At last, I'm going to see my favorite 1950's science fiction movie on the big screen.

[NNadir]

Forbidden Planet

"Monsters...monsters from the id."

In a way it was kind of prescient, a little different inasmuch as the monsters from the id are actually monsters from the internet.

I first saw it, as a child, on my parents small screen black and white TV. I've watched on DVDs a few times, but never in the theater.

I can't wait.

"Monsters from the id..."

One can imagine that metaphorically at least, the orange pedophile vandalizing the White House and Washington beyond is a monster from the id.

[wcmagumba]

1. Yup, that's the one. Along with "The Day the Earth Stood Still"...my top two...big screen yippee!

"Klaatu barada nikto" dude...

Edit: #three "The Thing from Another World"

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow, my dear NNadir! Enjoy the showing!

Monsters from the id . . .

[Permanut]

3. A classic for sure..

Part of my permanent collection.

The collection is not all classics though. I also have Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Creeping Terror.

[JoseBalow]

9. Plan 9 and Creeping Terror most certainly qualify as classics

I'll watch either whenever the opportunity presents.

[The Roux Comes First]

4. I Assume You Will Grace Us with a Full-on 3D Review! Please!

[eppur_se_muova]

5. College campus movie ? Or art-theater movie house ?

I saw it decades ago at MIT's SF Marathon. Preserves a lot of attitudes from the 50's, which don't wear well on viewing years later. It was on TNT (IIRC) a few weeks ago and I couldn't finish watching it.

When the Earth Stood Still, on the other hand, holds up pretty well (except for the usual dollop of generic "spiritual" claptrap to keep the peasants from rebelling against the idea that resurrection might be just a question of sufficiently advanced technology). Haven't seen the CGI-laden "remake" and I never will. It's not a special-effects movie, doesn't deserve being burdened with modern special effects "just because we couldn't do that back then, but we can't now".

(I'm not turning into a curmudgeon; I've enrolled in the lifetime plan.)

[NNadir]

6. It's at the Princeton Garden Theater, a non profit theater acquired from an old "for profit" theater.

My wife and I are members; the theater is a treasure. The University owns the theater and leases it to the non-profit organization that runs several old theaters in the region, basically as art houses, with some mainstream stuff as well.

You are right about 1950's attitudes in Forbidden Planet; in particular, the crew behaves like a caricature of a World War II Navy movie, with a weak dash of South Pacific thrown in.

My father was a navy veteran of the Second World War, so for me, if not for everyone, it has a certain nostalgic value, particularly as comic relief.

I grew up around that stuff. I think my father's years in the Navy were, despite the danger, magic to him; it took him out of Brooklyn and into the world.

The movie itself is, of course, a loose reworking of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with a dash of Sophocles Oedipus Rex thrown in.

It raised however, perhaps seeming crude for our overly and smugly sophisticated times, a question of the wisdom of technologies integrating our minds and our mind mimicing machines, and in that sense is, again, to use the word again, prescient, reminding us that humanity crawled out the mud of ancient seas.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Sounds like a cool set-up! Reminds of the old art theater in downtown Baltimore -- the Charles (or "The Chuck").

It's not only still going strong, it's expanded enormously ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Theatre

I saw "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" there, thanks to a couple of friends (I had no car at the time). Back then, they usually showed a different picture every night. Fans had to follow the schedule closely !

[NNadir]

12. Looks interesting, but I never go to Baltimore. The Charles was founded in 1939, the Princeton Garden in 1920.

I learned from its Wikipedia page that it has been voted the best theater in New Jersey, a vote with which I concur. It's not the flash; it's the taste.

It's one of the many wonderful things about living in the Princeton area.

[BeneteauBum]

7. Fellow sci-fi enthusiast

I understand where you’re coming from……

Peace ☮️

[edbermac]

10. Surely you can't be serious?

[10 Turtle Day]

11. Stop calling me Shirley!

[some_of_us_are_sane]

13. Wonderful, CREATIVE ending sentence!

"One can imagine that metaphorically at least, the orange pedophile vandalizing the White House and Washington beyond is a monster from the id."

BRAVO!!! LOL!!!

[LogDog75]

14. Forbidden Planet was on TMC the other day

Not a bad movie, IMO, but not the best of the 50s scifi genre. What I liked about the movie is you had a number of actors who became stars or well-known lie Leslie Nelson (Airplane and The Naked Gun), Anne Frances (Honey West), Jack Kelly (Maverick), Earl Holliman (Police Woman), Richard Anderson (The Six Million Dollar Man), and James Drury (The Virginian). Walter Pidgeon was the established star of the movie.

The one 50's scifi movie I'd like to see on the big screen is The Thing From Another World. Great movie with a great cast. Watching how the characters interacted with the each other tells me the cast really worked together well. Margaret Sheridan, the female lead, did a great job. She wasn't the "/damsel in distress" but her character held her own against the male dominate characters.

[NNadir]

15. I'm not sure the acting is all that great in Forbidden Planet - it's passable for sure - but that's not why I always...

...rated it well above all other science fiction movies of that era.

It really wasn't the special effects either, although for the time, as I understand it, they were considered quite ground breaking, particularly with respect to Robby the Robot.

What makes me value it is the Faustian aspect, the belief that intellectual and technological prowess can lead to our worst instincts going out of control.

I credit that the movie has a Shakespearean "The Tempest" theme, albeit modified, and I detect some Oedipus Rex as well, since Morbius kills his wife with his subconscious but not his daughter, but what really is the bottom line is Faust.

My favorite excerpt from Goethe's Faust, translated using my very bad German:

Du flehst, eratmend mich zu schauen,
Meine Stimme zu hören, mein Antlitz zu sehn;
Mich neigt dein mächtig Seelenflehn,
Da bin ich!- Welch erbärmlich Grauen
Faßt Übermenschen dich! Wo ist der Seele Ruf?
Wo ist die Brust, die eine Welt in sich erschuf
Und trug und hegte, die mit Freudebeben
Erschwoll, sich uns, den Geistern, gleich zu heben?
Wo bist du, Faust, des Stimme mir erklang,
Der sich an mich mit allen Kräften drang?
Bist du es, der, von meinem Hauch umwittert,
In allen Lebenslagen zittert,
Ein furchtsam weggekrümmter Wurm?

My translation:

You entreated me to show myself
To hear my voice, to see my face,
Your powerful soulful prayers bent me.
Here I am! What wretched dread
Seizes you, you superman! Where is the soul's call?
Where is the the breast in which a world itself was made.
Bore and nurtured, swollen with waves of ecstasy to become like us, a spirit,
Where are you Faust, whose voice rang out to me,
Pressing me with all that power?
Is it you, brushed by my breath,
So situated in this life, who trembles,
A fearful writhing worm?

For me the movie, out of the 1950s, anticipated what we now see before us, a horror where we lose control of our own power, in such a way that our power fills us with terrible and dangerous fears that we cannot control.

I read too much into it perhaps, but these are the feelings the movie evoked, now more than ever. I can't wait to see it again, full sized this time.

[electric_blue68]

16. Been meaning to comment. In a theater? That's exciting!....

There are bits that wear thin, but mostly it's still quite good. Of course, the story is interesting.

But to see the Krell stuctures.... on the big screen?! Ooooo!

One of my favorites is when they're walking on a big pathway that has several more from doorways leading by 90 degrees into it, but on the right side are spherical structures with energy emanating from them!
.
Then the famous scene where they're walking on a bridge pathway with gigantic machine parts sliding up, and down the square shaftway!
In the Sc-Fi series Babylon 5 they do a visual homage to that scene!
.
I saw it in black & white first, and decades later n color.

Hope you had a great viewng!

[NNadir]

17. It was quite amazing. Believe it or not, the theater was close to sold out. I've never seen it quite so full.

The Princeton Garden Theater is basically an art house. Most shows are lucky to have 20 or 30 people. I'd estimate there were 250 people.

[electric_blue68]

18. Wow, how fun! Glad they had a big turn out.