Forbidden Planet is probably the most influential and ground breaking film before Star Wars. Not only did it have a cool robot (Robby), but also an entertaining story. Most movies of this time were one trick ponies-- a mutant wasp terrorizes people until someone sprays it with bug spray, or a deranged giraffe eats the tops of most the trees in the zoo, until someone sprays it with bug spray. The point is that they all had some little gimmick, that, once reached, the movie was basically over. Not so with Forbidden Planet.

As aforementioned, Forbidden Planet has the cute and crudely robot, Robby, which set the stage for future movie robots and computers for decades. Not only can this guy cook, clean, make diamonds and whiskey, but he ALSO has functionless slinky arms and no knees whatsoever. You may notice a similar design in the show Lost In Space, which features "Robot" (clever name, eh?) who has even functionless slinky arms and no legs at all-- just the bottom half of the industrial Hoover used to clean the Jupiter 2. But I digress.

Can you separate the original from the imitator (which for some reason is in drag)?

As for the actual story, it's a sly remake of Shakespeare's The Tempest, just instead of a poetic foreigner in a strange land, we have a wise-crackin' robot and Leslie Neilson. That's right, Leslie Neilson. Many decades before his popular Naked Gun movies, he did cheesy sci-fi. Go figure. We have the basic romantic comedy story where Neilson's character pretends to not be attracted by the ridiculously attractive daughter of Dr. Mobius.

Dr. Freud even makes an appearance, so to speak, as his theories on the nature of the human mind and its internal workings with respect to developmental social conditions are used to explain a big invisible monster which kills people and feeds on laser energy.

The surprisingly uncheesy element to this movie is the artwork and set design. For a pre-Star Trek 50's film, it was pretty revolutionary. If you want proof, compare the landscape at the bottom of this review with that of It! (The Terror From Beyond Space). Even though this movie is one of the most influential films in history, there's still plenty to make fun of. Rent or steal it* today!

*Please don't steal it.