Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's winter break week, so we have a rewind episode
Speaker 1: here for you. This one originally published three seven, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. It is our episode on the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. Such and such a
Speaker 1: fun film, oh and such an iconic electronic musical score.
Speaker 1: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty six American science fiction adventure Forbidden Planet, starring Walter
Speaker 3: Pigeon and Francis and Leslie Nielsen. Yes, that Leslie Nielsen.
Speaker 3: You know before where he went full irony mode with
Speaker 3: movies like Airplane and The Naked Gun. He was a stern,
Speaker 3: square jawed ham from outer space. And this movie makes
Speaker 3: the best and the worst use of him.
Speaker 1: Yes, this movie is full of male actors just like that.
Speaker 3: I had such a good time rewatching Forbidden Planet. This
Speaker 3: wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but the first
Speaker 3: time in a while, and It's one of those classic
Speaker 3: films that both holds up so well and doesn't and
Speaker 3: both ways are good. Like it is at once gorgeous,
Speaker 3: thoughtful and clever and also dated, corny and numb skullish,
Speaker 3: and like both aspects make for a very good time.
Speaker 1: I will say that, at least in my viewing of
Speaker 1: the film, it never felt completely offensive, and it never was,
Speaker 1: but it was never boring. I guess it is a
Speaker 1: film that has a well earned place in sci fi
Speaker 1: cinema legend, and if you could, it's easy to go
Speaker 1: into Forbidden Planet expecting it to like wholly and completely
Speaker 1: live up to that legend. But this is a film
Speaker 1: that is clearly trying to do multiple things at the
Speaker 1: same time in essence to justify its budget. I imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, it needs to be a film with a
Speaker 1: brilliant sci fi vision. It also needs to have laughs,
Speaker 1: It needs to have some you know, some winky sex appeal.
Speaker 1: It needs to deliver on all of these things, and
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately it does and does so in a
Speaker 1: way that is not completely shameful decades later. So I
Speaker 1: think I have to tip my hat to it in
Speaker 1: that regard.
Speaker 3: You know, I had completely forgotten about the sixty gallons
Speaker 3: of whiskey scene. That really adds a whole other dimension
Speaker 3: to the Forbidden Planet experience. You did not think this
Speaker 3: movie would be so much about men stranded in space
Speaker 3: who are horny and want booze.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a huge element of mad men in space,
Speaker 1: the bunch of Don Draper esque male characters essentially hitting on,
Speaker 1: relentlessly hitting on the one female in their vicinity. Only
Speaker 1: instead of a like a secretary in a in like
Speaker 1: a New York office space, it is the daughter of
Speaker 1: a brilliant scientist on a distant world.
Speaker 3: The one true extraterrestrial we get to meet in the movie.
Speaker 3: Though she is a human, but she's from another planet.
Speaker 1: Now, Joe, you fished up one of the posters for
Speaker 1: Forbidden Planet, and oh, it's so it's so beautiful. It
Speaker 1: of course features a non human entity carrying an unconscious,
Speaker 1: beautiful woman. I can't recall. Does Robbie the robot ever
Speaker 1: carry Anne Francis in this picture?
Speaker 3: I don't remember if he does. He does carry the
Speaker 3: doctor Doc Austro, Remember.
Speaker 1: That and wonder that that should have been on the poster?
Speaker 3: Close enough? Yeah, it should have been like a uniformed
Speaker 3: guy who just got his brains apped by an alien computer.
Speaker 3: But no, he's he's carrying a blonde lady here, and
Speaker 3: she doesn't look that much like Anne Francis, Like really long,
Speaker 3: but you know it's close enough. This was the format
Speaker 3: at the time they tore Johnson to Robbie the Robot.
Speaker 1: I love it. Well, Yeah, this film is gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to talk about. I believe this
Speaker 1: is the third time we've covered a movie that's referenced
Speaker 1: in the lyrics of science fiction double Feature from the
Speaker 1: Rocky Horror Picture Show. Because we've done Doctor X, and
Speaker 1: we've done Tarantula, and now we've done Forbidden Planet. Of course,
Speaker 1: in the chorus we get to hear we are reminded
Speaker 1: several times that Ann Francis stars in Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 3: Ah, because planet runs with Janet. Yeah, yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 1: In addition to the film score, I will I won't
Speaker 1: say that I have the film score to Forbidden Planet
Speaker 1: stuck in my head. It's not really an earworming score
Speaker 1: in the traditional sense, but I've certainly had science fiction
Speaker 1: double feature in my head all week ever since I
Speaker 1: watched Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 3: You know one thing that I think really sets Forbidden
Speaker 3: Planet apart from most of the science fiction of the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties is that it is an extreme example of
Speaker 3: our show category of a rub the Fur movie. It
Speaker 3: is an overwhelming experience of pleasing visual and sonic textures.
Speaker 3: Like even if the movie had no dialogue or story
Speaker 3: at all, I think it would be a wonderful experience
Speaker 3: just to sit and absorb the sets and the painted
Speaker 3: back drops, the special effects, the costumes and the props.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about so many things that are just you know,
Speaker 3: caramel chocolate to the eyes, Like you know, the green
Speaker 3: sky and the mountains that we see on Altair four,
Speaker 3: the mid century future chic decor of the Morbius house,
Speaker 3: so that pink mod furniture and all the loosight beams
Speaker 3: and everything, the forced perspective shots of the Krell technology
Speaker 3: where you've got these bridges going over the bottomless pits
Speaker 3: of the power generators and whatever those big white globes
Speaker 3: are that are like riding belts up and down the
Speaker 3: wall into the darkness. You've got that great alien garden
Speaker 3: around the Morbius swimming pool. You've got the design of
Speaker 3: Robbie the robot, which is just I don't know, we
Speaker 3: should come back to that, because that alone is unbelievable,
Speaker 3: those great diamond shaped archways. And I love, of course
Speaker 3: when we finally see the hand animated blood red outline
Speaker 3: of the beast in the movie, the id Beast that
Speaker 3: hunts the Astronauts. And also not just the visual but
Speaker 3: the sonic textures as well. As you were just alluding to.
Speaker 3: It might not be earworms, but the sounds of the
Speaker 3: movie are so interesting. It's just a corn ucopia of
Speaker 3: fascinating ambient sound. And so I was thinking that while
Speaker 3: we are today quite used to thinking of sci fi
Speaker 3: movies as rubbed the fur events, full of pleasing images
Speaker 3: and sounds, just great textures, having watched a lot of
Speaker 3: sci fi movies from the nineteen fifties for the show,
Speaker 3: I would argue that this was not the norm at
Speaker 3: the time. A ton of sci fi movies from the
Speaker 3: fifties are not full of pleasing visual and sonic textures.
Speaker 3: They are low budget affairs without much exciting to show
Speaker 3: you other than maybe like a monster costume. Even a
Speaker 3: lot of the better ones are usually good because of
Speaker 3: the like premise, or they're about ideas in some interesting way,
Speaker 3: and they consist primarily of dudes standing around talking in
Speaker 3: a sparsely decorated set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I was just looking back at the
Speaker 1: films we've covered from the nineteen fifties, and some of
Speaker 1: them are, you know, definitely lower budget affairs. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there is, they're generally and that's part of it. You know,
Speaker 1: they're making do with less. They're leaning more into the
Speaker 1: ideas and we're not getting into that reb defer territory
Speaker 1: that we get with Forbidden Planet, which again is just
Speaker 1: like it's not like you can even single out well
Speaker 1: one or two visual elements or sonic elements as well.
Speaker 1: They're just so many. It's like, is just a feast
Speaker 1: for the eyes.
Speaker 3: Every scene is full of shots that are just like
Speaker 3: a poster you'd want to hang on your wall. And
Speaker 3: one reason, of course, is an obvious thing. Forbidden Planet
Speaker 3: stands out because it was shot in color. Specifically, the
Speaker 3: color process was Eastman color, and almost all of the
Speaker 3: other sci fi movies from the fifties that I can
Speaker 3: think of were in black and white. And this was funny, actually,
Speaker 3: I was trying to find a list of exceptions. I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, what were the other color sci fi
Speaker 3: movies from the fifties, and when I did a Google search,
Speaker 3: the AI summary at the top of the search results
Speaker 3: kept telling me, insisting that movies like The Thing from
Speaker 3: Another World The Incredible Shrinking Man, both of which we
Speaker 3: watched for the show, were in color. No, they're not,
Speaker 3: it said The Day the Earth Stood Still was in color.
Speaker 3: The original one is not. You know, I've seen these movies.
Speaker 3: They're in black and white. But there are some examples.
Speaker 3: I can think of a few that I've seen. One
Speaker 3: is Invaders from Mars from nineteen fifty three, directed by
Speaker 3: William Cameron Menzies. Though this was shot in something called
Speaker 3: super cinicolor, which is a two color process that doesn't
Speaker 3: quite end up looking like full color. It has an
Speaker 3: interesting color palette, but it's kind of pale and faded, faded,
Speaker 3: kind of greenish gold. And then the same year there
Speaker 3: was a color adaptation of H. G. Wells War of
Speaker 3: the Worlds directed by Byron Haskin that was in technicolor.
Speaker 3: There was an adapt there was the adaptation of twenty
Speaker 3: Thousand Leagues. Of course, we talked about that just a
Speaker 3: week or two ago, the one with James Mason that
Speaker 3: was in nineteen fifty four. That's in color, and it
Speaker 3: looks great. There is, of course, This Island Earth in
Speaker 3: fifty five that's in color.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think This Island Earth is indeed probably
Speaker 1: Forbidden Planet's closest peer. You know, it doesn't have a robot,
Speaker 1: but it has a wonderful monster. It has some you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of color and bizazz to it. But the
Speaker 1: thing about about This Island Earth much smaller budget. Forbidden
Speaker 1: Planet costs more than twice as much.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there are some other examples of great looking
Speaker 3: color sci fi films from the fifties, but not many,
Speaker 3: and it just was not the norm for sci fi
Speaker 3: movies at the time. Frankly, a lot of these movies
Speaker 3: from the fifties, even the relatively good ones, are not
Speaker 3: any more visually exciting than It Conquered the world. You know,
Speaker 3: would make them good might be good writing or good acting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe how well they shoot the monster costume
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: And as we were just saying, even when you consider
Speaker 3: the other color pictures, I just don't think there is
Speaker 3: another one that even comes close to Forbidden Planet. It's
Speaker 3: just exquisite to look upon this the whole box of crayons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean nine years later you would get Planet
Speaker 1: of the Vampires, which, of course is another film we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show that is set in space
Speaker 1: and has brilliant use of sets and costumes. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this is this is a this is this is the forerunner,
Speaker 1: and you could probably make a very strong case that
Speaker 1: a film like Planet of the Vampires wouldn't exist if
Speaker 1: you didn't have Forbidden Planet getting there early and setting
Speaker 1: the trend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Planet of the Vampires has got to
Speaker 3: be at least in part inspired by the look of
Speaker 3: Forbidden Planet. Okay, so we've established it's a ten course
Speaker 3: dinner for the eyes. But another thing I wonder if
Speaker 3: is this a good place to talk about this movie's
Speaker 3: relationship to Shakespeare's The Tempest, because that's the thing. A
Speaker 3: lot of people commenting on this over the years have
Speaker 3: pointed out the plot of Forbidden Planet seems like a
Speaker 3: very loose adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, And I think
Speaker 3: that was kind of interesting because I know I've heard
Speaker 3: it said before that compared to most of the plays
Speaker 3: of Shakespeare, The Tempest is rarely put on film in
Speaker 3: anything like its original form. It's just not a play
Speaker 3: that gets a straight adaptation to film very much. Adaptations
Speaker 3: of the Tempest in cinema are almost always very loose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, I took a few different Shakespeare
Speaker 1: classes in college and we never directly covered the Tempest,
Speaker 1: as I recall, so maybe in part because we didn't
Speaker 1: have as many adaptations to watch on video to discuss it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is frequently cited as an adaptation of
Speaker 1: the Tempest. We have the we have our Prospero character,
Speaker 1: our Miranda, and I guess we have our Caliban of
Speaker 1: sorts as well, our monstrous creature not to be confused
Speaker 1: with the Caliban in Clash of the Titans. Was he
Speaker 1: called Caliban and then I can't recall, but he the
Speaker 1: character in that is very much based on this element
Speaker 1: of the Tempest as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think people have said have pointed out that
Speaker 3: Robbie the robot is kind of aerial from the Tempest.
Speaker 1: Ah, yeah, yeah, and that.
Speaker 3: Adams is the Leslie Nielsen character is sort of I
Speaker 3: forget the name, but like one of the Italian nobles
Speaker 3: that gets a lured to the island.
Speaker 1: And who's cook cook have a don't know don't know
Speaker 1: about cook. All right, we'll get back to cook. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a groundbreaking sonic and visual science fiction film here,
Speaker 1: shot in color with a health very healthy by budget,
Speaker 1: and it has Shakespearean elements in its plotting. All right, Joe,
Speaker 1: do you have an elevator pitch for this film?
Speaker 3: I couldn't get it down to one sentence, but here's
Speaker 3: the setup. By the twenty third century, humankind has colonized
Speaker 3: the galaxy with the help of faster than light travel,
Speaker 3: but one mission, a mission to an exoplanet called Alta
Speaker 3: four by the explorationship Bellerophon, has gone silent after it arrived.
Speaker 3: Twenty years later, a United Planet's starship under Commander JJ
Speaker 3: Adams is sent to the Altaar system to investigate the
Speaker 3: fate of the lost ship and its crew. Once there,
Speaker 3: Adams and his men find that the only survivor of
Speaker 3: the Belerophon is a language scholar named doctor Morbius, as
Speaker 3: well as his twenty year old daughter Altera, who was
Speaker 3: born on the planet. What happened to the rest of
Speaker 3: the crew? How have Morbius and Altera survived all this time?
Speaker 3: And where can a guy find bourbon and kissing lessons.
Speaker 3: On a planet such as.
Speaker 1: This, all this and morel will be explored. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and listen to a little trailer on here.
Speaker 4: You imagine yourself as one of the crew of this
Speaker 4: faster than light spaceship of the future, sharing their curiosity
Speaker 4: to know the unknown, their tension, their readiness for inconceivable adventures.
Speaker 4: When you reach the Forbidden Planet, you will meet Doctor
Speaker 4: Morbius played by Walter Pigeon. The doctor is sole owner
Speaker 4: of this fabulous world. Anne Francis is his alluring daughter, Alta,
Speaker 4: who has never seen a young man till she meets
Speaker 4: Commander Adams played by talented Leslie Nielson. You will meet
Speaker 4: a charming character in a robot able to produce on
Speaker 4: order ten tons of lead or a slinky evening gown
Speaker 4: always at your service. You explore all the wonders of
Speaker 4: a vanished civilization. You travel deep down into the heart
Speaker 4: of the Forbidden Planet to discover the incredible marvels of
Speaker 4: this last genious race. These magnificent scenes in striking Eastman
Speaker 4: color stagger the imagination. Yet the wonders of the planet
Speaker 4: all tear four conceal a strange and evil force unknown irresistible.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, you may be wondering where can I
Speaker 1: watch Forbidden Planet. Well, this was a major release. It
Speaker 1: has been released on all formats over the years. It
Speaker 1: is definitely available on Blu ray I belief from Warner
Speaker 1: Home Video or something, and I'm not I didn't check
Speaker 1: for this, but it's possible, I guess. Given in this
Speaker 1: an MGM film, maybe MGM Plus has its streaming. You
Speaker 1: might check around for that. I, however, watched this film
Speaker 1: on the big screen. I saw it over the weekend
Speaker 1: at Atlanta's Historic Plaza Theater, presented as part of the
Speaker 1: Silver Screen Spook Show series, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: looks terrific watching it in those old squeaky chairs there.
Speaker 1: You know, the colors are fantastic. The sound is just
Speaker 1: resonating around you and sometimes feeling like it's moving from
Speaker 1: ear to ear. So I highly recommend seeing films like
Speaker 1: this in the theater if you do get a chance
Speaker 1: to see them. Silver Screens Spook Show. By the way,
Speaker 1: we'll be doing mathra versus Godzilla on May seventeenth, two
Speaker 1: shows as usual, a family friendly nay and a late
Speaker 1: night show for grown ups. If you were in the
Speaker 1: Atlanta area on that date.
Speaker 3: All right, should we get into the connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Starting at the top with the director. It's Fred M. Wilcox,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen sixty four, American
Speaker 1: director who started out at MGM as an assistant to
Speaker 1: King Vedoor, eventually working his way up through the MGM
Speaker 1: Shorts department to direct the nineteen forty three feature Lassie
Speaker 1: Come Home, which starred a fourteen year old Roddy McDowell.
Speaker 3: Is he the voice of the kid yelling Lassie?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's the kid that presumably yells Lassie, So
Speaker 1: I guess, so okay? Cool. I felt this one was
Speaker 1: evidently a success because it had a sequel, nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six is Courage of Lassie, And this one had a
Speaker 1: fully grown Elizabeth Taylor in it.
Speaker 3: Okay? Did it also still have Roddy McDowell.
Speaker 1: No, No, Roddy McDowell, this okay, Elizabeth Taylor only okay?
Speaker 3: And then Roddy McDowell. He went from Lassie to Laser Blast.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another film he director was nineteen forty nine is
Speaker 1: The Secret Garden, which had a twelve year old Dean
Speaker 1: Stockwall in it. Huh yeah, yeah, You can look up
Speaker 1: screenshots from The Secret Garden and there's a little kid,
Speaker 1: Dean Stockwell.
Speaker 3: Fact to check, Dean Stockwell was never twelve years old.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. He also did nineteen fifty two Shadow in
Speaker 1: the Sky with Nancy Reagan. Forbidden Planet was produced by
Speaker 1: Willcox's nephew in law, producer Nicholas Nefek, and he was
Speaker 1: apparently going to produce another big budget sci fi film
Speaker 1: with a title something like Robot Planet, and Willcox was
Speaker 1: going to direct that as well, but Nefact died in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. Wilcock directed one more film himself, and
Speaker 1: then he also died in nineteen sixty four at the
Speaker 1: age of fifty six. Wow. But I believe this is
Speaker 1: one of those examples where the director, you know, didn't
Speaker 1: come out of science fiction, and his life and career
Speaker 1: wasn't long enough afterwards to return to any science fiction,
Speaker 1: so you know, it kind of stands out as a
Speaker 1: one off. But boy, what a one off. This is
Speaker 1: easily the film he's best remembered for, all right. The
Speaker 1: screenplay is by Cyril Hume, who lived nineteen hundred through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, American writer whose first novel The Wife
Speaker 1: of the Centaur was a big hit in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: three and adapted into a King Vidor Silent film in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four. He wrote a few more novels, but
Speaker 1: mostly transitioned into screenwriting, working on several Tarzan movies in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, a nineteen forty nine adaptation of The
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby, and then also a nineteen fifty six film
Speaker 1: titled Ransom exclamation Point, which was remade in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the Mel Gibson picture that some of you might remember.
Speaker 1: But it's worth noting that the nineteen fifty six Ransom
Speaker 1: was itself an adaptation of a nineteen fifty four episode
Speaker 1: that aired on the anthology series The United States Steel Hour.
Speaker 3: What the United States Steel Out?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: It was just named after a sponsor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like what should we call it? Should we
Speaker 1: call it like action or thriller or you know, maybe
Speaker 1: some sort of a zone And they're like, nope, the
Speaker 1: United States Steel Hour.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like the Colgate Comedy Hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess somewhere to deal. Hume also
Speaker 1: did some westerns. His only other sci fi screenplay was
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven's The Invisible Boy, a sort of sequel
Speaker 1: spin off to Forbidden Planet, which we'll come back to.
Speaker 1: Forbidden Planet is Hume's most famous work, again highly influential,
Speaker 1: and is itself, at least a very loose adaptation of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's The Tempest. Now there are a couple of story
Speaker 1: credits Irving Block and Alan Adler. Alan Adler lived nineteen
Speaker 1: sixteen through nineteen sixty four, also worked on a film
Speaker 1: in fifty nine called The Giant Behemoth, and then Block
Speaker 1: lived nineteen ten through nineteen eighty six. He was a
Speaker 1: I think mostly a special effects visual effects guy who
Speaker 1: worked exclusively in genre pictures, often B movies, mostly science fiction,
Speaker 1: and he sometimes contributed story ideas, this being the first
Speaker 1: case of that. Other story credits include fifty seven's Kronos,
Speaker 1: as well as Oh boys, here's a title for you,
Speaker 1: The Saga of the Viking Women and their voyage to
Speaker 1: the waters of the Great Sea Serpent.
Speaker 3: I've seen that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, does that title cover everything?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, there's more, Okay, a longer title is possible. He
Speaker 1: also has story credits on Roger Corman's War of the
Speaker 1: Satellites in fifty eight.
Speaker 3: Those are both Roger Corman movies.
Speaker 1: Oh so the saga the Viking Women and their Voyage
Speaker 1: to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent also Corman.
Speaker 3: Also Corman, I think in the same year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's right, they're both fifty eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then he also has story credits on The thirty
Speaker 1: foot Bride of Candy Rock and Atomic Submarine, both in
Speaker 1: fifty nine.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it, but I've just I have a
Speaker 3: premonition that the movie Atomic Submarine is super boring.
Speaker 1: Getting into the cast, Let's start at the top in
Speaker 1: terms of billing with Doctor Morbius, played by Walter Pigeon,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen ninety seven through nineteen eighty four. Walter Pigeon,
Speaker 1: a two time Oscar nominee who had not done I
Speaker 1: don't believe he'd really done a sci fi film up
Speaker 1: to this point, having been mostly known for stuff like
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one's How Green Was My Valley? After Forbidden Planet,
Speaker 1: he'd go on to appear in a handful of other
Speaker 1: sci fi flicks, sixty one's Voyage to the Bottom of
Speaker 1: the Sea, seventy three's The Neptune Factor. Oh, and then
Speaker 1: this was interesting. This is apparently like a made for
Speaker 1: TV film Movie of the Week Situation nineteen seventy fours
Speaker 1: Live Again, Die Again, which is like about a woman
Speaker 1: who is cryogenically frozen and then is brought back to
Speaker 1: life and her husband is old now and played by
Speaker 1: Walter Pigeon.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, you know, I was thinking, I like the
Speaker 3: line that Walter Pigeon rides in this movie between hero
Speaker 3: and villain. For much of the film, you can't quite
Speaker 3: tell how like what his intentions are. So he's that
Speaker 3: kind of character who's mostly polite and helpful and seems
Speaker 3: mostly forthright, but also maybe seems to be hiding something.
Speaker 3: You don't know how much you can trust him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like is he going to be is he Captain Nemo?
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of the big question that had to
Speaker 1: be on a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so I don't know, I could
Speaker 3: see him. I could see him in another life of
Speaker 3: playing of having played a Bond villain or something like.
Speaker 3: Maybeybe nothing against Michael Lonsdale. He's great, but like he
Speaker 3: could have been in Moonriker.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, things have played out differently. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I also like the ambiguity regarding his character. You're never
Speaker 1: really sure that he's a villain or what villainous elements
Speaker 1: he might have, but you also don't completely trust him.
Speaker 1: I guess it's easier, as a modern viewer of this
Speaker 1: film to assume that he's up to no good. That's
Speaker 1: my kid also watch the film with me, and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, yeah, yeah, I knew he was hiding something, But.
Speaker 3: Did he know he was hiding something? I guess he
Speaker 3: knew he was hiding something, but maybe not the thing
Speaker 3: you're thinking of.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He also did some horror movies. He appeared
Speaker 1: in seventy two's The Screaming Woman, and also a couple
Speaker 1: of gorilla movies in the twenties and thirties. I think
Speaker 1: they're two separate gorilla movies and not the same gorilla movie.
Speaker 1: But you know, someone had to starring gerrilla movies, so
Speaker 1: more power to him.
Speaker 3: Was he in any of the Machist Goes to Hell movies?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, again, we know that Ann Francis stars
Speaker 1: in Forbidden Planet, and indeed she does, playing Altara Morbius,
Speaker 1: the daughter of doctor Morbius. Anne Francis lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: through twenty and eleven. She's our lone female character in
Speaker 1: the film the daughter of doctor Morbius, so again seemingly
Speaker 1: doomed to never know love or earth, at least until
Speaker 1: the rest of the cast shows up to just relentlessly
Speaker 1: hit on her again like she's a secretary and a
Speaker 1: Madman era office. She's our Miranda character, Golden Globe winning
Speaker 1: actress whose other films include nineteen fifty five's Bad Day
Speaker 1: at Black Rock and nineteen sixty eight's Funny Girl, which
Speaker 1: also co starred Walter Pigeon. Her screen credits begin in
Speaker 1: the late forties. I believe she appeared on Broadway as
Speaker 1: a child, and she remained active, especially on TV up
Speaker 1: through two thousand and four, and she did two episodes
Speaker 1: of the original Twilight Zone.
Speaker 3: I also like Anne Francis in this role quite a
Speaker 3: lot because she she does bring a kind of edge
Speaker 3: to it in a way that you don't expect when
Speaker 3: you first meet the character. So the character, as we'll
Speaker 3: get into later, I was describing her as sort of
Speaker 3: like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Twins, like she has learned all
Speaker 3: of the you know, all of the academic subjects, as
Speaker 3: she knows all the sciences and literature and everything, but
Speaker 3: is hopelessly naive about society and human interactions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of a subset of like she's not a
Speaker 1: full blown doll person where she's just like a child
Speaker 1: in an adult's body. She knows plenty of things, she
Speaker 1: just doesn't have like a lot of like social real
Speaker 1: world experience because she's never been to Earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she has no street smarts or savvy, so like
Speaker 3: has no doesn't know what to do when somebody is
Speaker 3: like trying to lie to her or take advantage of her.
Speaker 3: So there's a scene where this where a creep character
Speaker 3: is giving her kissing lessons. But she has a great
Speaker 3: kind of turn in that scene because he's like he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: let's try kissing again, and she's like, I don't get it.
Speaker 3: There's it's not very good.
Speaker 1: That got a lot of laughs with the audience, the
Speaker 1: live audience. So there's the humor in this film. You know,
Speaker 1: it mostly holds up sometimes, I mean it it holds
Speaker 1: it holds up in places, and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: hammy and too old fashioned in other places, but in
Speaker 1: both regards generates laughter, So still effective. But yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: I think she's she's good in the role. And of
Speaker 1: course she's a real beauty, no denying that, but I
Speaker 1: was surprised at how how skimpy the outfits get in
Speaker 1: this picture. Oh like there is. I was confused by
Speaker 1: the bathing sequence. At first it seems like she's bathing nude,
Speaker 1: and then maybe she's wearing a garment, but maybe that's
Speaker 1: also a garment that they wore in movies at the
Speaker 1: time to make it seem like someone was bathing naked.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: It does seem to be really pushing the limits of
Speaker 3: what like an MGM picture would have allowed in the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. But yeah, she's in the scene where she's swimming,
Speaker 3: I think she is supposed to be nude, and then
Speaker 3: she's just like you know, when she gets out of
Speaker 3: the pool in a brief shot. I think she's wearing
Speaker 3: a garment match to her skin, and then it's supposed
Speaker 3: to just go by real quick. But maybe they weren't
Speaker 3: expecting to have the kind of definition that people have
Speaker 3: on screens today.
Speaker 1: It's true like later in the picture, there's some very
Speaker 1: delicate wire work that allows Robbie the robot to carry
Speaker 1: the doctor's body and or doc's body, and it's very
Speaker 1: good wire work, because you can barely see it even
Speaker 1: in like higher definition, so I'm guessing it would have
Speaker 1: been most invisible at one point. All Right, it's time
Speaker 1: to talk about Leslie Nielsen. He's our leading man here
Speaker 1: playing Commander Adams. Lesli Nielsen lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and I think many many of you out there,
Speaker 1: myself included, for a long time anyway, when I thought
Speaker 1: about this Canadian actor, I mostly or even exclusively thought
Speaker 1: about his late career reinvention as a dead pan, comedic
Speaker 1: goof all of this coming in the wake of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties Airplane and this era gave like that lasted the
Speaker 1: rest of his life and career gave us the likes
Speaker 1: of TV's Police Squad It's Naked Gun spinoff films. I
Speaker 1: believe there were three of those, and such spoofs as
Speaker 1: mel Brooks Dracula Dead and Loving It from nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: and just a host of other goofy pictures where Leslie
Speaker 1: Nielsen continually plays these kind of either dead pan, funny
Speaker 1: characters or increasingly goofy characters. But they all stem from
Speaker 1: this initial Airplane Naked Gun phase where and these were
Speaker 1: both the work of David and Jerry Zucker.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to know, but I almost feel I could
Speaker 3: have predicted his career would or should take that turn,
Speaker 3: if you were to transport me back to the fifties
Speaker 3: and just show me his performance and Forbidden Planet, because
Speaker 3: he's playing the role totally serious, but he is such
Speaker 3: a natural ham just he's one of those guys who
Speaker 3: the more serious and deadpan and stern he tries to act,
Speaker 3: the funnier it gets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think the important thing to realize
Speaker 1: about this late career reinvention as a comedic actor, especially
Speaker 1: with those early examples. They work entirely on the basis
Speaker 1: that Nielsen was known for these straightforward, serious roles that
Speaker 1: were a little bit hammy and you know, maybe lacking
Speaker 1: in a lot of nuance, and his roland Forbidden Plannet
Speaker 1: is probably like the most famous example, you know, along
Speaker 1: side some other films and a great deal of TV work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We've talked on the show before about the concept
Speaker 3: of the nineteen fifties movie the leading man as the
Speaker 3: rectangle as sort of a character type. Leslie Nielsen in
Speaker 3: this movie is the ultimate rectangle. Yeah, that is exactly
Speaker 3: what he is he is just he is just there
Speaker 3: to sternly and straightforwardly execute the main motions of the
Speaker 3: plot and then eventually to kiss the girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think we would not be talking about him
Speaker 1: as much if he did not go on to all
Speaker 1: these other interesting things, because it's it's not a character
Speaker 1: that I found myself really connecting with on any level.
Speaker 1: Like he's just this this sort of hyper masculine ideal
Speaker 1: of the fifties.
Speaker 3: But not in an interesting way.
Speaker 1: Not an interesting way. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't like get into that as themes like
Speaker 3: say the Incredible Shrinking Man or something. Instead, it's just
Speaker 3: sort of unexamined. There are interesting characters in the movie,
Speaker 3: like Morbius and Alta are interesting, but yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: Doc, I think Doc, who will get to in a second,
Speaker 1: like he's the character that, in many ways should be
Speaker 1: like the main point of focus for us as the
Speaker 1: audience because he does the most amazing things.
Speaker 3: Yes, but Adams is almos. It almost feels like he's
Speaker 3: made boring on purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, and of course this is not entirely Leslie
Speaker 1: Nielsen's fault, And I want to point out that Nielsen
Speaker 1: did have I think a pretty strong villain era. He
Speaker 1: he appears as a villain in one of my favorite
Speaker 1: Night Gallery episodes nineteen sixty nine, is a question of fear.
Speaker 1: I believe he's like a former mercenary, just a real
Speaker 1: ruthless character. And I think he ultimately did that really well,
Speaker 1: playing in as he you know, aged out of being
Speaker 1: any kind of a leading and character. He could play
Speaker 1: these like ruthless, cold characters really well. He plays one
Speaker 1: in Stephen King's Creep Show from nineteen eighty two, in
Speaker 1: which he viciously murders his wife and her lover, who's
Speaker 1: played by Ted Danson.
Speaker 3: And then gets some supernatural vengeance.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's some zombie action of course.
Speaker 3: Or vengeance visited upon him, not gets the vengeance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Other villain roles of note include nineteen seventy seven's
Speaker 1: Day of the Animals, in which he plays a really
Speaker 1: nasty character, and also nineteen eighty seven's Nuts.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to see some more of the Leslie
Speaker 3: Nielsen villain stuff. I'm interested in that.
Speaker 1: And it is interesting that some of these villain roles
Speaker 1: that we just mentioned they occurred after airplanes, so he
Speaker 1: was really It's not like he just was like, oh,
Speaker 1: airplanes here, I can just do comedy from here on out. Like, No,
Speaker 1: he was sort of, you know, keeping it a little
Speaker 1: varied there for a bit, you know, playing a real
Speaker 1: dirt bag here and then you know, hamming it up
Speaker 1: for laughs on the other side. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at some point the rectangle was just cut loose.
Speaker 3: You got some curves, got some corners. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next character we want to talk about is Lieutenant
Speaker 1: doc Ostro, played by Warren Stevens, who of nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: through twenty twelve. This is the character that I think
Speaker 1: is the most interesting. He's the male character that I
Speaker 1: found myself relating to the most because he seemed most
Speaker 1: on mission. I think he was the only one that
Speaker 1: was not concerned with hitting on the strange alien woman.
Speaker 1: He's the one who actually attempts to solve problems that
Speaker 1: are the larger problems of the plot and has a
Speaker 1: tragic trajectory as opposed to the heroic trajectory of Leslie
Speaker 1: Nielsen's character.
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like there are things said about
Speaker 3: this character that are not fully demonstrated in any way
Speaker 3: that I recall, and that makes me wonder if there
Speaker 3: were more originally in the script. Maybe some more interactions
Speaker 3: with him that didn't make it to the final cut. Specifically,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of how it's implied that when Morbius meets
Speaker 3: the the main members of the crew, that he really
Speaker 3: sort of bonds with Ostro about like Ostro being a
Speaker 3: kind of scholar, a man of learning, somebody who's interested
Speaker 3: in learning scientific complexities and stuff like that, which, unless
Speaker 3: I'm forgetting something, I don't think we ever really see
Speaker 3: demonstrated about the character. It's just sort of said about him.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that this film in many ways influenced
Speaker 1: Star Trek. We'll get to some examples of that with
Speaker 1: from a visual standpoint in a bit, But also you
Speaker 1: can easily look at Commander Adams Leslie Nilsen's character as
Speaker 1: sort of being a proto Kirk, and you can kind
Speaker 1: of look at Ostro as being a proto Spock. Kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would think Bones because the doctor Bones settlement,
Speaker 3: but no, Yeah, he's a little bit more Spocky. He's
Speaker 3: somewhere between Bones and Spock.
Speaker 1: He does the sort of thing that I guess you
Speaker 1: could see Bones or Spock doing what this character ultimately does,
Speaker 1: but especially Spock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the third guy in the main three
Speaker 3: landing Party is just like Kirk two.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I'll get to him. Well, I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: mention him and then come back to to Stevens. But yeah.
Speaker 1: Jack Kelly plays Lieutenant Farman who Live nineteen twenty seven
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety two American actor whose other credits include
Speaker 1: sixty one's A Fever in the Blood and the TV
Speaker 1: show Maverick Warren Stevens. He also did a fair amount
Speaker 1: of TV, best remembered for his role here in Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 1: His other film credits include nineteen fifty four is Gorilla
Speaker 1: at Large Again you got to have a Gorilla movie
Speaker 1: in there somewhere, and the Barefoot Contests I believe in
Speaker 1: the same year, opposite Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six is Cyborg twenty eighty seven, and he apparently
Speaker 1: has a cameo in nineteen ninety one Samurai Cop.
Speaker 3: Wow Man Cyborg twenty eighty seven. That sounds like the
Speaker 3: name of a movie from the eighties, not a movie
Speaker 3: from the sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna have to look into that one more.
Speaker 1: Another crew member to briefly mention, we have Richard Anderson
Speaker 1: playing Chief Quinn. He lived nineteen twenty six through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: American actor who also appeared in Stanley Kubrick's nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven war picture Paths of Glory. I don't remember who
Speaker 1: exactly he was in that. It's been a while since
Speaker 1: I've seen that movie. But he was also a regular
Speaker 1: cast member on TV's The Six Million Dollar Man. But
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about Cook.
Speaker 3: COOKOK, what a character. I think at some point the
Speaker 3: other day I just texted you the word cook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cook. I was not expecting Cook. I should also add
Speaker 1: I had not seen for Bid Blennett before before seeing
Speaker 1: it in the theater, and I think I was kind
Speaker 1: of expecting more like pure high minded science fiction. So
Speaker 1: the Hammier elements kind of surprised me, and then Cook
Speaker 1: really surprised me. A character, a pure comic relief character
Speaker 1: who initially just kind of like wanders into the scene,
Speaker 1: like stirring some biscuits or something and starts asking wise
Speaker 1: guy questions about the plot. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, so they're going to another star system on
Speaker 3: this like multi year voyage to Altara four, and some
Speaker 3: of the crew members are just guys like Cook. Cook
Speaker 3: is just a total bumpkin who is looking for whiskey
Speaker 3: on the other edge of the galaxy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like he sees Robby the rovine. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: what is it as a man? Is it a woman?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we we have a lot to say about Cook here,
Speaker 1: played by Earl Holloman who lived in nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 1: through twenty twenty four. A real Mike Nelson looking guy.
Speaker 3: I have to say, yeah, yeah, I could see Cook
Speaker 3: was almost like a character Mike Nelson would have played
Speaker 3: in one of the early show skits.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I could have easily imagined Mike Nelson, you know,
Speaker 1: walking out on the set of the Sidle Out of Love,
Speaker 1: like stirring the pot here. Now. Holloman's pretty interesting tho,
Speaker 1: because he went on to appear in a number of
Speaker 1: big films in the nineteen fifties. He was in A
Speaker 1: fifty six Giant. He was also in The rain Maker
Speaker 1: and in The rain Maker. His role in that earned
Speaker 1: him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, and
Speaker 1: he remained active up until I believe two thousand, doing
Speaker 1: a lot of TV, as well as popping up in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one Sharky's Machine, which keeps coming up on
Speaker 1: the show in the Connections. I've never seen it, but
Speaker 1: it is a neo noir set in Atlanta, directed by
Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds. So at some point I need to actually
Speaker 1: sit down and watch Sharky's Machine.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I've never seen it either.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know that it actually has
Speaker 1: a machine. I was I had that question pop into
Speaker 1: my head and I was looking at the Wikipedia article
Speaker 1: and like the plot summary, It's like, well, is there
Speaker 1: a machine or is there not a machine? I think
Speaker 1: the machine is one of the supporting characters. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I know Sharky is Burt Reynolds, that's all.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, maybe machine is like a like a system
Speaker 3: of people doing something like a like a crime. Crime
Speaker 3: syndicate is a machine in some way.
Speaker 1: And speaking of machines, this film also famously stars Robbie
Speaker 1: the Robot playing Robbie the Robot.
Speaker 3: They give him billing, he.
Speaker 1: Has bill in and I am just ever pleased by
Speaker 1: the fact that he has his own IMDb page. He
Speaker 1: is treated by IMDb as an actual actor, alongside various
Speaker 1: dogs and cats, and of course living in deceased human beings.
Speaker 1: This was his screen debut. Robbie the Robot was essentially
Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifty five. He was born in the
Speaker 1: MGM Props Department, with credit generally going to a. Arnold Gailepsi,
Speaker 1: Doug Hubbard, and Robert Kinoshita. He's voiced here by Marvin Miller,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen eighty five, with Frankie
Speaker 1: Darrow who lived nineteen seventeen through nineteen seventy six. Actually
Speaker 1: in the suit, it is a suit. It's a big
Speaker 1: clunky prop. Shane Morton, the host of the Silver Screens
Speaker 1: Spook Show, mentioned that in the intro to the presentation
Speaker 1: of the picture that it was apparently really loud, and
Speaker 1: if you watch Forbidden Planet a lot, you can maybe
Speaker 1: note that actors are maybe speaking a little louder when
Speaker 1: they're sharing a screen time with Robbie the Robot, because
Speaker 1: he had all sorts of clunky of business going on
Speaker 1: in his body. And it is probably a clunky, old
Speaker 1: fashioned design by today's standards, but it's an amazing build
Speaker 1: that you know, certainly resonated with sci fi fans and
Speaker 1: it made him icon of the genre. You know, this
Speaker 1: is you think about robots from the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to think about Robbie the Robot.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, the clunkiness does not downgrade him at all.
Speaker 3: In my mind. I think Robbie is still to this
Speaker 3: day one of the best robots ever put on film.
Speaker 3: I'd love so much about his design. I love the
Speaker 3: non humanoid moving parts, so not just the arms and legs,
Speaker 3: but things like the cycling typewriter guts inside, the clear
Speaker 3: plastic dome of his head and the chemical analyzer, the
Speaker 3: male slot mouth thing in his chest, the spinning navigation,
Speaker 3: and timmy. It's just one of the best robot designs ever.
Speaker 3: And I love every moment he's on screen. I love
Speaker 3: the I think this is what you were just alluding to,
Speaker 3: being very loud. I love the clacking sound that starts
Speaker 3: as like the parts are moving inside before he starts talking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a great design. I love his shape.
Speaker 1: He has a great silhouette, instantly recognizable. I love his
Speaker 1: little centaur vehicle that he climbs into to roam about
Speaker 1: on the planet's surface.
Speaker 3: Oh the buggy, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, Robbie the Robot. He followed this up
Speaker 1: with the spinoff The Invisible Boy, in which a boy
Speaker 1: named Kimmy in the year nineteen fifty seven is given
Speaker 1: a given super intelligence by a supercomputer and then he
Speaker 1: like reassembles Robbie again. This is kind of like a
Speaker 1: loose spinoff sequel. I don't think it really necessarily supposed
Speaker 1: to think it is a legitimate follow up to Forbid
Speaker 1: the Planet. But Robbie the Robot mostly appeared in TV
Speaker 1: cameos after this. He showed up on The Twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: The Adams Family, Lost in Space opposite the Robot. The
Speaker 1: Robot from Lost in Space is another iconic robot costume
Speaker 1: of the time period, showed up on Colombo, Wonder Woman,
Speaker 1: More Can Mindy, the Love Boat, and then you know
Speaker 1: of later appearances and things like Earth Girls Are Easy
Speaker 1: and sometimes a IMDb he's credited as toy. Like I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: like maybe he just shows up as a Robbie the
Speaker 1: Robot toy, which isn't quite the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of his cameos are just he's a prop
Speaker 3: in the background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think I like the Twilight Zone, he
Speaker 1: shows up as like it is a plot element and
Speaker 1: to some extent like he has a Robot.
Speaker 3: So I mentioned earlier that the special effects throughout the
Speaker 3: film just looked fantastic, Robbie of course being a major
Speaker 3: one of them the prop created there. But also there
Speaker 3: are some animation effects in this movie that are I
Speaker 3: think just unparalleled, just absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 1: That's right, because eventually we begin we begin to have
Speaker 1: these attacks by some sort of a monster, but it
Speaker 1: is an invisible monster for the most part, and we
Speaker 1: only get glimpses of its form as it interacts with
Speaker 1: various force fields and so forth, various like energy sources
Speaker 1: and the like. And when this occurs, we are seeing
Speaker 1: special effects that I believe are largely the work of
Speaker 1: one Joshua Mador who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: He's credited with special effects through courtesy of Walt Disney Productions,
Speaker 1: because indeed, he was an animator and special effects artist
Speaker 1: who had worked on numerous Walt Disney animated features such
Speaker 1: as thirty seven Snow White nineteen forties, Fan Tasa nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty Cinderella later on, as well as such live action
Speaker 1: productions as fifty four to twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea,
Speaker 1: which we just mentioned, and so yeah, his talents helped
Speaker 1: bring to life the Invisible Monstrosity. You know, they have
Speaker 1: some practical effects too, like you know, a tree getting
Speaker 1: knocked over on the set when the creature passes. But
Speaker 1: then also these animated effects that kind of give us
Speaker 1: a glimpse of this big kind of you know, monstrous
Speaker 1: almost I don't know, kind of like dog like, bear,
Speaker 1: like grimlin like being.
Speaker 3: I mean, we never see a very clear picture of
Speaker 3: what it is, which makes it all the more interesting,
Speaker 3: Like you only get these sort of illuminated electric outlines
Speaker 3: of the face in which it is. It is something
Speaker 3: that's kind of raging. It has a snarling, toothy mouth.
Speaker 3: It's gigantic, of course, and it also appears to be
Speaker 3: I don't know, almost kind of pyramid shaped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's it's really cool and I think these
Speaker 1: effects hold up really well. Mayde Or outside of this,
Speaker 1: would mostly continue to work on Disney films and TV
Speaker 1: projects for the rest of his career, including animation effects
Speaker 1: on Darby Ogill and The Little People in fifty nine.
Speaker 1: He was also apparently an accomplished painter.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob, I know you already said you had been
Speaker 3: listening to the sounds from the film I don't know
Speaker 3: if they called it a soundtrack in this in this
Speaker 3: case because a lot of it is not exactly what
Speaker 3: we'd think of as music, but is very important for
Speaker 3: the feeling of the film. But it was produced by
Speaker 3: actually a pair of creators, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, husband and wife team Beebe and Lewis Baron. Boebe
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty sixty two thousand and eight and Lewis
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty nine, and they are
Speaker 1: credited as composer electronic tonalities, which is perfect, a perfect
Speaker 1: way to describe the music that they create. But I
Speaker 1: think there were also some technicalities regarding like unions where
Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to say that it was a film
Speaker 1: score because they were not in the Music Film Score
Speaker 1: Union at the time, and I think therefore we're also
Speaker 1: not eligible for OSCAR nomination. But yes, the score is terrific.
Speaker 1: It is an historic score in that it is the
Speaker 1: first fully electronic score for a motion picture. By nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, movies had been utilizing electronic elements in their
Speaker 1: sound design for quite a while. I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit about the use of the theorem and in
Speaker 1: film in a twenty eighteen article for the Script Lab
Speaker 1: by Claire Nina Narelli pointing out that the Theoreman was
Speaker 1: invented in nineteen twenty and by around nineteen thirty nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one it was used in the Russian film auDNA
Speaker 1: or Alone. This was originally going to be a silent film,
Speaker 1: but then apparently had music, sound effects and some dialogue
Speaker 1: recorded in post and then played alongside it, and among
Speaker 1: those sounds we had Theramy music. There's another electronic instrument
Speaker 1: of the time period, an early electronic instrument called the
Speaker 1: let's say, the one Martineau, and this was also used
Speaker 1: in various scores and sound designs, including Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: And the author here points out that the instruments, this instrument,
Speaker 1: that Theram in particular, began to pop up in Hollywood
Speaker 1: films during the mid nineteen forties, generally at first to
Speaker 1: emphasize instability, such as in nineteen forty five Spellbound, so
Speaker 1: a destabilizing sonic effect, but then it began to be
Speaker 1: associated with sci fi and spaceships, in nineteen fifty with
Speaker 1: rocket Ship XM, and then of course in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one's The Day the Earth Stood Still, which features a
Speaker 1: traditional orchestral score, but with two theremins so again. Up
Speaker 1: until this point, cinema had been playing with a little
Speaker 1: electronic sound, but no one had fully committed to a
Speaker 1: full length motion picture with exclusively electronic music until now.
Speaker 1: And apparently, like I was reading, apparently the way it
Speaker 1: started out, they were like, well, let's these guys were
Speaker 1: doing some really interesting work BB and Lewis, Let's bring
Speaker 1: him in to do you know, a few minutes worth
Speaker 1: of sound. And then like the right people liked it
Speaker 1: and they were like, let's have them do the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Let's let's do this exclusively, which you know, for various reasons,
Speaker 1: this wasn't popular with everyone. And I can imagine, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were probably some people who are like, this doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a film score, this doesn't sound like music.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would disagree. But their work was apparently
Speaker 1: very avant garde. They you know, they used ring modulator
Speaker 1: circuits and then altered the results with reverb, tape delay
Speaker 1: and other editing techniques. Apparently there was a very high
Speaker 1: unpredictability with their work, like if they successfully create they
Speaker 1: did a certain soundscape, they couldn't necessarily come back and
Speaker 1: recreate it in the same way, so it was kind
Speaker 1: of a roll of the dice and then and then
Speaker 1: an editing exercise to get something that they wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think a lot of music creators today might
Speaker 3: know that effect. If you've got like a pedal board
Speaker 3: that you runar through and you might create some sound
Speaker 3: you really like, but then you mess with the knobs
Speaker 3: and then you can't get it to sound the same
Speaker 3: way again, you forget how you did it.
Speaker 1: Oh wow wow. So yeah, at this point, yeah, they
Speaker 1: were very avant garde. They had been contributing electronic sounds
Speaker 1: to various generally got short art films, like the work
Speaker 1: of Ian Hugo. I believe he did some adaptations of
Speaker 1: anis nin short stories, that sort of thing, So nothing
Speaker 1: that was at all mainstream Hollywood. And then here they
Speaker 1: are scoring the tonalities of Forbidden Planet, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's tremendous, but it is deeply weird and alien.
Speaker 1: It is largely devoid of any melodic content. It just
Speaker 1: the sounds like twinkle like stars against the dark void.
Speaker 1: They drip like liquid metal and alien caves, and it
Speaker 1: just delivers an overwhelming vibe of just inhuman mystery. Which
Speaker 1: works exceedingly well with various aspects of the plot and
Speaker 1: certainly the look of the picture. Maybe less so with
Speaker 1: the more hammy aspects of it, but to their credit,
Speaker 1: nobody went in and added like goofy sound effects for
Speaker 1: the comedic moments. Like all the sound design we have
Speaker 1: there is exclusively sci fi.
Speaker 3: I think it's the kind of thing that to audiences
Speaker 3: going back today feels less groundbreaking because we have experienced
Speaker 3: a lot of what followed in its footsteps, and that
Speaker 3: if we were to be there in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 3: we would probably recognize the sound of this movie as
Speaker 3: being more we would recognize it for being how unique
Speaker 3: in time it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it seems I can imagine people being
Speaker 1: surprised though, because it at least, you know, to my ears,
Speaker 1: it hits pretty hard. It seems it feels pretty far
Speaker 1: removed from something like you know, some of the work
Speaker 1: of say Wendy Carlos you would get a little over
Speaker 1: a decade later, was like Switched on Bach Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very melodic but very electronic at the same time, and
Speaker 1: this is just like, yeah, this stuff is just alien.
Speaker 1: It does not have the human touch, And I love
Speaker 1: it for that, but it it seems like a minor
Speaker 1: miracle that this score exists at all. It seems like
Speaker 1: exactly the sort of sort of score that some sort
Speaker 1: of producer would come along and say and say like,
Speaker 1: we can't use this. You can use it when the
Speaker 1: spaceship's landing. But let's let's get some stock music in
Speaker 1: here so that the humans can connect with the plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's too weird. Yeah, but no, they got away
Speaker 3: with it, and I'm glad they did. All Right, you
Speaker 3: want to talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the plot.
Speaker 3: Warning that this movie does have, in my opinion, some
Speaker 3: pretty good twists and reveals in it, especially the ending,
Speaker 3: and we are going to be talking about those. So
Speaker 3: if you want to see it without having anything spoiled,
Speaker 3: I would suggest pausing and doing that now.
Speaker 1: But you're still here, so I guess it's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So opening monologue. I'm just going to read this
Speaker 3: to set the tone. The voice over tells us, in
Speaker 3: the final decade of the twenty first century, men and
Speaker 3: women in rocket ships landed on the Moon. Great start.
Speaker 3: Do you think we're going to make it to the
Speaker 3: moon by the twenty nineties, by twenty two hundred AD,
Speaker 3: they had reached the other planets of our Solar system
Speaker 3: almost at once. There followed the discovery of hyperdrive, through
Speaker 3: which the speed of light was first attained and later
Speaker 3: greatly surpassed. And so at last mankind began the conquest
Speaker 3: and colonization of deep space. United Planets. Cruiser C fifty
Speaker 3: seven D now more than a year out from Earth
Speaker 3: base on a special mission to the planetary system of
Speaker 3: the great main sequence star Altear And so it's showing
Speaker 3: us the spaceship as it tells us what it is.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to note here in Forbidden Planet,
Speaker 3: the spaceship used by the human heroes is a flying saucer.
Speaker 3: And I think this is notable because while the flying
Speaker 3: saucer was absolutely well known in science fiction of the time,
Speaker 3: it had already been used in multiple movies. I think
Speaker 3: it was usually the form of ship used by non
Speaker 3: human aliens. More often, human ships are shown as elongated
Speaker 3: and cylindrical, vaguely rocket shaped, or maybe they were shaped
Speaker 3: like an airplane. I don't know if there is anything
Speaker 3: to read into this choice as far as the intentions
Speaker 3: of the filmmakers go, but at least to me, the
Speaker 3: choice of putting humans inside the flying Saucer instead of
Speaker 3: having that be the alien vessel, suggests that we are
Speaker 3: the aliens, which is relevant to the movie in multiple ways.
Speaker 3: One of these will be a spoiler, so again spoiler
Speaker 3: warning number one. Of course, in this story, the humans
Speaker 3: are colonizing an ex soa planet far beyond Earth, So
Speaker 3: we are the aliens in the scenario. We're not in
Speaker 3: our own cosmic neighborhood. But the other sense in which
Speaker 3: humans are the aliens in this movie has to do
Speaker 3: with the big twist at the end, the supposedly alien
Speaker 3: force that is attacking the humans is not actually of
Speaker 3: alien origin but of human origin. And so anyway, I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this for a bit. It made me
Speaker 3: think it might be interesting at some point to come
Speaker 3: back into a deep dive on the history of this
Speaker 3: ship form, on the idea of the flying Saucer as
Speaker 3: a shape, to kind of look at that in history
Speaker 3: as far as like UFO reports go, and then also
Speaker 3: in popular culture, but then also compare that to real
Speaker 3: you know, flying machine designs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm all for it. One quick note on
Speaker 1: ship design again, this film was very influential on the
Speaker 1: the ultimate shape that star Trek would take. And it's
Speaker 1: often pointed out that the stars the starship Inner is
Speaker 1: in many ways a disc based ship as well. It
Speaker 1: is a flying saucer, but with other elements added to it,
Speaker 1: you know, with engines and the lower you know, engineering
Speaker 1: portion of the ship and all. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: mostly flying saucer, and part of that seems to come
Speaker 1: from Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like a it's like a flying
Speaker 3: saucer with a stem and legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I'm going to try to summarize the setup
Speaker 3: of the film here. So, the crew of the uninspiringly
Speaker 3: named C fifty seven D are on a mission to
Speaker 3: the planet all Tear four to investigate what happened to
Speaker 3: a ship named the Beleerophon, which ventured out to the
Speaker 3: planet twenty years prior. In command of this mission is
Speaker 3: jj Adams, a by God rectangle. If we ever saw
Speaker 3: one gruff tough, no nonsense, you'd really get the feeling
Speaker 3: that he expects a rost ready when he gets home
Speaker 3: from space. Yes. Yeah, So when the crew reached which
Speaker 3: is the vicinity of Altar four, they receive a radio
Speaker 3: message from a man. It's a human voice he comes
Speaker 3: on the radio and identifies himself as doctor Edward Morbius.
Speaker 3: They check that against the manifest of the original mission,
Speaker 3: and they verified that was part of the original crew.
Speaker 3: Morbius is supposed to be there, though curiously they note
Speaker 3: that he was a philologist a language expert, which is
Speaker 3: not exactly what you imagine in the landing party among
Speaker 3: your geologists and exobiologists and engineers and so forth. Morbius
Speaker 3: warns them not to land. He says doing so would
Speaker 3: put them in grave danger, but Adams is not deterred.
Speaker 3: It's the mission, gentlemen. We've got a land So they
Speaker 3: come and set down in the middle of this vast
Speaker 3: desert plain surrounded by jagged mountains. And oh, I love
Speaker 3: love the design of the surface of Altaar four. Here
Speaker 3: there is a painted backdrop which has a green sky
Speaker 3: and sort of different strata of clouds with multiple moons
Speaker 3: in the background. I love the rocky mountains. But also
Speaker 3: this is not a barren, rocky planet, like we're looking
Speaker 3: at a kind of desert plane. But different parts of
Speaker 3: the planet have more vegetation, have strange looking trees and
Speaker 3: brush and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does just look absolutely terrific. You can just
Speaker 1: imagine how sci fi fans of the time just probably
Speaker 1: lost their mind when they'd seen this. You know, this
Speaker 1: was you know, obviously this was before two thousand and
Speaker 1: one a Space Odyssey, which you know, really set an
Speaker 1: all new standard for what visions of a sci fi
Speaker 1: future might look like in space. But man, it Forbidden
Speaker 1: Planet just looks amazing.
Speaker 3: So the crew lands on the surface, and I like, here,
Speaker 3: how the different members of the crew have different reactions
Speaker 3: to it, Like they debate how pleasant it is. One
Speaker 3: person likes it, another person is put off and just
Speaker 3: missing Earth. And so the crew they get out and
Speaker 3: they are greeted by a robot whom they first see
Speaker 3: hot rotting a buggy through the desert, like they just
Speaker 3: see dust kicking up in the desert in the distance, like, Wow,
Speaker 3: something's coming to meet us. And when it pulls up.
Speaker 3: When they first got there, I couldn't remember exactly what
Speaker 3: was happening. I was like, Oh, did they get attacked
Speaker 3: by the monster this early? No, that's not It's just
Speaker 3: Robbie driving a buggy. He really looks like he would
Speaker 3: be weighing down the front of this thing and making
Speaker 3: it do I don't know whatever. The opposite of popping
Speaker 3: a wheelie is like coming down in the front, but
Speaker 3: somehow it stays. It stays on all four wheels, and
Speaker 3: it arrives and sort of a cage opens in the
Speaker 3: front and Robbie walks out, and oh boy, what a
Speaker 3: vision he is. We've already talked about how much I
Speaker 3: like the design of Robbie the robot, but he the
Speaker 3: meeting is a magical moment, and the crew were kind
Speaker 3: of at a loss for words. He's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I am monitored to respond to the name Robbie. And
Speaker 3: he tries to say, hey, if you don't speak English,
Speaker 3: you know, I speak one hundred and eighty seven other
Speaker 3: languages and there are various various sub tongues, and they're like,
Speaker 3: no English is okay? And they say hi to each other,
Speaker 3: and we get a lot of kind of yuck yuck moments.
Speaker 3: So with the more bumpkinny members of the crew trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what to make of Robbie. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: Robbie takes Adams, his lieutenant Jerry Farman, and the ship's
Speaker 3: doctor Doc Astro to the home of Edward Morbius, the
Speaker 3: guy they talked to on the radio, and Morbius greets
Speaker 3: them courteously and invites them in for lunch. Now, what
Speaker 3: would you say is what's your read on Morbius when
Speaker 3: we first meet him here?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very much a Captain Nemo sort of vibe,
Speaker 1: and and you know, this is a highly influential film
Speaker 1: like it. You know, there are also elements like it
Speaker 1: reminds me of Alien Covenant a bit like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's a guy here and he seems to be
Speaker 1: doing just on a world where everyone else is absolutely dead.
Speaker 1: Something here is us. But that being said, Morbius comes
Speaker 1: off very pleasant, you know, in his his crib is
Speaker 1: just luxurious. I love the blast curtains that the oh,
Speaker 1: stop motion blast curtains that he demonstrates. I mean, so
Speaker 1: he wins us over with charm, but you know, remains suspicious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the blast curtains you're talking about. There's like an
Speaker 3: open design of the house. It's one of those mid
Speaker 3: century kind of West Coast designs where it's all glass
Speaker 3: walls all around or loose sight maybe. But then yeah,
Speaker 3: suddenly he can like snap his fingers or press a
Speaker 3: button and all of the windows get replaced with like
Speaker 3: solid lead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which is which is created via some sort
Speaker 1: of a stop motion approach. But it looks really good,
Speaker 1: Like I totally buy this as as a technology.
Speaker 3: So they get to know each other here over a
Speaker 3: over a pleasant lunch, and we learn about Robbie. We
Speaker 3: learned that Robbie is immensely strong, uh, and that he
Speaker 3: has the power to synthesize any object or material that
Speaker 3: he analyzes in his sort of male slot mouth in
Speaker 3: his chest. I think we correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: But it sort of suggested that the delicious food they
Speaker 3: just ate was somehow extruded out of Robbie's holes.
Speaker 1: I guess so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also we learned, I think, in borrowing from some
Speaker 3: other science fiction, that Robbie has some of the laws
Speaker 3: of robotics written into him, like that Isaac Asimov, Susan
Speaker 3: Calvin robopsychology stories, the laws of robotics. So Morbius demonstrates,
Speaker 3: for example, that Robbie cannot harm a human by and
Speaker 3: he demonstrates this in a great way. He's like, mister Adams,
Speaker 3: you know, give me your gun, and he takes it.
Speaker 3: He puts it in Robbie's hand first, as Robbie zap
Speaker 3: a plant in their garden, and then he's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: point the blaster at Commander Adams and kill him. But
Speaker 3: Robbie can't do it. He starts to sizzle and fry.
Speaker 3: All these like purple sparks shoot inside his head. And
Speaker 3: this is caused by a contradiction between receiving the order
Speaker 3: which he is supposed to follow and his inability to
Speaker 3: harm anyone. And he just stands there, frozen in that
Speaker 3: state until Morbius says, canceled the order.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're very forgiving of doctor Morbius's terrifying demonstration
Speaker 1: of power.
Speaker 3: I would say we also get the impression that Morbius
Speaker 3: is not too happy about this visit from the crew.
Speaker 3: He is not rude to them, but he says, for
Speaker 3: one of the lines, is how ironic that a simple
Speaker 3: scholar with no ambition beyond a modest measure of seclusion, should,
Speaker 3: out of the clear sky find himself besieged by an
Speaker 3: army of fellow creatures, all grimly determined to be of service.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But Adams is like, we've got to do it
Speaker 1: by the book, you know, We've got to stick around,
Speaker 1: and then we have to follow up.
Speaker 3: The mission, so we learn what happened to the rest
Speaker 3: of the crew the original crew of the Bellerophon. Morbius
Speaker 3: tells the story of how after they landed and began
Speaker 3: to explore the planet, something started going wrong, something started happening. Eventually,
Speaker 3: every other member of the crew was murdered, literally torn
Speaker 3: limb from limb by what he calls an invisible planetary force,
Speaker 3: and when a certain group of the only survivors who
Speaker 3: were left, say for Morbius, tried to flee the planet
Speaker 3: in their spaceship, that ship was obliterated upon takeoff. Now,
Speaker 3: Morbius himself has no idea what the force was, but
Speaker 3: it seems he is somehow immune to it, as is
Speaker 3: surprise we find out about his twenty year old daughter, Altara,
Speaker 3: who was born right after their arrival on the planet.
Speaker 3: Altara's mother was another scientist of the original Billerophon Crewe.
Speaker 3: She and Morbius fell in love and married on the
Speaker 3: way to the planet, but unfortunately, Altera's mother also died,
Speaker 3: though she died of natural causes. So whatever it was
Speaker 3: that literally ripped apart the bodies of the other members
Speaker 3: of the crew, for some reason, it has never tried
Speaker 3: to harm Morbius or his daughter.
Speaker 1: Which is also deeply suspicious. And when we meet Altaria again,
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen the film before, so it's like, is
Speaker 1: she she a space vampire? She is she a robot?
Speaker 1: Is she an evil destructive force? I was trusting neither
Speaker 1: of these two. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't know what to make of her at first,
Speaker 3: and especially because it seems Morbius was hoping to keep
Speaker 3: Altara's existence a secret from Adams and the crew. It's
Speaker 3: like he was trying to hide her. And when she
Speaker 3: becomes her existence becomes revealed, he's like, oh no, She.
Speaker 1: Like wanders out, like it's past her bedtime, and like
Speaker 1: guests have come over, and it's like, oh, honey, go
Speaker 1: back to bed, and it may be you go. There
Speaker 1: are at least a couple of scenes where she is
Speaker 1: told to go to bed by yeah, the male characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So we already talked about Altara how she
Speaker 3: is at once brilliant and naive, like she you know,
Speaker 3: she is schooled in all of the arts and sciences,
Speaker 3: but she has no experience dealing with human society. She's
Speaker 3: also kind of like snow White in that she has
Speaker 3: animal friends like it's deer and a tiger and stuff
Speaker 3: that run out of the garden and just hang out
Speaker 3: with her. And the tiger represents no threat. When it
Speaker 3: first shows up, Adams is like pulling out his gun,
Speaker 3: but they're like no, no, no, wait, watch and yeah,
Speaker 3: it just wants to hang. So Adams and the rest
Speaker 3: offered to take Morbius and Altera home to Earth, but
Speaker 3: Morbius has no desire to go. And after this there's
Speaker 3: some kind of technical work that has to be done
Speaker 3: and I don't remember exactly what the deal is. I
Speaker 3: think the crew of the ship has to build like
Speaker 3: a faster than light radio transmitter to communicate with Earth
Speaker 3: and find out what their orders are or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's something in stalls them. So there's a
Speaker 1: little time to meander about and get into trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, time for kissing lessons. So here's where we get
Speaker 3: to that portion of the story. Essentially, Altara is she's
Speaker 3: very interested in all of the young men who have
Speaker 3: arrived on this ship, and many of this the men
Speaker 3: on the ship are interested in hers. Some of the
Speaker 3: lovelorn dudes and the crew get obsessed with Altara. She's
Speaker 3: known as Alta for short, by the way, so that
Speaker 3: was kind of confusing at first. But sometimes Morbies is
Speaker 3: calling her Alta, and there is a scene where Jerry Farman,
Speaker 3: the lieutenant sort of Adams's number two, takes Alta for
Speaker 3: a walk on the planet's surface and they sort of
Speaker 3: wander into the forest and he ends up trying to
Speaker 3: convince her that he needs to teach her how to
Speaker 3: kiss so that she can be in proper health, because
Speaker 3: you need to kiss in order to be healthy. This
Speaker 3: scene is both pretty cringey but also, as I was
Speaker 3: mentioning earlier, kind of funny because Alta does say these
Speaker 3: like really cutting things at him. She's like, isn't this
Speaker 3: supposed to be stimulating? I don't find it remarkable. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And in the middle of all this, Adams catches them
Speaker 3: and so he chews out Jerry, but then he also
Speaker 3: gets super flustered and he criticizes Alta for wearing revealing clothes,
Speaker 3: and in one funny note, adams freak out here contains
Speaker 3: a rant about like how attractive and sext up his
Speaker 3: men are. Yeah, He's like, all of my crew members
Speaker 3: are the prizest specimens of twenty four year old men
Speaker 3: on Earth. But I was thinking, like, even Cook, is
Speaker 3: that what he thinks about Cook?
Speaker 1: Well, Cook is in a supporting role.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no offense to the looks of Cook. I just
Speaker 3: mean like, is he the best Earth has at cooking?
Speaker 3: Maybe we didn't know this was a breeding mission, Yeah,
Speaker 3: exactly so. Anyway, but Altara, after this, goes home and
Speaker 3: co miss Robbie to make her a new dress that
Speaker 3: will cover her whole body. Of course, we will see
Speaker 3: that dress later, and it also looks beautiful. It's kind
Speaker 3: of a Greek goddess kind of address. But interesting things
Speaker 3: in the scene, like the uncomfortable sexual politics of it. Aside,
Speaker 3: the scene is interesting because it is supposed to be
Speaker 3: I think Alta's first real experience with the rest of humanity,
Speaker 3: with people who would judge her unfairly, with people who
Speaker 3: would lie to her and treat her unkindly, with people
Speaker 3: who would exploit and take advantage of her. She's coming
Speaker 3: into collision with human nature after having grown up in
Speaker 3: what's presented as a sort of perfect bubble of cool, detached, trustworthy,
Speaker 3: scholarly enlightenment, and she's learning that human nature has a
Speaker 3: dark and bestial side as well. Meanwhile, things also start
Speaker 3: going wrong at the ship. In the middle of the night,
Speaker 3: something invisible sneaks into the ship. And I love the
Speaker 3: special effects in these nighttime sneaking scenes, by the way,
Speaker 3: But something sneaks into the ship and sabotages the equipment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so already we're getting little invisible attacks that
Speaker 1: are sabotaging the ship, keeping it from leaving.
Speaker 3: Now. The next day, Adams goes to the home of
Speaker 3: Morbius and Alta to apologize to Alta for one thing,
Speaker 3: for his behavior the day before. He sort of realizes
Speaker 3: he was in the wrong, and when he arrives, Alta
Speaker 3: is swimming naked in the pool and Adams gets all
Speaker 3: super flustered again. He's like, oh uh, I don't know
Speaker 3: what to do. But in a scene after this, it
Speaker 3: becomes clear that they are both interested in each other,
Speaker 3: and Alta kisses Adams, and while they are kissing, they
Speaker 3: are suddenly attacked by Alta's tiger friend. The tiger they
Speaker 3: saw earlier that was so friendly and you know, and
Speaker 3: not a threat at all, appears on a sort of
Speaker 3: ledge above them and then leaps at them, claws out
Speaker 3: as if ready to attack. Adams just at the last
Speaker 3: second has to zapf it with his phaser gun, and
Speaker 3: it's like, there's this feeling Alta has of how why,
Speaker 3: Like the tiger had never tried to harm her before
Speaker 3: and suddenly it has turned hostile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something has changed. And this was also I was
Speaker 1: really shocked by this scene when the tiger was completely
Speaker 1: annihilated in mid air by the laser gun, absolutely disintegrated.
Speaker 3: Now from here we move on to a big reveal
Speaker 3: and a sequence of a lot of the best sets
Speaker 3: and special effects shots in the movie. Morbius comes to
Speaker 3: talk to Adams and doctor Ostro. Astro was like along
Speaker 3: for the whole time, so just hanging out for the
Speaker 3: kissing and the tiger killing. But Morbius comes to tell
Speaker 3: Adams and Astro about the secrets of the planet, the
Speaker 3: main secret being that All Tai four was once inhabited
Speaker 3: by an extremely technologically advanced species of alien known as
Speaker 3: the Krell. And here I'm going to read Morbius's monologue
Speaker 3: about the Krell. He says, in times long past, this
Speaker 3: planet was the home of a mighty and noble race
Speaker 3: of beings which called themselves the Krell. Ethically as well
Speaker 3: as technologically, they were a million years ahead of humankind,
Speaker 3: for in unlocking the mysteries of nature, they had conquered
Speaker 3: even their baser selves. And when in the course of
Speaker 3: eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, and crime and
Speaker 3: all injustice, they turned still with high benevolence outward towards space.
Speaker 3: Long before the dawn of man's history, they had walked
Speaker 3: our earth and brought back many biological specimens like the
Speaker 3: tiger exactly he goes on the heights they had reached.
Speaker 3: But then, seemingly on the threshold of some supreme accomplishment
Speaker 3: which was to have crowned their entire history, this all
Speaker 3: but divine race perished in a single night. In the
Speaker 3: two thousand centuries since that unexplained catastrophe, even their cloud
Speaker 3: piercing towers of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel have
Speaker 3: crumbled back into the soil of all Ta four, and nothing,
Speaker 3: absolutely nothing remains above ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're getting into some pretty ambitious science fiction here.
Speaker 1: Reminds me a bit of the various Sublime civilizations and
Speaker 1: Ian m Banks culture series civilizations that advanced to a
Speaker 1: state where they end up leaving our dimension of space
Speaker 1: and time for higher dimensions, generally leaving behind a great
Speaker 1: deal of technology that's now redundant to them. But I
Speaker 1: guess in this scenario, it sounds like the Krell might
Speaker 1: have been on the cusp of subliming, of moving on,
Speaker 1: and then something terrible kept them from not only kept
Speaker 1: them from moving on to this next level level of existence,
Speaker 1: but also just eradicated them entirely, and all we have
Speaker 1: left are the technological depths of the planet.
Speaker 3: That's right, when we get a tour of these technological depths,
Speaker 3: a tour of their underground facilities, and again I can't
Speaker 3: emphasize enough how amazing these sets and special effects are.
Speaker 1: Some are like paintings are just amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good. So they go through like a
Speaker 3: giant underground power plant that they say is a huge
Speaker 3: buried cube running something that's like twenty miles in every direction,
Speaker 3: which we see them. They're crossing this great chasm on
Speaker 3: a little suspension bridge, and we see these things moving
Speaker 3: up and down the chasm and electricity arcing through it. Also,
Speaker 3: there is a device they come across. They go to
Speaker 3: this essentially Krell schoolhouse, where there is a device that
Speaker 3: the Crell used to train the brains of their young,
Speaker 3: and Morbius explains when this device is used by humans
Speaker 3: it is almost always fatal, but if you can use
Speaker 3: it and survive, it will double your IQ. And that's
Speaker 3: how Morby has got so smart. By the way he
Speaker 3: increased his intelligence with the machine, I guess he started
Speaker 3: off pretty smart, though he's humble about it, but then
Speaker 3: he's like, you know, I took my normal, you know,
Speaker 3: my middling intellect when I first got here, and I
Speaker 3: doubled it with this machine. Everybody else who tried it
Speaker 3: was killed. But by surviving that process himself, that allowed
Speaker 3: him to decipher the Krell histories and figure out parts
Speaker 3: of Krell technology and to for example, a symbol Robbie
Speaker 3: the robot.
Speaker 1: It's explained as well that this maybe not the device itself,
Speaker 1: but there's an element of the device that is like
Speaker 1: a high striker a strong man game from your fare
Speaker 1: or carnival, you know, where you hit a circle with
Speaker 1: a hammer or mallet as hard as you can and
Speaker 1: then it causes this little float be ley to go,
Speaker 1: you know, to rise up and with your brain, but
Speaker 1: with your brain. Yeah, so it's it's the smart man game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I like Striker. They put Leslie Nielsen on
Speaker 3: it and he can barely get the thing to go off,
Speaker 3: and they're like, well that's you know, it doesn't take
Speaker 3: brains to command a starship.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Massive dig on Adams here.
Speaker 3: Anyway, after learning about all this stuff that this like power,
Speaker 3: this underground power plant that can generate generate what seems
Speaker 3: to be an infinite amount of energy, and this brain
Speaker 3: boosting machine, Adams says, you know what, this changes everything
Speaker 3: Earth has to know about these devices. But Morbius resists.
Speaker 3: He's like, I think this is what he was trying
Speaker 3: to hide from them before. He's like, humans are not
Speaker 3: ready for this kind of power, and this technology may
Speaker 3: have been what wiped out the Krell, but if so,
Speaker 3: we don't know how.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, because the Krell were millions of years ahead
Speaker 1: of humans and something tripped them up in their dizzying
Speaker 1: ascent with this technology, So we're clearly not ready for it.
Speaker 3: Should we do something on the B plot here about
Speaker 3: cook and the synth synthesis of whiskey?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is so you set
Speaker 1: this one up so you know cook, I guess in
Speaker 1: sort of like the you know, you know, old fashioned
Speaker 1: US military sense of these kind of plot developments. He's
Speaker 1: supposed to acquire some local ingredients and also find like
Speaker 1: local illicit sources of hooch for cooking, but also clearly
Speaker 1: not for cooking.
Speaker 3: He's like, I need to go out and look for
Speaker 3: some wild radishes. Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and basically what he runs into Robbie the robot,
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, I need some more of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And he shows him like a mostly empty flask of whiskey,
Speaker 1: and Robbie grabs it shoots it back into his mail slot,
Speaker 1: and Cook is like, well, well that was my last twig.
Speaker 1: How could you do that? And Robbie's like, I will
Speaker 1: now synthesize this for you. Will let you say, like,
Speaker 1: will sixty gallons be sufficient?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And then Cook comes back later and there's there's like
Speaker 3: a giant pyramid of heights of whiskey in their own
Speaker 3: individual glass bottles.
Speaker 1: And somehow Cook doesn't die at this moment, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like later on in like in speculative media, like
Speaker 1: this would be the moment where the monster comes and
Speaker 1: kills him, you know, where he's like, I have all
Speaker 1: the whiskey in the world. What could possibly go wrong,
Speaker 1: instant monster death booze enough at last, yes, exactly, but
Speaker 1: now Cook will survive a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: So another thing that happens at this point in the
Speaker 3: story is that the attacks on the ship become much
Speaker 3: more severe. What we got in the first attack by
Speaker 3: the Invisible Force at night was just the sabotaging of equipment.
Speaker 3: But this escalates to in one instance, murder. I believe
Speaker 3: the communications officer Quinn is found murder. Did they say?
Speaker 3: They describe it in a quite grizzly way. I think
Speaker 3: they say he smeared all over the walls of the
Speaker 3: communication room. And after that they set up a perimeter.
Speaker 3: You know what we should do sometime on the show
Speaker 3: is we should set up a list of the best
Speaker 3: establishing a perimeter scenes.
Speaker 1: Yes, beca, isn't it? This is pretty good though, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the technology is convincing, and yeah, everyone left, I
Speaker 1: mean it really This also reminded me of what would
Speaker 1: come much later with Aliens with you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, is it? You know it's inside the perimeter.
Speaker 1: You know I'm reading it's reading right, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very similar what happens here. In fact, I
Speaker 3: almost feel like that that scene in Aliens. It feels
Speaker 3: like a callback to this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they establish a perimeter and eventually this creature, this
Speaker 3: invisible creature comes in a brazen frontal attack where the
Speaker 3: crew are resisting with big energy weapons, these big beam
Speaker 3: weapons and then handheld a laser rifle. And when the thing,
Speaker 3: when the invisible creature gets illuminated by all of the
Speaker 3: energy weapons that are hitting it, we suddenly see pieces
Speaker 3: of its form and yeah, it's oh, it's frightening. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've read things that, like, I think the producers were
Speaker 3: worried that this would be so frightening that like it
Speaker 3: would be it would make the movie inappropriate for younger audiences.
Speaker 3: And I can see why. It's a truly scary thing
Speaker 3: that they conjure up. It's like a kind of a
Speaker 3: ram lion bulldog monster with sort of horns or something,
Speaker 3: and it's made out of flames.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To compare it to things that would come much
Speaker 1: later and may have been each in their own way,
Speaker 1: or at least in their visualization on screen, been inspired by.
Speaker 1: This reminds me a bit of the ball Rog, reminds
Speaker 1: me a bit of the Red Bull from the last unicorn.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, and Jerry Farman, the lieutenant who is trying
Speaker 3: to do the kissing lessons, he gets killed in one
Speaker 3: of these attacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Eventually Cook does too, right, Cook's taken out by
Speaker 1: the monster.
Speaker 3: Oh is he? I didn't remember that? How could they
Speaker 3: do that to Cook?
Speaker 1: Thank god he's secured all that whiskey first.
Speaker 3: But during this attack we start to get an indication
Speaker 3: of where this alien monster is coming from, because we
Speaker 3: cut away in the middle of the attack to Morbius,
Speaker 3: who is sleeping in his home. I think he's fallen
Speaker 3: asleep on his desk and he is maybe having a nightmare.
Speaker 3: And at one point suddenly he snaps awake in his
Speaker 3: home and then at the other end of the planet,
Speaker 3: not the other end of the planet, but away where
Speaker 3: the monster is attacking, it suddenly vanishes. Oh oh. So
Speaker 3: after this attack, Adams goes back to the Morbius and
Speaker 3: Altara house to try to get I think the reason
Speaker 3: is he wants Altara to leave the planet with him.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, this monster is attacking. You've got
Speaker 3: to go now, and for your own safety you should
Speaker 3: come with me.
Speaker 1: Plus we're in love. Now this is meant to be
Speaker 1: you've got to run away with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to be clear, it seems reciprocal, like she's
Speaker 3: very into him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's part of you know, this part
Speaker 1: of the split that's going on here is that now
Speaker 1: she is more she is attracted to the outside world,
Speaker 1: the world of Adams, the world of Earth, and wants
Speaker 1: to leave. I mean, she wants to bring her father
Speaker 1: with her if possible, but she is also ready to
Speaker 1: leave her father's home, her father's world for the first time.
Speaker 3: I think when so, Adams and Astro go to the house,
Speaker 3: and when they first get there, Robbie's trying to block
Speaker 3: their way. He's like, I am monitored, not to permit you.
Speaker 3: But they're kind of discussing, like what's he gonna do.
Speaker 3: He can't hurt us, so I think we could. But
Speaker 3: then we never see that tested, right, because eventually Altara
Speaker 3: shows up and is like, cancel the order, let them in.
Speaker 3: But I was curious about that. It's like, Okay, if
Speaker 3: he can't hurt them, could they couldn't they just force
Speaker 3: their way past him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, though he is he's bulky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true anyway. So, uh So, now we have
Speaker 3: Adams and Ostro in the in the Morbius home and
Speaker 3: at some point here Astro sneaks away because, oh, because
Speaker 3: this is another part of their plan. They're like, we've
Speaker 3: got to find a way to defeat this monster. So
Speaker 3: either Adams or Astro, one of them needs to use
Speaker 3: the brain enhancer machine, which you know they have learned
Speaker 3: will probably kill you, but if you can survive it,
Speaker 3: it'll make you super smart, and they think they will
Speaker 3: need those extra smarts in order to survive. Well. While
Speaker 3: they're hanging out, Robbie, Robbie at some point, like comes
Speaker 3: in carrying the body of Astro and it's like, uh, oh,
Speaker 3: he tried to he tried to get smart. Bad move.
Speaker 1: And this is an example of a scene that I
Speaker 1: wish we could have seen like this would have This
Speaker 1: is a highly dramatic moment for this character, and it
Speaker 1: occurs entirely off screen. They're like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: he did it. He plugged in and now he's done.
Speaker 1: But we do get some final last words.
Speaker 3: His final last words are solve the riddle. Solve the
Speaker 3: riddle of the movie. So by increasing his intelligence, he
Speaker 3: did doom himself to death, but he also was able
Speaker 3: to understand what happened to the Krell and how it's
Speaker 3: still affecting them now. So it turns out the big
Speaker 3: reveal is this giant underground power plant was created for
Speaker 3: the purpose of essentially doing a way with all need
Speaker 3: for mechanical labor and mechanical devices and instead would allow
Speaker 3: any of the Krell to make a physical reality manifest
Speaker 3: simply by thinking about it. So you can interface with
Speaker 3: this giant machine and it will interpret your thoughts and
Speaker 3: then manifest those thoughts as physical atoms and energy, which
Speaker 3: sounds great. Okay, it's just like in it free energy
Speaker 3: and labor. You know, you can all want all kind
Speaker 3: of problems. Material problems are done away with, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the rational mind can imagine it, then it
Speaker 1: is real and it is in action.
Speaker 3: Except the problem is what the Crell did not foresee
Speaker 3: and what Ostro figures out happened to them is it's
Speaker 3: not only the rational mind that's in the driver's seat now, baby,
Speaker 3: Both the rational mind and the sort of the ego,
Speaker 3: the rational mind and the base desires of the ID
Speaker 3: are hooked up to this machine, and so it began
Speaker 3: manifesting the Krell's unconscious or subconscious thoughts and desires as well.
Speaker 3: Everything that they knew they shouldn't do, but deep down
Speaker 3: secretly wanted that was manifest as well, and so what
Speaker 3: that turned into was the slaughter and extermination of their
Speaker 3: entire people.
Speaker 1: All the demons of the mind unleashed on the planet
Speaker 1: with infinite power backing them up. Yeah, yeah, it's it's amazing, Like,
Speaker 1: this is such a Again, when this movie goes hard
Speaker 1: on its genre elements, it's really spectacular.
Speaker 3: I agree, it's a great premise, and it not to
Speaker 3: spoil it by saying this, but I realized I came
Speaker 3: to these in backwards order. But when I was younger,
Speaker 3: I read the books Fear by Michael Crichton, which essentially
Speaker 3: has the same premise. It's like they come across alien
Speaker 3: technology that can make your thoughts manifest, but then they
Speaker 3: realize like, oh, it's also making subconscious thoughts manifest. So
Speaker 3: everybody's anxieties and fears are like becoming physical objects that
Speaker 3: are attacking them. And so in fact, what the characters
Speaker 3: discover here and Forbidden Planet is not only is that
Speaker 3: what happened to the Krell, it's still operating that way,
Speaker 3: and so it is taking the subconscious fears and desires
Speaker 3: and complexes of doctor Morbius, who has linked his brain
Speaker 3: to the machine by by using it uh and making
Speaker 3: those manifest and in fact, not all of the links
Speaker 3: are fully spelled out, but it's sort of suggesting the
Speaker 3: idea that like, he doesn't want to go back to Earth.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want Altera to go back to Earth. He
Speaker 3: doesn't want the corrupting influence of Earth to to change
Speaker 3: his daughter, to sort of like corrupt the perfect, precious
Speaker 3: existence he has created for them. And you know, you
Speaker 3: can kind of understand why. You can see how Alta's
Speaker 3: first encounter with the broader human kind involved like, you know,
Speaker 3: some dudes being creeps to her. Yeah, so you can
Speaker 3: see where his desires to kind of like just create
Speaker 3: a bubble and live in it with his family and
Speaker 3: live in that protective bubble without any without any intrusion
Speaker 3: where that desire comes from. But it is manifesting as
Speaker 3: the creation of a violent monster that lashes out to
Speaker 3: kill anything that threatens to puncture the bubble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now that we know what the monster is,
Speaker 1: it is coming for our main characters, and it is
Speaker 1: we realize inexorable. It is unstoppable. And this just leads
Speaker 1: to like an avalanche of scenes that are are really
Speaker 1: highly effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And I like the way that it really
Speaker 3: does make sense taken given the premise of the story,
Speaker 3: because you might think, well, couldn't he just call it off?
Speaker 3: But as anybody who's ever had like a panic attack, no,
Speaker 3: you know, you can know rationally that the thing that
Speaker 3: you are afraid of is not something you should be
Speaker 3: afraid of, it's not a real threat, and yet you
Speaker 3: still just can't make your subconscious mind give in. The
Speaker 3: subconscious is resistant to rational control.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so he can't call it off. He can't
Speaker 1: control it. It is. It is coming no matter what,
Speaker 1: and even like knowing what it is doesn't give him
Speaker 1: power over it, which you know, matches up with some
Speaker 1: of these you know, states to the mind as we
Speaker 1: experience them as well. I mean, sometimes knowing can help,
Speaker 1: and that can be part of the tools of controlling
Speaker 1: things like anxiety in some cases. But but but yeah,
Speaker 1: not not necessarily at all.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of interesting things that happen in
Speaker 3: the climax here, Like at one point they try to
Speaker 3: command Robbie the robot to kill the monster that's attacking
Speaker 3: them in the house. But Robbie, knowing that the monster
Speaker 3: is a manifestation of a human mind, can't can't hurt it,
Speaker 3: right because he can't hurt a human.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's excellent. And it just leads them to
Speaker 1: they have to like start retreating through these various levels
Speaker 1: of protection, so the for instance, the homes, combat shades
Speaker 1: come up, and of course the doors, yeah, the blast doors,
Speaker 1: and the monster makes pretty quick work of that. And
Speaker 1: they have to retreat into the into the Krell sub
Speaker 1: surface chambers, and they have all those really cool doors
Speaker 1: to move behind and the locking mechanism, but even that
Speaker 1: is not going to keep the monster at bay. And
Speaker 1: we get this terrific scene where the monster is like
Speaker 1: literally melting its way through the door.
Speaker 3: And we see the power plant. There's like a readout
Speaker 3: engine on this showing how much energy is being directed
Speaker 3: into the machine that this alien power plant is generating.
Speaker 3: And earlier we were seeing things happen where there's like,
Speaker 3: you know, fifty lights lined up and only the first
Speaker 3: one is barely lighting. But when the monster's trying to
Speaker 3: get through the door, we see it like lighting up
Speaker 3: all the way more and more, and like the energy
Speaker 3: produced is limitless, and they realize, like, it's just not
Speaker 3: going to stop now. I think finally, Morbius was resistant
Speaker 3: to the idea at first that he was the one
Speaker 3: creating the monster, but he eventually comes to accept it
Speaker 3: and then sort of gets in the path of the monster,
Speaker 3: and I think as he is fatally injured by it,
Speaker 3: that sort of like makes it demateialized for the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he stands up to it, he basically has
Speaker 1: a you shall not pass moment. But yeah, at that
Speaker 1: I mean, he still can't overpower it, and it manages
Speaker 1: to fatally injure him in the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so at that point they somehow they end
Speaker 3: up setting a self destruct thing for the entire planet.
Speaker 3: You have ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance. They
Speaker 3: set up a self destruct for the planet, and then
Speaker 3: Adams and Altara have to escape back to the ship.
Speaker 3: Oh and I think Robbie comes with them, doesn't he
Speaker 3: as Robbie comes.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Robbie gets to come along for
Speaker 1: the ride.
Speaker 3: It's a fair trade. I mean, like they made the
Speaker 3: right decision to set the self destruct, like such a
Speaker 3: such a technology that makes all our thoughts manifest that
Speaker 3: there's no way that can be wielded correctly. You just
Speaker 3: just had to be destroyed. Can't be good. But Robbie,
Speaker 3: I feel like Robbie's he's good tech. You can bring
Speaker 3: him with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his programming is sound, and so yeah, he's a board.
Speaker 1: We have a moment where the surviving crew members there
Speaker 1: witness the destruction of the planet from Afar, which is
Speaker 1: a little weird because Adams is like, there it goes
Speaker 1: your dad's on that planet or what's left of him,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's like, well, yes, obviously.
Speaker 3: And the ending line I remember is a little Hokia.
Speaker 3: He has basically a he tampered in God's domain statement,
Speaker 3: I think. But also there's a good observation where they're like,
Speaker 3: you know, what the Crell achieved is not unique to
Speaker 3: the Krell. Maybe someday long in the future, humans will
Speaker 3: achieve the same level of technology and then we'll be
Speaker 3: facing the same problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a valid point. We see this
Speaker 1: in sci fi time and time again. It remains pretty accurate,
Speaker 1: and that is that our technological achievements tend to outstrip
Speaker 1: our ability to control ourselves regarding that technology at a
Speaker 1: personal level or at like a you know, governmental level.
Speaker 3: I think it's a plea for a kind of a
Speaker 3: regulatory or limiting consciousness about technology before it's achieved. It's
Speaker 3: recognizing that the story of the Krell is literally people
Speaker 3: achieving a power to do something before they've fully thought
Speaker 3: through what it would mean to have that power, and
Speaker 3: then of course it destroys them. And this is something
Speaker 3: we've seen happen again again in technological history. People figure
Speaker 3: out how to do something before they've thought through all
Speaker 3: of the ways in which it could be used for
Speaker 3: ill and should thus be constrained or constrained to the
Speaker 3: extent that it could be constrained. I mean, some things
Speaker 3: are really hard to constrain, but you know, to whatever
Speaker 3: extent we have the power to. And so, yeah, we
Speaker 3: don't want to become like the Krell. We should think
Speaker 3: hard about how technological creations could go wrong before we
Speaker 3: create them. It's kind of a plea for science fiction. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, anyway,
Speaker 3: that's forbidden Planet.
Speaker 1: That is the Forbidden Planet. And yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: was an absolute delight. I highly recommend checking this one
Speaker 1: out if you've managed to not see it thus far.
Speaker 1: Like we said before, sometimes the these highly influential films.
Speaker 1: They can be easy films to miss because you have
Speaker 1: at least sort of surface level understanding of what it's about,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to sort of put that one on
Speaker 1: the back burner. But this one's worth coming back to
Speaker 1: for sure. All Right, we would love to hear from
Speaker 1: everyone out there. What is your history with Forbidden Planet?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts concerning it and other pictures from
Speaker 1: this timeframe? Or are there other movies that you would
Speaker 1: compare favorably to Forbidden Planet from the nineteen fifties? Yeah,
Speaker 1: right in, we'd love to hear from you. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast with core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. In the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film here on Weird House Cinema. And if you
Speaker 1: want a complete list of all the movies we've covered
Speaker 1: thus far, well, you can head on over to letterbox
Speaker 1: dot com. You can look us up. Our user name
Speaker 1: is weird House, and we have an episode list of
Speaker 1: everything we've covered thus far I believe at this point
Speaker 1: what are we up to? It is exactly one hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety five films, so we're closing in on two hundred.
Speaker 1: If you have an idea for what we should cover
Speaker 1: for our two hundredth episode of Weird House Cinema, write
Speaker 1: in with suggestions.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, to suggest a two hundredth
Speaker 3: film for us to cover, or just to say hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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