Review of Forbidden Planet
Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com
I just saw the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet for the first time. Well, it was mighty cheesy, but it was still a rockin' good time, from the oh-so-verisimilitudinous credits sequence from the days when a spaceship really was an honest-to-God flying saucer to the not-exactly-nailbiting suspenseful finale. I encourage everyone who hasn't seen this movie yet, to do so, for four reasons:
1) Forbidden Planet was billed as an adaptation of The Tempest, which interested me right there since as some of you know I've done some of my own Shakespeare/sci-fi crossing over. Well, Bill wasn't credited in the "based on" line, but then the story didn't really reproduce the plot very closely. You had your crotchety old hermit (Dr. Morbeus, named for the Greek god of sleep), his innocent yet oh so precocious daughter (Altara, played by the aforementioned Anne Francis), their helpful superpowerful sprite (Robby the Robot, the most fully-realized and entertaining character in this film), and the Big Mean Nasty Out To Wreak Havoc and Kill People (the "monster" that terrorizes everyone). However, in terms of what these characters all do, the movie departs pretty widely. There was one neat touch in that the Caliban character turns out to be, not an indigenous menace, but the creation of Prospero's twisted little mind, which is an interesting and in some ways very progressive reading of the original play. And there was one very odd touch in that the only plot that was actually preserved in anything like its original form was the Trinculo/Stephano subplot. In the play, these two clowns get washed up with a few gallons of liquor and spend most of the play getting themselves and Caliban drunk. In the film, T & S are represented by the cook, played by Earl Holliman, who convinces Robbie the Robot to synthesize 60 gallons of Kentucky bourbon, which leads to serious consequences for the Earth crew, and to one of the film's most outrageous double-entendres (more on that later).
2) Forbidden Planet is Star Trek. I am serious when I say that Gene Roddenberry must have gotten a lot of his ideas from either this movie or similar ones, because this thing has all the elements we've come to know and love, to wit:
In addition to these larger correspondences, there were some startling minor ones. When the crew has to come out of hyperspace (their version of warp travel) they for some reason have to stand on these round platforms that look exactly like the old Enterprise's transporter pads--so much so, in fact, that when the beams that were shining on them from above faded out and they were still there, there was a collective "Huh?" from the audience, who expected to see them materialize on the planet. The planet isn't called Class M, but it may as well be. The sliding doors looked mighty familiar. And the sets just look like Star Trek, in that inimitable Star Trek design sort of way.
There were also things that I am prepared to swear showed up in individual TOS episodes, notably the mind-expando machine that Morbeus used to make himself smart enough to operate the technology left behind by the Krell, the super-advanced race that had once inhabited the planet. This gadget appears in the infamous Spock's Brain, only it looks like a beehive hairdryer. As in Spock's Brain, the doctor tries on the mind-expando machine and it works on him; unfortunately, in FP the doctor dies shortly thereafter, but not before he has gasped out vital clues to the captain, who hovers over him solicitously. And then of course the idea of having one's subconscious run amok in physical form, which is the crux of the "monster" plot, got used in everything from "Shore Leave" to "The Enemy Within." And there were moments when Anne Francis was looking up with that same, "I know not why, but I am compelled to stand here gazing up at your eyes until you mash your face down onto mine again" look that you can see on Shayna in "Gamesters of Triskelion."
Speaking of which--FP has gender politics very similar to TOS's, which makes the captain/space babe romance REAL annoying to watch. The captain first charms Altara by lecturing her about how irresponsible it is for her to go parading around in skimpy butt-length tunics in front of his crew of randy male astronauts. It is quite clear from this speech that he's worried not so much about Altara being gang-raped as about this creating discipline problems for his crew. Anyhow, Altara is so affected by this that she asks Robby to create a new, more modest outfit for her, which she wears just for him on his next visit...and it's love at first clinch. After which her friend the tiger inexplicably tries to kill her; we could make no sense of this except to assume that the movie believes that it's like virgins and unicorns; once you eat the apple, you can't talk to the animals any more. Once she melts in his arms, it's paternalism a-go-go till you want to puke. But then we've come to expect that from this genre and this period, so on we go...
3) The sexual "subtext" in this movie is so outrageous it's incredible to watch. I'm not talking about the obvious coded sexuality of the basic plot (men land on virgin territory, vanquish its resistance, and leave it virgin no more). I'm not even talking about the constant homoerotic charge that seems to drive all the male-male interactions (from the triangulation between the captain and his first officer as they compete for Altara to the captain's tender love scene with the doctor as he dies, to the cook's almost crush-like infatuation with Robby the Robot, to the way shipmates on this spacecraft tend to always stand real close to each other and say their lines into each other's faces). I'm talking about lines like:
--Chief engineer; "this thing," be it noted, is an extremely phallic object being screwed on to a perpendicular pole so that the engineer looks like he's fondling one of those early Greek statues to Priapus.
--The cook, explaining that it must've taken him a good 3 or 4 hours to get as drunk as he was when he finally returned to the ship.
--Robbie the Robot, explaining why he was late in responding to Altara's summons.
And many more that I can't remember right now. I tell you, Star Wars has got nothing on this movie as regards the apparently unintentional dick joke. I say "apparently" because I just cannot believe all of this was accidental, especially the "oil job" reference.
4) Robbie the Robot. Robbie rocks. He's got a personality, but he's not human, and he gets all the best lines. He answers the question "is it male or female?" with "In my case, that question is totally irrelevant," and for the rest of the movie provides a helpful antitdote to the relentless gender enforcement going on in the rest of the film, being both masculine and feminine, and up to any task, whether it's replicating 60 gallons of bourbon or designing a new dress with emeralds and diamond trim. He's a damn sight more engaging than C3PO or R2D2, even if he does kind of look like they made him by taking the Michelin Man and stuffing a typewriter down his throat.
All that aside, I have to say my absolute favorite part of this movie was the conclusion, in which the following really funny things happen:
In his dying brain-expanded moments, the doctor gasps out that the problem is "Monsters from the id!!!" At which point the captain says, "What's the id? What's the id?" Alas, the doctor dies before he can tell him, but hey, if the captain had the intelligence of an adobe brick he would know the answer, wouldn't he?
Notwithstanding the fact that he had never heard of the id, once Morbeus glosses the term for him the captain immediately formulates a complicated and as it turns out accurate theory about how Morbeus's own subconscious created the monster that picked off the rest of his ship's crew and is now chowing down on the captain's men. It's almost as if he'd put himself through the mind expando-thing without anyone noticing.
During his final confrontation with Morbeus, the captain yells the phrase "MONSTERS FROM THE ID!!!!" a lot while Morbeus sits racked with grief and remorse. I think "MONSTERS FROM THE ID!!" is about to replace "MIT SCHLAG!" as my favorite "Thing to Yell Real Loud While Attacking An Adversary."
Other howlers include the funeral for the engineer, in which the captain tosses some dirt into the open grave, and then concludes the service and walks away with the rest of the party...leaving the grave open and uncovered. They weren't so much burying a shipmate as feeding the predators...and then of course there's the first officer, who after going to all the trouble to set up a secure electrofence around the spacecraft lets the cook out to go do some unspecified activity in the hinterlands. And the number of soldiers who seem to be intentionally hurling themselves into the maw of the Monster from the Id, who looks like of like the big orange hairy thing from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.