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I’m going to go ahead and reveal that no, the movie at no point ever explains why it took so damn long to send help. Fortunately it doesn’t end up making any difference. When the C-57D arrives, they’re immediately told to beat feet back to Earth. The fiendishly named Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) is the sole survivor of the doomed science ship Bellerophon and he does not with to be rescued. I’m additionally going to reveal that no, the movie never explains why future people suck so bad at picking out ship names.

Adams insists on landing, and is ominously warned that he will regret this, and also “welcome." When Adams and his men arrive, they find that the good Doctor is not so alone after all. The fashionably postmodern split-level he inhabits was built with the services of a hulking robot named Robby. Robby can speak 187 languages, shoot lasers out the back of his head, create complex objects out of raw matter at will and lift a hundred times his own weight. Evidently, Doctor Morbius built Robby himself, out of whatever was just lying around the planet.

Everyone initially finds this suspicious, but then moves right past it. Ironically, it becomes kind of important later.

Morbius also has a daughter named Alta (Anne Francis) who looks absolutely smashing in a miniskirt. Her first reaction to meeting her first human beings other than her parents is to immediately flirt with them. Adams and Farman spend the rest of the movie competing over her like a pair of stupid frat boys. Except Farman comes on strong, while Adams plays it all cool like he doesn’t care. And bear in mind, this juvenile clash begins literally moments after discovering that the Bellerophon was disintegrated, and its crew was brutally ripped to shreds by an alien hell-beast.

But hey, it’s the future. It’s a fast paced world where women are commodities to be passed around like baseball cards, and there’s just no goddamn time to mourn the dead.

Well, that’s not true. There actually IS an alien hell-beast, but the surface of Altair is littered with graves. First, the Bellerophon crew and then, the thing starts stalking Adams and his men, too. If that weren’t enough, the creature is also invisible, and armed with claws as big as a toddler. They manage to fend it off, buying valuable time. Of course, it will be back, but Morbius and his daughter are the only ones the beast seems to ignore.

Also, in what is surely a completely unrelated turn of events, Dr. Morbius has discovered a fantastic secret in the bowels of Altair that has the potential to change the course of human history. There’s quite a bit going on here, with Alta running around in the middle of it, constantly changing out of one unbelievably sexy dress into another. But while my description probably sounds campy, Forbidden Planet actually takes itself relatively seriously.

There’s a lot of reasonable sounding technobabble and high minded talk about pure energy and the ultimate evolution of species. It’s said that this film served as inspiration for Star Trek, and once you know that, it’s pretty obvious. This is a cerebral film that manages to spend almost a full half of its runtime on exposition and character development without the story ever running out of steam. Despite being a little on the horny side, Adams seems like a curious and capable commander who really likes his men. And his men seem like a rowdy but capable bunch who really like him, too.

It’s actually pretty entertaining watching a bunch of hyper-fit professional soldiers who haven’t seen a girl for a year land on an alien planet where they happen to meet a twenty year old swimsuit model who’s never met a man before. Believe it or not, the script juggles all of this well enough to keep everything light and tight, so to speak. Before long, it seems perfectly reasonable to continue trying to get laid - even after your nuclear powered laser cannons fail to destroy the aforementioned hell-beast that is picking off your men one at a time.

Really, there’s something for just about everyone in this movie. It’s filled with really smart, progressive sci-fi elements, but also boasts a satisfying balance of horror and humor. And the sets and special effects deserve particular mention for still looking so sharp. There are some ingenious images late in the film of some vast interior spaces, comprised of the most eerily convincing combination of miniature, matte painting, animation and composite photography that I think I’ve ever seen.

And yet there’s also two grown men trying to cockblock each other over a woman they just met while their friends are dying around them. So, the kids today will probably like that.

Bottom line, I love this movie. It’s fun, fascinating, and it’s so well made that it doesn’t look old so much as it looks genuinely alien.

I feel inspired again. I might have to dust off that Calamari Syndicate graphic novel.

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