FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)

By: Steve Biodrowski
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000

In some ways the presentation is naïve, even cornball, but this film survives on the strength of its story (loosely derived from Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST) and the best production values that MGM could furnish. Sort of a forerunner of STAR TREK (with a starship captain who falls in love with an alien girl, not to mention a logical second-in-command character), FORBIDDEN PLANET found a unique way to take the primordial terror of the horror genre and relocate it in an interstellar, futuristic setting: in the invisible monster stalking Altair IV is actually a subconscious projection from the mind of Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) who has attained the ability to make his thoughts real thanks a brain-boosting device created by an ancient alien civilization, the Krell. The production design and special effects are beautiful, and if the dialogue occasionally sounds corny, that's not enough to undermine the dark Oedipal rumblings beneath the narrative's surface.