Il pianeta proibito

Like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, this film helped make sci-fi respectable instead of the stuff for silly B-movies with cheap costumes and obviously faked sets. To help strengthen the thought-level of the story, the scriptwriters included elements of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and Freudian psychology to make an enlightening tale of other-worldly mystery.

Leslie Nielsen is in his serious mode here long before he became the comic madman of the NAKED GUN movies and POLICE SQUAD television series. It is easy to see the prototypes of much of STAR TREK in this movie. The electronic soundtrack becomes a bit repetitious, but it works well as it is used in the scenes.

The short skirt on the heroine is a bit much but of course "cheesecake" was one of the things the cigar-chomping studio suits always liked in the 1950s and still do. Robbie the Robot is thrown in for some comic-relief and appeared in many other movies and television shows including LOST IN SPACE.

The most interesting aspect of the story for me was Monsters from the Id. The point being made is that the serpent is still in the Garden of Eden because we carry evil around with us wherever we go.

This is an excellent entertainment.

I first saw this movie when it originally came out. I was about 9 yrs. old and found this movie both highly entertaining and very frightening and unlike any other movie I had seen up until that time.

BASIC PLOT: An expedition is sent out from Earth to the fourth planet of Altair, a great mainsequence star in constellation Aquilae to find out what happened to a colony of settlers which landed twenty years before and had not been heard from since.

THEME: An inferior civilization (namely ours) comes into contact with the remains of a greatly advanced alien civilization, the Krell-200,000 years removed. The "seed" of destruction from one civilization is being passed on to another, unknowingly at first. The theme of this movie is very much Good vs. Evil.

I first saw this movie with my brother when it came out originally. I was just a boy and the tiger scenes really did scare me as did the battle scenes with the unseen Creature-force. I was also amazed at just how real things looked in the movie.

What really captures my attention as an adult though is the truth of the movie "forbidden knowledge" and how relevant this will be when we do (if ever) come into contact with an advanced (alien) civilization far more developed than we ourselves are presently. Advanced technology and responsibility seem go hand in hand. We must do the work for ourselves to acquire the knowledge along with the wisdom of how to use advanced technology. This is, in my opinion, the great moral of the movie.

I learned in graduate school that "knowledge is power" is at best, in fact, not correct! Knowledge is "potential" power depending upon how it is applied (... if it is applied at all.) [It's not what you know, but how you use what you know!]

The overall impact of this movie may well be realized sometime in Mankind's own future. That is knowledge in and of itself is not enough, we must, MUST have the wisdom that knowledge depends on to truly control our own destiny OR we will end up like the Krell in the movie-just winked-out.

Many thanks to those who responded to earlier versions of this article with comments and corrections, they are all very much appreciated!! I hope you are as entertained by this story as much as I have been over the past 40+ years ....

Rating: 10 out 10 stars

While not re-treading the comments or plot summaries of other IMDB users, I thought I'd say that this particular film does get better as it gets older. While ground-breaking on it's release in 1956, the visual "look" of this film has grown over the 46 years since it first arrived.

True to the pulp sci-fi of its day, the art direction has mellowed into an archetype that has not been bettered to this date. MGM put a surprising amount of money into the production values (similar to, but better than Universal's "This Island Earth"). This is a living "cover art". The indelible images of the saucer passing through space, landing on Altair-4, Robby, and the disintegrating tiger linger long in collective memory.

This must be seen on the big screen if possible, and in the original Cinemascope format. I've been lucky enough to see it (it was re-released in the 70's on a double bill with George Pal's "The Time Machine"), and the power it carries in scenes such as the Krell machines and the attack of the Id Monster are truly impressive. Watching it on a television just doesn't come close, although the "letterboxed" version is better than nothing. I am a poster collector, and even the advertising material for this film is exceptional. I see the one-sheet for it every day in my living room, and have never grown tired of it. "AMAZING!" is what is says, and for once they got it right. A true classic of it's type.

FORBIDDEN PLANET is the best SF film from the golden age of SF cinema and what makes it a great film is its sense of wonder . As soon as the spaceship lands the audience - via the ships human crew - travels through an intelligent and sometimes terrifying adventure . We meet the unforgetable Robbie , the mysterious Dr Morbuis , his beautiful and innocent daughter Altair and we learn about the former inhabitants of the planet - The Krell who died out overnight . Or did they ?

You can nitpick and say the planet is obviously filmed in a movie studio with painted backdrops but that adds to a sense of menace of claustraphobia I feel and Bebe and Louis Barron`s electronic music adds even more atmosphere

I`m shocked this film isn`t in the top 250 IMDB films .

This is the Roman Empire of Science Fiction films. All films before lead into it, and all films since flow out of it. It captures the romance, the spirit, and the nifty look of 1950's pulp science fiction. This is one science fiction movie with a theme, not just eye candy. No matter how high humanity climbs on the evolutionary scale, no matter how advanced our technology becomes, we must never forget the primal instincts of our darker nature.

This film is a masterpiece.