Forbidden Planet (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Forbidden Planet (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Fred M. Wilcox

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DVD details

Actor: Anne Francis, Jack Kelly, Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, Warren Stevens
Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-14
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of Forbidden Planet (Two-Disc Special Edition)

DVD Review: BAD DVD - not the movie just the DVD received
Summary: 1 Stars

I received the DVD. It would not play on my DVD player. Thinking that the HD DVD would not play on the older DVD player, I purchased an HD DVD player only to find out the DVD was actually BAD - NOT IN PLAY MODE.

DVD Review: Monsters From the Id
Summary: 5 Stars

When FORBIDDEN PLANET was released in 1956, science fiction films tended to be low budget black and white affairs that called to mind aliens attacking earth when Americans still recalled vividly GIs storming the beaches at Iwo Jima. Director Fred Wilcox wanted to continue the very recent trend blazed by the slightly earlier THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD which similarly suggested that science fiction could reflect some serious subtexts. Here, Wilcox took the essentials of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST and incorporated Walter Pidgeon in the Prospero role as Dr. Morbius, Anne Francis as Altaira (Miranda in THE TEMPEST), and the invisible monster from the ID as Caliban. Moviegoers were immediately entranced for all the right reasons. Leslie Nielsen as the captain was properly heroic as the one who emerged as the most insightful of his crew despite his failing to register high on the Krell brain booster. It was he who directed his crew to defend their ship against the ID beast. It was he who wound up with the lovely Altaira. And it was he who determined how to defeat a creature that was deemed too impossible to exist. Part of the allure of FORBIDDEN PLANET was the seamless melding of drama with comedy and ultimately with tragedy. The drama lay in how the crew from earth could avoid being picked off one by one as the crew of the Bellerephon had been twenty years earlier. As did Shakespeare in many of his tragedies, FORBIDDEN PLANET has several moments of low comedy (mostly in the intonations of Robby the Robot interacting with the goofy Earl Holliman). And the tragedy came not from the deaths of the crew but from the conversations of Dr. Morbius who sadly bemoaned the deaths of the technologically advanced Krell who in Morbius' words: "Could hardly have known what was killing them." Tying these three disparate elements into a cohesive whole was the Freudian subtext of the monsters from the ID. Morbius refused to grant until the very end that even his beloved Krell could yet retain a semblance of human emotion that might damn them just as thoroughly as it did for Freud's patients. There is a telling scene at the end when Morbius finally realizes the ghastly truth that it was he who was responsible for reviving the ID beast. He faces the beast and denounces it, all the while knowing that he can no more disavow it than he could disavow his own inner demons. As he confronts it, the captain takes out his blaster and points it at Morbius, realizing that the only way to stop the beast was to kill Morbius.

Even after watching FORBIDDEN PLANET numerous times over the decades, I can still eagerly view it with each viewing, much like one of Shakespeare's plays, revealing a new facet to enjoy. The special effects, top notch as they are, are not what I take away from any viewing. What brings me back again and again to the fold is the realization that what is normally forbidden for anyone to make use of is under the right circunstances a license for brutality that can overwhelm the best of anyone us, including even the godlike Krell.

DVD Review: An over-rated classic.
Summary: 2 Stars

Let's be honest here......had it not been for the jaw-dropping special effects (at least for the time), this mundane flick would have been quickly forgotten. As another reviewer pointed out, most of the money for the production seems to have gone for the effects, with only a token amount devoted for the cast and soundtrack. Robby the robot alone cost some $100,000 to create...not a small sum for the mid-1950's. I like Leslie Nielsen, but he was just getting started here. A bit green and it shows. Walter Pidgeon, an otherwise fine and gifted actor, was far past his prime by the time he did 'Forbidden Planet'. Leggy Anne Francis comes off more as dingy blonde prick tease than anything. And I can only assume that a booze-guzzling Earl Holliman was inserted as comic relief.

The politically correct crowd will find a lot to gripe about with this film. There wasn't a single African-American in the entire cast. And apparently, females had not yet been trusted to operate, much less travel in, interstellar spacecraft, since Nielsen's crew is entirely male. And even they begin acting like immature teenage boys as soon as they get an eyeful of Anne Francis. As the only female character, she didn't do much to advance the feminist cause. This sort of thing could be found in any number of films from the 1950's. 'Forbidden Planet' most certainly was not the only one.

The most annoying thing about this film is the soundtrack. OMG...what were they thinking? An overheated theremin (along with some creative use of reverb and echo) pushes out a near-constant stream of bleeps, warbles, shrieks and other noises that don't sound anything like music. Imagine a pair of white-hot sewing needles being inserted into your eardrums. This film would have been so much better served by a soaring, orchestra-based soundtrack.

All in all, this is NOT a bad film, but it has some bad qualities. Worth watching at least once, if for no other reason because it's a classic. But not worth the tons of praise I've seen heaped on it over the years.

DVD Review: Forbidden Planet
Summary: 5 Stars

This is a movie that I have loved since I first saw it as a child. I bought it on VHS and finally on DVD. Although it is old, the special effects for that time period were outstanding. It is actually the only movie that I have ever seen Leslie Neilson acting in a serious part.

DVD Review: digital remix fantastic
Summary: 4 Stars

It's been more than twenty years since I've seen this movie and the remake is absolutely awesome. I watched the film with my 10 year old grandson and he said the film was great. He couldn't believe that the film was made over 50 years ago. The color and graphics were great and the audio was very good. I couldn't recommend a better movie for entertainment.

Description of Forbidden Planet (Two-Disc Special Edition)

A dutiful robot named Robby speaks 188 languages. An underground lair offers evidence of an advanced civilization. But among Altair-4's many wonders none is greater or more deadly than the human mind. Forbidden Planet is the granddaddy of tomorrow a pioneering work whose ideas and style would be reverse-engineered into many cinematic space voyages to come. Leslie Nielsen plays the commander who brings his spacecruiser crew to the green-skied world that's home to Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) his daughter (Anne Francis)...and to a mysterious terror. Featuring sets of extraordinary scale and the first all-electronic musical soundscape in film history Forbidden Planet is in a movie orbit all its own.Running Time: 98 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?TELEVISION/CLASSIC UPC:?012569691223 Manufacturer No:?66912

This 1956 pop adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the best, most influential science fiction movies ever made. Its space explorers are the models for the crew of Star Trek's Enterprise, and the film's robot is clearly the prototype for Robby in Lost in Space. Walter Pidgeon is the Prospero figure, presiding over a paradisiacal world with his lovely young daughter and their servile droid. When the crew of a spaceship lands on the planet, they become aware of a sinister invisible force that threatens to destroy them. Great special effects and a bizarre electronic score help make this movie as fresh, imaginative, and fun as it was when first released. --Amazon.com

On the DVDs
On disc 1 of the colorfully designed 2-disc 50th Anniversary Edition of Forbidden Planet (also available in a collector's box), the movie is presented with a new digital transfer from restored picture and audio elements, with soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, offering considerable improvement over the film's previous DVD release. A selection of deleted scenes were taken from a faded and scratchy 16-millimeter "work print" that had originally been viewed by composers Louis and Bebe Barron as they were creating the film's unique electronic score; they consist of full or partial scenes cut from the final film-- mostly for good reason, but collectors (and those who first saw this rare material on the original Criterion Collection laserdisc) will welcome their inclusion here. The "lost footage" is crude special-effects test footage, primarily of interest to sci-fi historians and aficionados. Given the fact that the original "Robby the Robot" cost over $100,000 to build in 1955, it's easy to see why MGM wanted to get their money's worth: An excerpt from the 1950s TV series "MGM Parade" shows Forbidden Planet star Walter Pigeon appearing briefly with Robby, and the popular robot gets even more attention as a guest star in "The Robot Client," an episode of the Thin Man TV series (starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk) that originally aired on Feb. 28, 1958. Disc 1 also includes a gallery of seven science-fiction movie trailers dating from 1953 (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) to 1960's The Time Machine.

Disc 2 begins with 1957's The Invisible Boy, a still-enjoyable B-movie that served as Robby's post-Forbidden Planet showcase. Here, filmdom's favorite automaton plays sidekick to a young boy (Richard Eyer) who turns invisible when he gets caught up in a super-computer's scheme of global domination. Also included are three documentaries, ranging from very good to excellent: In addition to reuniting the surviving cast members of the '56 classic (including Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis, Richard Anderson, Warren Stevens, and Earl Holliman), "Amazing! Exploring the Far Reaches of Forbidden Planet" is an appreciative tribute to Forbidden Planet with some of Hollywood's foremost sci-fi fans including special effects masters Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett, SF movie expert Bill Warren, and others. "Robby the Robot: Engineering a Sci-Fi Icon" is a featurette about the robot's design, creation and pop-cultural history, featuring original "Robby" designer Robert Kinoshita, Bill Malone (current owner of the original Robby), and Fred "The Robot Man" Barton, a lifelong robot fanatic who now sells fully authorized, full-scale replicas of Robby for sci-fi fans with deep pockets. Closing out disc 2 is "Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us," a 2005 documentary from Turner Classic Movies, written and directed by Time magazine critic Richard Schickel. It's a thoroughly comprehensive survey of '50s sci-fi and its influence on the next generation of film directors, including engaging interviews with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and James Cameron. --Jeff Shannon

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