Tomorrowsday #1: Mr. Id


I now intend to blog about all of them.











Check out the two end ones.












19 Responses to “Tomorrowsday #1: Mr. Id”

  1. Krell-inspired noises are terribly important to a lot of synthesizer people, there are well over 5000 videos of people doing their own versions on youtube. It’s sort of like a Smoke On The Water for the bleep skronk fart community.

    I think the tiger may have been attacking out of disgust for Altaira’s newfound sartorial conservatism.

  2. Simon Fraser Says:

    This is certainly the high water mark of sci fi movies before the actual space program stared influencing the esthetics. All that wonderful Chesley Bonestel influenced romantic Technicolor, which Star Trek gamely held on to , was utterly annihilated by Kubrickian austerity.

  3. Eastmancolor!

    Forbidden Planet’s Jetsons cleanness is still present in 2001, in a different form. It’s Star Wars that seems to add grunge to space. As a post-Nam film, it seems like the first space movie not to believe in perfectibility thru tech.

  4. “The Invisible Boy” creeped me out. Not for the sci fi elements per se, but for the scene where the title character spies on his parents about to get intimate (and gives himself away by giggling).

    Wondering if anybody involved in FB’s groundbreaking wonders got ticked off when effect shots, “space music”, costumes, and Robby ended up in B movies and television. Robby’s resume included “Twilight Zone” (with a cheap replacement head), “Lost in Space”, and “The Red Skelton Show” (in a comedy sketch, speaking with the Lost in Space robot’s voice). I’ve seen a lot of toy Robbys over the years; not sure if any of them were licensed.

  5. There’s one authentic Robby, and he’s had a splendid long career. I do think of him as an actor, and am always happy to see him.

    Bebe Barron did a late interview and was indeed a bit peeved that her music was reused without credit or payment. Philosophical about it, but not best pleased.

  6. I believe that Forbidden Planet is the movie that killed science fiction as a subject of big budgeted movies for a couple of decades. If this film had been a success there may have been more “adult” science fiction movies with A level actors and directors, in the same way as the 1950s saw the emergence of the “adult” western.
    You pointed out how improved this film would have been with a better actor in the role of Morbius. Charles Laughton, William Powell, or maybe Clifton Webb, in the role, could have made this movie a sensation. Also, moving Leslie Nielsen to the second in command
    role and putting in either a Dana Andrews, Glenn Ford, Richard Witmark or Rock Hudson as the commander, would have added much to this movie’s appeal. Instead the production, under Dore Schary, mainly spent money on the effects believing that would be enough to bring viewers in. But, no matter how excellent the effects were, without an A list actor or two to sell the movie to audiences not that familiar with the genre, the effects alone proved inadequate to draw enough ticket buyers to pay off the expense of the production.
    The result was that movie production heads, who never really like fantasy and SF subjects for films in the first place, believed that there were only so many people who will come to this type of movie, no matter how much you spend on it. After this, for the next decades, SF movies were always made by independent producers, on limited budgets, with actors of a second level status, and only distributed by the majors. I think that only the Japanese studios , and for a short time the Italian film industry, that regularly produced major science fiction films. The American studio heads would not back this type of film until after 1977 and the success of Star Wars, and even then reluctantly.

  7. Well, though not a blockbuster, the film made 2.765 million USD against a budget of 1.968 million USD. And you did get a few movies like The Time Machine afterwards.

  8. chris schneider Says:

    Only just finished reading this. (Bravo, David!) As far as Altaira is concerned … I always connected her with the ’30s Dorothy Lamour kind of “innocent” maiden, the kind who shows off her cleavage yet needs an American male to teach her how to kiss. And my assumption was that, at some unarticulated level hinted at by Age-of-Freud scribes, the Id Monster represented the Morbius libido compelling itself in directions it shouldn’t oughta go.

    But I wasn’t thinking about that when I was a youthful fan. Back then, I was thinking that FORBIDDEN PLANET seemed to be mentioned whenever people talked about THIS ISLAND EARTH … and I kinda preferred THIS ISLAND EARTH.

  9. TIE has a longer wait before you get the good stuff. And it has (even) less interesting humans. I believe I’m for FP, and always have been. But it has been a while since I saw a version of TIE that wasn’t Mystery Science Theater 3000’s.

  10. And yes, Altaira is a space sarong girl, and daddy’s “protectiveness” may be responsible for some of his id-iocy. The monster was dormant until the starship arrived…

  11. Okay, there was some profit on FP, but it doesn’t seem to have been enough to generate the immediate production of any more major science fiction, interplanetary travel themed movies from MGM or any other studio. The Time Machine was made four years later by independent producers, George Pal and Galaxy Productions, and distributed by MGM. And it is was made more due to the success of Around The World in 80 Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. With some Cold War warnings thrown in.
    My basic criticism of Forbidden Planet is that the production focused too much on the appearance of the movie and not the substance. Taking the extra effort to get the effects right, but only settling on a mediocre cast and script. Looking at it as more of an experiment in movie effects than as a full on dramatic film. I think that no matter how fancy movie effects get, it still gets down to who is in the film and what are they doing. In Wim Wenders 1982 film The State of Things, the film director in the movie says that his movies need to be aware of the space between the characters. It’s the people in the film that hold an audience’s attention after they’ve gotten over the visual impact of the new movie effects.
    After reading your article on Shadow in the Sky, Ralph Meeker would have been a much better choice to play the ship’s captain in FP.

  12. Agree there. Of course he’d be a great wolfish second-in-command too.

    Meeker for president!

    Still, I think the script is fine, the direction more than decent. And though Doc Ostrow isn’t a colourful character, he’s really nice.

  13. chris schneider Says:

    Afternote: my reaction to THIS ISLAND EARTH is largely that of my early years. I’ve seen portions of it, sans commentary, on tv recently and my attention always wanders. Raymond Durgnat had good things to say about it, in any case. My latest apercu is that it’s a film about bulges — Faith Domergue’s blouse and Jeff Morrow’s forehead.

  14. Matthew Clarke said: “After this, for the next decades, SF movies were always made by independent producers, on limited budgets, with actors of a second level status, and only distributed by the majors.”

    That’s not quite true. The Bond series had elements of sf, especially You Only Live Twice, as did Our Man Flint, In Like Flint and even the Matt Helm films. Fantastic Voyage was a big-budget production from Fox. There came a resurgence of major sf films from the studios beginning in the late ’60s through the mid-’70s, all preceding Star Wars. 2001, Planet of the Apes and its sequels, Marooned, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, The Terminal Man, Silent Running, Rollerball, Logan’s Run and post-apocalyptic dramas like Soylent Green and The Omega Man.

  15. Originally, I believe Morbius’ monster from the id was to become briefly visible as it killed him, which is why there’s that reaction shot of Leslie Nielson averting Ann Francis’ eyes from the scene.

    The glaring plot hole is the presence of the conveniently located self-destruct switch in the Krell lab that destroys the planet. Why did they put it there?.

  16. An excess of playful spirit?

  17. I’m inclined to discount Bond: the space piracy is on a par with Goldfinger’s laser and in keeping with the fantasy of Bond wearing his tuxedo under his wetsuit. The audience is supposed to think of this stuff as being possible in a silly version of the modern world, rather than being an extrapolation. But the other examples certainly stand.

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