FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) ***1/2 Technicolor documentary on the status of the subconscious in an era in which they filmed nude swimming scenes in flesh-colored dresses...well, not exactly a documentary. Instead no less than...THE FIRST FILM OF THE MODERNE ERA! They had it all wired-all they needed was previously unimaginable special effects, a chick in a short skirt, and some pseudo-scientific psycho-babble and that makes movie. Ostensibly lifted from "The Tempest" I have little doubt that the ever playful Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon himself would be proud to be associated with this master work. Perhaps even more than Shakespeare this owes a debt to Carl Jung and Sidmund Freud-Monsters of the Id indeed! It's all here, unaccented acting (it helps that Leslie Nielsen's career turned out the way it did, in looking back to understand), an entire rocket ship of sex crazed space cadets out to get a little "healthy stimulation" going with Anne Francis, sets, ideas and musical themes to be stolen by entities as diverse as "Lost in Space" and "Star Trek" and Exodus, the remarkable arrogance of Walter Pidgeon (shouldn't that somehow be Sir Walter Pidgeon), an American guy named Cookie who only wants to wring bourbon out of the wisdom of the ages...and of course a military operation to destroy any intelligence that appears superior to its own.
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