How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't."
Forbidden Planet, 1956, was an important movie. It was one of the first sci-fi movies to be in color, to have a spaceship, that went faster than the speed of light, to have the entire adventure on another planet with, for the time, exceptional, special effects, .and to be in stereo. Oh yes, they have one of the greatest robots of all time, Robbie the robot.
One more thing: it was the first live-action movie I ever saw. My first movie was Fantasia. And I very much enjoyed it now as I very much enjoyed it then.
Unusually let me discuss the audio first. About a decade ago, a restored movie Palace in New Jersey was running weekly old movies on the weekend. Not only was forbidden planet one of the movies, but they brought in the original stereo audio equipment. And they gave a lecture about it. Briefly, the Perspecta stereo sound system was not like the stereo of today. It made the left or right channel louder to sync the action on the screen. There are three choices of audio on this disk. One is the original Perspecta, a 5.1 channel, and the one that I found most satisfying was a 3.0 soundtrack, which for a movie of this period was excellent.
The videos starts off, not being very good. But that is just at the very very beginning and then it becomes near excellent.
The story is about Leslie Nielsen commanding a flying saucer-type spaceship that goes to rescue Walter Pidgeon, Morbius, who has been stranded on another planet for almost 20 years along with his incredibly attractive daughter, Anne Francis.
We discovered that there was an ancient civilization on the planet that was brilliant, but wiped out. The crew that came with Morbius had also been wiped out. And so the mystery arises who is doing the wiping out?
The special effects on this package comes on a second disc and they are exceptional. First there is a movie starring Robbie the Robot entitled, “The Invisible Boy.” There is also an episode from a 1950s TV show, The Thin Man.
Not to cause a Tempest in a teapot , I won’t get into who or what was wiping out everyone, but the reveal was very well done.
After all "We are such stuff As dreams are made on: and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."
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