Last night I watched Forbidden Planet starring... Leslie Nielson. Actually, it's an excellent film that I'd recommend to anybody. I hadn't seen it in well over a decade.
I was engaged and impressed. The special effects are fun, the soundtrack is awesome, and, you know, Robbie The Robot. The end is scarier than I remembered. I was watching it with Kate, and she kept giving me wide-eyed looks and saying "OH NO, WHAT HAPPENED?" It's good stuff for a 1956 Leslie Nielson flick. Stick this in the "Good 50's movies file" along with War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
I'll also admit that the writing holds up pretty well. Aliens-style rescue mission meets The Black Hole meets Twilight Zone. The romance dialogue doesn't work, nor do the sad attempts at humor, but it was for an audience from a different age. The basic plot holds it together though, and the reasoning behind the premise is surprisingly sound.
Admittedly some of the scenes are a little hokey, like when the string-suspended flying saucer descends to the planet surface. But I couldn't shake the feeling that if I was a different 12-year-old me, circa mid 1950's, I'd be digging the hell out of this film.
2 comments:
Forbidden Planet is such a great, great movie.
Wife and I have been on a classic movie binge lately: "The Italian Job" (original Michael Kane 1960's edition), "The Stepford Wives" (1970-something horror edition), "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" are just a few on Don's recommended list.
Yeah, I still haven't seen Strangelove all the way through, much to my embarassment. On the list, on the list.
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