Forbidden Planet (Two-Disc Special Edition) | 
 enlarge | Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Actors: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $10.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  362 reviews
Sales Rank: 1013
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Number Of Items: 2
Running Time: 98
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: WARD66912D
UPC: 012569691223
EAN: 0012569691223
ASIN: B000HEWEDK
Theatrical Release Date: March 15, 1956
Release Date: November 14, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/14/2006 Run time: 98 minutes Rating: G
Amazon.com
This 1956 pop adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the best, most influential science fiction movies ever made. Its space explorers are the models for the crew of Star Trek's Enterprise, and the film's robot is clearly the prototype for Robby in Lost in Space. Walter Pidgeon is the Prospero figure, presiding over a paradisiacal world with his lovely young daughter and their servile droid. When the crew of a spaceship lands on the planet, they become aware of a sinister invisible force that threatens to destroy them. Great special effects and a bizarre electronic score help make this movie as fresh, imaginative, and fun as it was when first released. --Amazon.com On the DVDs
On disc 1 of the colorfully designed 2-disc 50th Anniversary Edition of Forbidden Planet (also available in a collector's box), the movie is presented with a new digital transfer from restored picture and audio elements, with soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, offering considerable improvement over the film's previous DVD release. A selection of deleted scenes were taken from a faded and scratchy 16-millimeter "work print" that had originally been viewed by composers Louis and Bebe Barron as they were creating the film's unique electronic score; they consist of full or partial scenes cut from the final film-- mostly for good reason, but collectors (and those who first saw this rare material on the original Criterion Collection laserdisc) will welcome their inclusion here. The "lost footage" is crude special-effects test footage, primarily of interest to sci-fi historians and aficionados. Given the fact that the original "Robby the Robot" cost over $100,000 to build in 1955, it's easy to see why MGM wanted to get their money's worth: An excerpt from the 1950s TV series "MGM Parade" shows Forbidden Planet star Walter Pigeon appearing briefly with Robby, and the popular robot gets even more attention as a guest star in "The Robot Client," an episode of the Thin Man TV series (starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk) that originally aired on Feb. 28, 1958. Disc 1 also includes a gallery of seven science-fiction movie trailers dating from 1953 (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) to 1960's The Time Machine. Disc 2 begins with 1957's The Invisible Boy, a still-enjoyable B-movie that served as Robby's post-Forbidden Planet showcase. Here, filmdom's favorite automaton plays sidekick to a young boy (Richard Eyer) who turns invisible when he gets caught up in a super-computer's scheme of global domination. Also included are three documentaries, ranging from very good to excellent: In addition to reuniting the surviving cast members of the '56 classic (including Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis, Richard Anderson, Warren Stevens, and Earl Holliman), "Amazing! Exploring the Far Reaches of Forbidden Planet" is an appreciative tribute to Forbidden Planet with some of Hollywood's foremost sci-fi fans including special effects masters Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett, SF movie expert Bill Warren, and others. "Robby the Robot: Engineering a Sci-Fi Icon" is a featurette about the robot's design, creation and pop-cultural history, featuring original "Robby" designer Robert Kinoshita, Bill Malone (current owner of the original Robby), and Fred "The Robot Man" Barton, a lifelong robot fanatic who now sells fully authorized, full-scale replicas of Robby for sci-fi fans with deep pockets. Closing out disc 2 is "Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us," a 2005 documentary from Turner Classic Movies, written and directed by Time magazine critic Richard Schickel. It's a thoroughly comprehensive survey of '50s sci-fi and its influence on the next generation of film directors, including engaging interviews with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and James Cameron. --Jeff Shannon
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| Customer Reviews: Read 357 more reviews...
 FLASH GORDON, THE THING, FORBIDDIN PLANET December 2, 2008
I WAS IMPRESSED. DAVE HAD A STROKE 10 YEARS AGO, I (HIS WIFE) AM TYPING THIS RESPONSE FOR HIM.
 One of the Best SciFi Movies November 29, 2008
This is one of the best SciFi movies of all time (#1 being "The Day The Earth Stood Still"). Based (loosely) on Shakespeare's play "The Tempest", it brings together an outstanding cast (look at the cast list) to tell the story of genius ultimately controlled, then destroyed, by the "mindless primitive". The special effects are astounding; espcially for the time. I find the electronic music to be sometimes distracting and there are places where it's impossible to tell if the sound you are hearing is a monster, wind in the rocks, or the soundtrack. The movie, with its award winning special effects and soundtrack and its fine cast of actors appears to be quite rough in places (more on that later) but this is the way the movie was made. The acting is quite good. Walter Pidgeon is perfect as Morbius. Leslie Nielsen as Adams does a credible job in a dramatic role (but you can't help slipping to "Naked Gun"). I won't run down the rest of the cast except to say that Earl Holliman is, at best, light comedic relief; I could never figure out why he was really in this movie.
The disc set containts the movie, specials, and trailers on one disc with "The Invisible Boy" (which I have not yet seen) on the second. One special is a set of "lost" footage which is really a set of test shots of scenery but which is really quite interesting (watch as the camera moves around the planet and note that it looks like you are really circling a planet and not looking at a prop)
The other special contains scenes that were shot but not part of the original release. A couple of notes here. There is one scene of Adams dressing down three of his officers just after the communications officer is killed. The disc has that as a deleted scene and it is missing from the movie on this disc but that scene is included in every version of this movie I have ever seen. Another deleted scene is the "unicorn explanation" that I have never seen but that perfectly explains why Altaira has the affinity for animals that she does and why the tiger must later be killed. I had already surmised the reason but this was the actual confirmation (after 50 years!!). There is also a scene that seems to be rewritten on the disc (where Morbius asks Altaira to deny her love for Adams. When I watched the disc she just stands there but I recall her as saying something to the effect "No, not even if I could").
One of the specials also describes how the movie was apparently left roughly cut to rush it to general release instead of waiting for a finished product. I'd always wondered why there were obvious cuts in the film; now I know.
I bought this set to fill in my collection of great, old, classic, SciFi films. And, while I have seen the film at least 50 times, I still enjoy it and I still see something interesting in the special effects or the sets. It's worth getting.
Sci-fi classic beautifully restored November 10, 2008
Forbidden Planet was always a science fiction favorite of mine due to it's outlandish setting, great acting, great sets, great characters, excellent science fiction and human element. It's pretty much everything good science fiction should be but too seldom actually achieves: intellectually stimulating, frightening, sexy, bold in story and look, fantastic, etc. This 2006 remastering is stunningly beautiful even on a standard DVD. Someone kept or found an excellent print or negative which is very fortunate.
So in this Forbidden Planet DVD we have arguably the most significant science fiction film of the surrounding decades beautifully restored to probably better than it's ever been seen in a theater. Kudos to the makers and restorers of this classic.
For those who haven't seen Forbidden Planet, it's been likened to Shakespeare's Tempest set in space, but it has interesting plot twists of its own. This film significantly influenced every movie or television series set on a spaceship, particularly Star Trek which followed about a decade later.
The extras include deleted scenes which were rightfully deleted. Those scenes edited out, the theatrical release is much tighter, if one can forgive the ugly jump cuts that result.
I highly recommend this science fiction classic, especially for the wonderful remastering.
 BAD DVD - not the movie just the DVD received November 2, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I received the DVD. It would not play on my DVD player. Thinking that the HD DVD would not play on the older DVD player, I purchased an HD DVD player only to find out the DVD was actually BAD - NOT IN PLAY MODE.
Monsters From the Id November 2, 2008
When FORBIDDEN PLANET was released in 1956, science fiction films tended to be low budget black and white affairs that called to mind aliens attacking earth when Americans still recalled vividly GIs storming the beaches at Iwo Jima. Director Fred Wilcox wanted to continue the very recent trend blazed by the slightly earlier THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD which similarly suggested that science fiction could reflect some serious subtexts. Here, Wilcox took the essentials of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST and incorporated Walter Pidgeon in the Prospero role as Dr. Morbius, Anne Francis as Altaira (Miranda in THE TEMPEST), and the invisible monster from the ID as Caliban. Moviegoers were immediately entranced for all the right reasons. Leslie Nielsen as the captain was properly heroic as the one who emerged as the most insightful of his crew despite his failing to register high on the Krell brain booster. It was he who directed his crew to defend their ship against the ID beast. It was he who wound up with the lovely Altaira. And it was he who determined how to defeat a creature that was deemed too impossible to exist. Part of the allure of FORBIDDEN PLANET was the seamless melding of drama with comedy and ultimately with tragedy. The drama lay in how the crew from earth could avoid being picked off one by one as the crew of the Bellerephon had been twenty years earlier. As did Shakespeare in many of his tragedies, FORBIDDEN PLANET has several moments of low comedy (mostly in the intonations of Robby the Robot interacting with the goofy Earl Holliman). And the tragedy came not from the deaths of the crew but from the conversations of Dr. Morbius who sadly bemoaned the deaths of the technologically advanced Krell who in Morbius' words: "Could hardly have known what was killing them." Tying these three disparate elements into a cohesive whole was the Freudian subtext of the monsters from the ID. Morbius refused to grant until the very end that even his beloved Krell could yet retain a semblance of human emotion that might damn them just as thoroughly as it did for Freud's patients. There is a telling scene at the end when Morbius finally realizes the ghastly truth that it was he who was responsible for reviving the ID beast. He faces the beast and denounces it, all the while knowing that he can no more disavow it than he could disavow his own inner demons. As he confronts it, the captain takes out his blaster and points it at Morbius, realizing that the only way to stop the beast was to kill Morbius.
Even after watching FORBIDDEN PLANET numerous times over the decades, I can still eagerly view it with each viewing, much like one of Shakespeare's plays, revealing a new facet to enjoy. The special effects, top notch as they are, are not what I take away from any viewing. What brings me back again and again to the fold is the realization that what is normally forbidden for anyone to make use of is under the right circunstances a license for brutality that can overwhelm the best of anyone us, including even the godlike Krell.
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