Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
If you’re wondering what Forbidden Planet is about, well there’s this planet that is – yes – FORBIDDEN to you. Namely Altair IV, where an expedition force was sent some 20 years prior and promptly vanished. Leslie Nielsen’s Commander John J. Adams and his crew have been sent to investigate.
They find only one survivor of that outing, Walter Pidgeon’s Dr. Edward Morbius. And I don’t want to be all judgey here, but with that name, that voice, and that beard, there may just be something more sinister to his story. Just a guess. He tells them that some vague planetary force killed all of the crew, one by one, leaving only Morbius, his wife, later dying of natural causes, and his young daughter, Anne Francis’s Alta, whom many of the crew take a liking to.
However if they had any untoward thoughts, they have to get past Robby the Robot, an amazingly advanced automatron that outclasses anything seen on Earth and that Morbius seemingly knocked out in his spare time, despite him being a linguist, not a robotics expert. Turns out he’s been plugging himself into the remnant technology of a long lost race called the Krell, which has had the side effect of increasing his intellect. The still perfectly functioning technology is ridiculously advanced, but Morbius rejects the Commander’s suggestion that other scientists should be studying this. Earth, he says, isn’t ready for this jelly.
Things take a perhaps expected turn into disaster when the Commander’s ship is attacked by a powerful unseen entity, just as happened all those years ago. So, they have to work out what’s going on and stop it before they are all killed, and also uncover the full extent of what happened to Morbius and his crewmates all those years ago.
Right, let’s get this out of the way – the standard issue early career Leslie Nielsen disclaimer, in that it’s always quite difficult to take him seriously in straight roles given his innate Niels-icity and comedic roles post Airplane!. He and the rest of the cast do well enough with all the dramatic reading that’s required, and it’s not their fault that I kept waiting for a punchline that never came. That’s the Zucker brother’s fault. Or mine. Maybe.
What Forbidden Planet delivers, like a lot of the best sci-fi, isn’t necessarily action – there’s a nice animated laserfight later on, but that’s pretty much all the thrills and spills you get, but instead sets up a mystery, sets up some interesting characters, has them bounce off each other for a while until the kinda-sorta twist of the ending that’s maybe not standing up to a great deal of scientific scrutiny, but does say something meaningful about the human condition.
I’m not sure it quite qualifies for the same historical importance recommendation as the others we’ve spoken about, but for what it’s worth it’s one of the most easily enjoyable and digestible courses on today’s menu.