. They pitched it to MGM as an inexpensive sci-fi entry, but studio chief Dore Schary doubled the budget, to nearly $2 million, impressive for a 50s B-picture. (Lang Thompson, www.tcm.com)
However, author Danny Peary reports Schary raised the budget only to augment the special effects; otherwise, the rest of the production was made on the cheap, as the B-movie it originally was intended to be. (Cult Movies by Danny Peary, Dell Publishing, 1981.)
Director Fred McLeod Wilcox's work with the actors was as undistinguished as most of his credits, which included a few Lassie pictures and something called I Passed for White.
Forbidden Planet wasn't the first sci-fi movie about space travel. And it didn't do especially well on first release. But Planet showed sci-fi was capable of mixing serious themes with cool effects and it helped shape the way Hollywood -- and the larger society -- visualized the future.
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