Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet (1956) 

Notable cast/crew: Walter Pidgeon as Dr Morbius.  Anne Francis as Altaira Morbius.  Leslie Nielsen as Commander Adams.  Warren Stevens as Lt "Doc" Ostrow.  Richard Anderson as Chief Quinn.  Earl Holliman as Cook.  Robby the Robot as Himself.  James Best as Crewman (uncredited).

Running time: 98 minutes

Director: Fred M Wilcox

Plot: The crew of the C-57D goes in search of the missing expedition from the Bellerophon and find a mystery involving a lost, ancient race

Verdict: Loosely based on The Tempest, Forbidden Planet is a landmark sci fi movie that heavily influenced movies and television shows for decades.  It was the first film with an all-electronic score.  It also was the first film depicting faster-than-light travel and the first to take place entirely on another world in interstellar space.

How'd you project her without an R2 unit?

The look of the film is outstanding mixing matte paintings, effects, and sound stage shots.  You can tell that Star Trek was heavily influenced by this from the look of the planets (in space and on the ground) to the look of the ship's interior, even down to the relationship between the commander, executive officer, and doctor (think Kirk, Spock, McCoy).  In fact, Warren Stevens even guest starred on Star Trek.

The plot is pretty standard sci fi, and it would have fit right in as an episode of Star Trek.  Walter Pidgeon is excellent as the dark, mysterious Dr Morbius.  Interestingly, he's not a villain, though you keep expecting him to be.  Anne Francis is fine as Altaira, although she's mainly there to show off her "how's she keeping covered up in that dress?" outfits.  Leslie Nielsen had not yet become a comedian and is in full leading man mode.  The film is sprinkled with several character actors who would go on to greater notoriety later: Warren Stevens, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman on The Six Million Dollar Man), Earl Holliman.

A roaring fire, a beautiful girl, all we need now are cocktails and smooth jazz!

I can't convey how surprising it is to see how good the film still looks for a movie made in the mid-50s.  This isn't a low-budget popcorn flick like so much sci fi was in that decade.  It was a big budget film that was wildly successful.  Part of it's popularity goes to Robby the Robot who was used in later films and TV appearances.  Some of the sets were recycled for use in The Twilight Zone.  It would be another decade before Lost in Space re-introduced a companion/servant robot.  Very much ahead of its time, it stands out because so few other sci fi films were made with this level of care.  It's easily one of my favorite sci fi movies.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Galaxy Quest

Dark City

Dark City (1998) 

Notable cast/crew: Rufus Sewell as John Murdoch.  William Hurt as Inspector Frank Bumstead.  Kiefer Sutherland as Dr Daniel P Schreber.  Jennifer Connelly as Emma Murdoch.  Richard O'Brien as Mr Hand.  Ian Richardson as Mr Book.

Running time: 111 minutes

Director: Alex Proyas

Plot: Aliens experiment on humans to determine what constitutes the soul

Verdict: Not a documentary on life in Cleveland, Dark City was a box office flop due to problems marketing it and to problems with the plot.  That Titanic was still dominating the box office didn't help.  This is about as far in the other direction as you can go.  It is an influential movie, though, as the concept of false, manipulated realities was rehashed in later films like The Thirteenth Floor and The Matrix (which even borrowed some of its sets).

The film begins looking like a noirish murder mystery, but it quickly becomes apparent there's more going on than meets the eye.  The twist comes before the halfway point in the film where we discover the city is really part of an alien experiment on humans where the city and people are changed each night to observe human reactions to situations so that the aliens can determine the nature of the human soul.  Why they need to know this, how they got these humans, and what their purpose for doing this is, are never explained, to the film's detriment on repeat viewings.  The movie essentially relies on the plot twist plus stylish setting to drive the film.  If you don't like the twist, the movie quickly falls apart, especially with the second twist near the end of the film.

We can put the pool right here next to the solarium.

The cast is mainly a handful of good actors, but they're given little to do besides push the film to its twists.  The problem being that once the twist is revealed there's no real resolution.  The aliens are defeated, but there's no explanation of where the humans go from here.  How'd they get there?  How will they get home?  How are they going to figure out who they originally were?  Do they even care about any of that?  This is a fairly shallow movie that has a great premise, but doesn't deliver on later viewings when you know what's coming.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Forbidden Planet

Capricorn One

Capricorn One (1977) 

Notable cast/crew: Elliott Gould as Robert Caulfield.  James Brolin as Charles Brubaker.  Brenda Vaccaro as Kay Brubaker.  Sam Waterston as Peter Willis.  O J Simpson as John Walker.  Hal Holbrook as Dr James Kelloway.  Karen Black as Judy Drinkwater.  Telly Savalas as Albain.  David Huddleston as Hollis Peaker.  David Doyle as Walter Loughlin.  Original music by Jerry Goldsmith.

Running time: 123 minutes

Director: Peter Hyams

Plot: NASA is in danger of losing funding so it fakes a Mars landing, but the astronauts involved realize they're expendable and try to escape.

Verdict: This is something of a forgotten classic of the conspiracy genre.  It featured a tremendous cast with numerous Academy Award nominees.  While a bit thin on characterization, it makes up for it in riveting plot.  This was the most successful independent film of 1977 for good reason.  Right from the outset, the bold beats of Jerry Goldsmith's score (which he would pay homage to in his Star Trek film work) set the mood that something is off.

Brolin is easily the best of the astronauts as the other two are given very little to work with.  He and Holbrook carry the first half of the film.  The latter half is mostly Gould with very strong cameos from Doyle and Savalas.  None of the supporting cast are bad, in fact, they all stand out in their brief moments, but aside from maybe Vaccaro, they are peripheral to the rest of the story.

I love the taste of rattlesnake in the morning

The conspiracy aspect is very much of a piece from the late 70s, post-Watergate.  The idea of a faked Mars landing is not that far-fetched, and how it is handled here is a little too plausible given the distrust in government we see today.  It's a little unclear as to how much time elapses from the time the astronauts go on the run, and there is some ambiguity as to whether the plan was always to kill them or if the other two were even actually killed (likely, given how they tried to kill Brubaker on the plane).  That ambiguity feeds into the sense of unease and paranoia and works to the film's advantage.

The stunt work is terrific from Gould's out of control car to the helicopter/airplane chase.  For an independent film, there were no corners cut.  They even wrangled actual equipment from NASA for the Martian soundstage scenes.

They don't make action-packed conspiracy films like this with a big name cast any more.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Dark City

Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1982) 

Notable cast/crew: Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard.  Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty.  Sean Young as Rachael.  Edward James Olmos as Gaff.  M Emmet Walsh as Bryant.  Daryl Hannah as Pris.  William Sanderson as J F Sebastian.  Brion James as Leon Kowalski.  Joanna Cassidy as Zhora.  Soundtrack by Vangelis.

Running time: 117 minutes

Director: Ridley Scott

Plot: Deckard, a blade runner, is assigned to track down and retire a group of rogue replicants.

Verdict: While not a commercial success on release, Blade Runner has become one of the more influential movies of the last 30 years.  The film is fairly straightforward in its plot, but it's the imagery and the philosophical questions it poses that have led to its longevity in the public mind.  Ridley Scott was coming off Alien, and Harrison Ford was in the midst of his highest notoriety having been Han Solo and Indiana Jones shortly before this.  Sean Young hadn't gone crazy yet, and Vangelis had just won an Oscar for his work in Chariots of Fire.

The movie is an adaptation of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  There are a number of differences between the book and the movie, but the movie did a good job of capturing the essence of what the book was about which led Dick to comment that he felt the movie surpassed the book in taking things further than he had in the questions it posed.  This movie led to a number of other of his books being adapted to film (Total Recall, Minority Report, etc).

The visual depiction of the gritty dystopia of the film is one of its lasting influences seen in other films (Dark City and The Fifth Element, for example) and still influences sci fi depictions today.  SyFy's The Expanse borrows heavily from the look of Blade Runner and even some of it's themes.

Grandma, what big eyes you have!

As it's a by the numbers noir set-up, there isn't much to the characters aside from Hauer's Roy Batty who questions why he cannot become human when his designer intended him to be "more human than human" (which became the title of a well known White Zombie song).  Accordingly, there isn't a lot to the performances.  No one is bad, but very little rises above average.  It doesn't help that Batty goes batty at the end removing any sympathy one might have had for what was a robot slave revolting against its masters.

The book does a better job of explaining the characters' motivations as well as the world the story takes place in.  There are repeated references to the animals shown being synthetic machines, but only in the book is it explained that wildlife was virtually wiped out by a nuclear holocaust.  The significance of having a real pet, life versus facsimile, and even Rachael's relation to Deckard are better explained in the book.

The movie suffers a bit from the chaos behind the scenes.  There were constant rewrites while shooting, and the studio interfered to make changes after Scott had finished filming.  The end result is that there are seven different versions of the film.  Ironically, as the characters in the film question what is the essence of humanity, one can question what is the essence of Blade Runner?  Which is the real film and which the replicant?

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Capricorn One

The Black Hole

The Black Hole (1979) 

Notable cast/crew: Maximilian Schell as Dr Hans Reinhardt.  Anthony Perkins as Dr Alex Durant.  Robert Forster as Captain Dan Holland.  Joseph Bottoms as Lieutenant Charles Pizer.  Yvette Mimieux as Dr Kate McCrae.  Ernest Borgnine as Harry Booth.  Roddy McDowall as V.I.N.CENT.  Slim Pickens as B.O.B.

Running time: 98 minutes

Director: Gary Nelson

Plot: The crew of the USS Palomino encounter a massive black hole and find a derelict, lost ship, the USS Cygnus, somehow stationary just outside the black hole's event horizon.  The Palomino docks with the Cygnus to find the ship is still active and controlled by a mad genius who intends to enter the black hole, believing there is something beyond on the other side.

Verdict: This film has largely been forgotten, but it was a big budget film for its time (the most expensive movie Disney had made to that point).  The special effects are still impressive for the time, although slightly less so than Star Wars or Alien.  They were all done in-house at Disney and not farmed out to an effects studio (the last movie made this way).  It was the first Disney film to garner a PG rating due to a few scenes containing mild swearing and Perkins' violent death.

This was one of the last movies to be made with an overture, and it hints at Disney intending this movie to be taken more seriously than normal Disney fare.  The movie is only 98 minutes long, though, so the 2:30 overture comes off a bit pretentious.  However, the score is fantastic and one the best things about the film.  It sets the mood that this is something ominous and that doom will come to the Palomino crew.  It was the first digitally recorded soundtrack.

The biggest problem is this film can never figure out what it wants to be.  The first third has a very 2001 or Space:1999 feel (some of the ship designs clearly were influenced by them).  This encompasses the discovery and investigation of the Cygnus.  Once Reinhardt is introduced, the middle third of the film is drawn from much older literary works like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Moby-Dick, or The Sea-Wolf.  It's here we find the madman is intent upon entering the black hole, and he has murdered most of his crew by turning them into cyborg-automatons.  The final third incorporates elements derived from Star Wars, The Poseidon Adventure, and A Descent into the Maelstrom.  The final sequence clearly draws from 2001 and tries to add on a suggestion of Heaven and Hell.  Up until that final sequence, the film largely works as a dark, action drama, but the brief scenes of Reinhardt entombed inside Maximilian overlooking what appears to be Hell followed by what appears to be an angelic figure in a cathedral of white light are so open-ended and subjective that they invite confusion more than provide resolution to the story. 

They even get Sunday Ticket up here!

This is where the film clearly intends to be more than it ultimately is which results in a feeling that it failed to reach that goal.  Although paced well for most of the movie, it's too much for a film that has spent 95 minutes slowly building from sci fi horror to an adventurous escape from a madman to a disaster flick to suddenly leap into the metaphysical and suggest something more beyond what has been discussed.  There are multiple references throughout the film linking the black hole to hellish imagery: Dante's Inferno, the devil, the reds and blacks used in the color scheme of the robots and imprisoned crew.  There has been little discussion, though, to set up that final metaphysical leap, and we are left to only speculate what it means.  The Palomino survivors apparently make it through the black hole and emerge from a white hole approaching a planet while Reinhardt is trapped in Hell inside the black hole.  It is an interesting ending but not a satisfying one.  The movie might have worked better with an ending closer to the works it borrowed from with a few survivors and no metaphysical imagery, or it may have been better to explore what lay on the other side in more detail.  The brevity of the ending detracts from it and leaves the viewer looking for something more from the film.

Anthony Perkins is too stiff, displaying none of the easy charm from his role in Psycho, although there is a nice homage to that film when he turns the "robot" around in the chair and pulls off the mask to reveal the human corpse trapped inside.  Schell is excellent as Reinhardt in the same vein as James Mason as Nemo in 20,000 Leagues or Walter Pidgeon as Dr Morbius in Forbidden Planet.  The rest of the cast is solid but unremarkable.

Ultimately, the film tries to be too many things and winds up falling short of all them.  That said, it's still an entertaining film and worth seeing.  There are wonderful effects and stylish imagery that show the care and effort put into it.  It definitely doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Blade Runner