Rating: 
Summary: Beauty, The Beast, And Robby The Robot too!
Review: Commander J. J. Adams (Leslie Nielson) leads a crew of deep space explorers on a mission to Altair 4, to check on a colony there. Altair 4 is a psychedelic planet with a green sky. Upon arrival, Adams and company find only one man named Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis- one of the sexiest women in ANY galaxy) alive. Morbius explains that the others were killed by some strange, unseen force. Morbius is a solemn, mysterious sort of guy himself, and it's apparent that he's not telling the whole truth. He's built a virtual paradise in the middle of a wasteland, complete with a forest, deer, and a tiger. Morbius also has a robot named Robby, who does all of the menial labor around the stellar estate. Adams and his men soon learn that all is not well on Altair 4. An unstoppable, invisible entity is unleashed, tearing crewmembers to pieces, while absorbing their laser blasts into it's incredible mass. Adams and his first mate learn that Morbius has tapped into a vast computer network (about the size of Cleveland), left behind by a now extinct race of super-beings called "the Krell". Somehow, using this network, Morbius can release his "id" to do his insane bidding. Will anyone be going back to earth at all? Can the invisible horror be defeated? Will Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis live on to star together again in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand? Watch and see. Highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: The one that started it all!
Review: Still the quintessential grand daddy of most of today's sci-fi features, Forbidden Planet has it all!
The DVD quality is great although I would have liked a few of the other 187 languages and sub-tongues Robby alludes to offered on the disk besides colloquial English and French.
However if you look at a classic Sci-Fi T.V series like the original Star Trek you can see where Jean Roddenberry might have gotten some of his inspiration.
The Earth cruiser is a disk, used Hyper Drive (Warp Drive), has a chief engineer that wears a suspiciously similar earpiece to the one Spock wore to listen to radio transmissions. The captain has an executive officer, and a doctor on board ala number one and Dr. McCoy, the list of similarities with Trek goes on and on.
My suggestion is to watch the wide screen version, on the opposite side of the disk, turn off the lights and watch it on a large screen if you can. It is well worth it!
The actors are great; Walter Pidgeon offers a great performance as Dr. Morbius. Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen are great together and the Cinemascope does the rest.
This one's a must for the collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic Sci-Fi
Review: Walter Pidgeon stars in this 1950's sci-fi movie in which a ship is sent to investigate life on other planets & finds a planet that was once inhabited by the Krell. How did the race die? Watch & find out. Animation done by Disney.
Rating:
Summary: One of the top SF films ever made
Review: Brilliant, big-studio epic. One of the very best SF films ever made. WATCH THE LETTERBOX VERSION! Original, expansive, truly great stuff. Big-name actors, incredible special effects, great music, an engaging story -- this is a movie that you will watch over and over again, it's strong from start to finish.
Rating:
Summary: In a class all by itself!
Review: Forbidden Planet left me... speechless. It's difficult to put into words. If you like spcience fiction, Leslie Neilsen, or being shocked into silence, this is a must.
Rating: 
Summary: Love it, but...
Review: I love this movie. It's classic science-fiction. But the DVD transfer leaves some to be desired. The picture often has bits of fuzz and other debris that you just wouldn't expect with a DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Still Totally Enjoyable
Review: Forbidden Planet is still fresh and entertaining after all these years. It was so well done that whatever may seem dated is very charming. The color is fantastic.
The humor still holds up, and aside from a slightly silly looking space ship, the special effects were great.
This movie is a classic worthy of any collector of great movies, shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Definitively to watch if you love bad movies.
Review: Leslie Nielsen as the captain of intrepid purebred horny spacemen ? Robbie the Robot ? A long-lost civilization ? This romp to planet Altair, besieged by an unknown evil force, is unbelievably hilarious for its pulp and sixties sensibility. The movie always threatens to morph into a weird episode of some sixties sitcom with a name like "Leave it to Beaver" in outer space. Bonus points for having a story that actually makes sense and manages to be interesting, despite the movie being hilarious. Definitively to watch if you love bad movies.
Rating:
Summary: Not just a classic sci-fi film -- a classic film, period.
Review: Not everything is perfect, of course. Here are some pros and cons:
Good: The faster-than-light travel. Contrast this with another good sci-fi film, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" -- both made in the 50's, but only FP's writers had any clue as to interplanetary distances and the speeds required to cross them. Also, the "DC" (deceleration) procedure was good, complete with "DC stations" and post-DC physical effects on the crew that were treated matter-of-factly rather than explained to the movie viewer. Quite good.
Bad: First moon landing in the "last decade of the 21st Century"? They missed that one by 130 years.
Very good: Most of the special effects.
Not so good: Some of the Disney-supplied cartoon effects (not that I'm really complaining; they weren't all that bad, and it was the 50's after all).
Great: Morbius' house and surrounding grounds.
Not so great: The caps that the commander and lieutenant wore briefly with their short-sleeve shirts.
Great: Anne Francis as Altaira (a babe, no matter what star system you're in)
Great: Robby the robot
Not so great: Earl Holliman's ship's cook character. A little bit went a long way.
Great: The underground Krell complex (more good f/x)
Good: the electronic music score
Great: Walter Pidgeon's performance as Morbius
Good-but-not-great: Leslie Nielsen's performance as the commander of C57D.
Good: C57D; remember, this was the same time most sci-fi was still using the finned rocket ship.
Not good: the fact that the DVD is not letter-boxed. It would have been better to see the whole screen.
And the list goes on, of course, but you can add your own after you see this excellent movie.
Rating:
Summary: Fun = Freud, Shakespeare, and Space
Review: As is well known, this is a Sci-fi film loosely based on Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST meeting Freud's theories of the Id. But this would count for nothing if the film weren't so extremely well done in other ways. Although not working with an especially large budget, the makers of the film combined a good story with amazingly innovative set design and clever special effects to produce what is possibly the most satisfying film set in outer space film made during the 1950s. Shot entirely on a soundstage, the exterior shots of the planet manage to avoid looking at all hokey, and the house in which Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira live, despite looking pure 1950s, manages to somehow seem right at home. The shots of the interior of the former inhabitants' magnificent structures are some of the best model shots in film history. Even with today's special effects and CGI scripting, they are impressive. And Robby the Robot has to go down as one of the great screen robots of all time. Also among the all time greats, the invisible but nonetheless detectable "monster from the ID" is one of the most satisfying monsters one could imagine. Almost all movie monsters from the fifties disappoint, at seem to some degree a bit silly, but not this one. Part of the reason the movie works so well is the cast, which is a cut above average for a fifties Sci-fi flick. Leslie Nielsen was thirty years away from his debut as a comedian, and plays what was his usual character for the first half of his film career: a solid if a bit too serious lead. Walter Pidgeon turns in the strongest performance in the film, as the brilliant Dr. Morbius. His voice alone makes many of the key scenes in the film work beautifully. Anne Francis is simply beautiful, and it doesn't take much imagination the effect she would have on a ship full of men who haven't seen a woman in several months. She manages to be incredibly sexy and completely innocent as successfully as any actress I have ever seen. One can overstress the Shakespeare and Freud connection, but this film does get my vote for the best use of psychology ever made in a Sci-fi film. It along with the extreme care given to every aspect of this film make it to this day one of the most durable Sci-fi films ever made.
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