Product Description
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Forbidden Planet: 50th Anniversary Edition (Dbl DVD)
(Multi-Title)
A dutiful robot named Robby speaks 188 languages. An underground
lair offers evidence of an advanced civilization. But among
Altair-4's many wonders, none is greater or more deadly than the
human mind. Forbidden Planet is the granddaddy of tomorrow, a
pioneering work whose ideas and style would be reverse-engineered
into many cinematic space voyages to come. Leslie Nielsen plays
the commander who brings his spacecruiser crew to the green-skied
world that's home to Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his daughter
(Anne Francis)...and to a mysterious terror. Featuring sets of
extraordinary scale and the first all-electronic musical
soundscape in film history, Forbidden Planet is in a movie orbit
all its own.
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.com
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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. --.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
( /dp/B000HEWEEY )), 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 homs) 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