Forbidden Planet is arguably the best science fiction movie of the 1950's. In an era where Cold War fears materialized in mutated, giant insects, or alien invaders subverting all that was American, Forbidden Planet worked as all good science fiction does: it examines ourselves. Quite literally, it looked into the materialization of our own inner demons. While most '50s movies are marred by obviously wire strung rockets, rehashed radiation clouds or just plain bad acting, Forbidden Planet continues to view like a top of the line movie, some fourty years later.
The story of Forbidden Planet holds up so well because it is lifted almost straight from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Starring Leslie Nielson, Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis, it tells the tale of a ship from Earth investigating the missing expedition to Altair IV. When they arrive they find that most of the crew had died nearly two decades before with only a scientist and his daughter still alive. The scientist's inner hate for all things foreign to the world begins to leathally manifest through the alien world's advance technology, especially once love blooms between the ship's captain and the scientist's daughter.
The best site for Forbidden Planet info is without a doubt Luca Oleastri's The Unofficial Forbidden Planet Movie Home Page. Rating high on the spiffy-meter, it contains lots of movie goodies and links to all sorts of classic Sci-Fi resources.
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