Forbidden Planet is still dazzling and subversive, and an influence on most major space opera science fiction.
When it became apparent just how much money could be made with sci-fi, however, most eventually relented.
MGM was a prestige studio after all, best known for making lavish epics and musicals.
Leave that spaceship and alien monster crap to Universal.
Hed only agreed to a B-film budget, but it was still the last thing anyone expected.
Maybe it was that classy Shakespeare angle that hooked him.
It didnt require much imagination to take that premise and set it in a sci-fi context.
So thats essentially what screenwriters Irving Block and Allen Adler did.
All three were under the impression at the time theyd just be making a cheap B-quickie.
But they knew what they were after, and they got it.
Thats how I remembered it anywa.
We are never told what the Krell looked like or how they lived.
The only threat here, the only monsters, are recognizably human.
But what they were shown on the screen was a pretty good starting point.
It was a move that not only made it unique among its contemporaries, but still quietly subversive today.
By the mid-50s psychoanalysis had become the new suburban religion in America.
More than that, hes all aboutWEIRDsex!
So what the hell?
All that wild sex aside, it remains a film that boasts a number of firsts.
It was the first film in which a robot was given his own onscreen credit.
It was also the first film to be released with a purely electronic score.
It was a wise choice.
Without that strange and bubbling alien music, the picture likely wouldnt have had the impact it did.
Maybe they shouldve readJulius Caesara little more closely.
Schary was forced to step down shortly afterward, rumor has it for backing this folly.
Director Fred Wilcox only made one other film, then died.
