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 This is the 1991 video release commemorating the 35th anniversary of the movie.
It's digitally transferred and is a "deluxe remastered edition." In the year
2257 on the planet Altair-IV, Professor Morbius, "a fugitive superscientist,"
lives with his daughter Altaira, and Robby the Robot. Altaira is described as
a "bewitching innocent" while Robby is described as "an endearing machine."
When Commander Adams arrives from Earth this causes "a spine-chilling,
flamboyant adventure fantasy with romance, humor, and suspense, which speeds to a fiery
climax." 1956, 99 minutes, VHS
Well, as most of you may know this is supposed to be the granddaddy of 1950s
science-fiction films. I doubt that that is really the highest of compliments
when your main competition is stuff like The Day The Earth Stood Still and most of the movies of that period are just out and out garbage like Red Planet Mars and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. However, with the exception of a somewhat, shall we say "uneven" performance
by leading man Leslie Neilsen, the movie is actually a very good one. The plot
is supposedly based on The Tempest, a work written by William Shakespeare. If
you are reading this, you're probably most familiar with Billy Shakes from his
work in Hollywood, scripting such hit movies as Romeo Must Die with Jet Li.
Now, you and I know from that movie, that Bill can work kung fu fights into his
stories and it will be clear from this movie that he is equally adept at
working in flying saucers, spacemen in grody uniforms, and giant robots into
his stories. The movie begins with Leslie Neilsen as Commander Adams, the
skipper aboard a starship from the United Federation of Planets or something.
He is leading a crew of "competitively selected" and highly intelligent men to
the distant planet Altair-IV. Their 99 minute mission is to investigate what
happened to a spaceship full of busy bodies that disappeared there something
like 20 years ago. Wow, you really have to be impressed with their rescue
response time in this case. Once near the planet, Adams and his crew pick up a
transmission from a man identifying himself as Dr. Morbius. Morbius was a
scientist on the original mission that disappeared so Leslie and crew are
delighted to hear from him. Morbius radios that everything is A.O.K.,
everybody else is dead, and there's really no reason why Adams and his crew
should land and investigate everyone's mysterious disappearance. Now, if I
were the captain I would done a u-turn right there, wrote my report up on the
flight home, and figured this Morbius dude was telling the whole story, after
all, he's a doctor and if you can't trust a doctor who can you trust?
Commander Adams though is well chosen for his job because he smells something
fishy and it ain't Cookie's space tuna surprise. He tells Morbius to prepare
some cold cuts cause he and the boys are dropping anchor at Morbius' ranch for
some shore leave. Morbius says fine, but that he can't guarantee their safety.
That's a line I'm going to start using whenever my white trash relatives want
to stay at my trailer when their hiding out from their old ladies: "Okay, but
I can't
guarantee your safety."  Adams and crew land on Altair-IV and are immediately met by a giant black robot
driving a shuttle bus. It's nice that even on a planet as underdeveloped as
Altair-IV, they still recognize the need and the benefits of mass
transportation. This robot hops (not really, he is very large and bulky and can
barely move - he's a little like one of those giant broads at Wal-Mart that
have to cruise around the store in one of those motorized shopping carts. I
got behind one of those the other day and it was like trying to pass a semi on
hilly road. You just can't do it, especially when they're giving out free
samples of Breyer's Ice Cream!). The robot it turns out is named Robby. This
I'm assuming is the actor billed in the opening credits as "Robby The Robot."
Robby says that he can speak 187 languages just in case Leslie doesn't
understand English. Leslie understands English enough to hop a ride with Robby
and two of his crewmates back to Robby's secret hideout. There we are
introduced to Dr. Morbius, a scientist prone to wearing an unflattering dark
pants with no belt and sort of puffy shirt with no tie combo. He also sports a
goatee that was last seen hanging on the face of Count Karnstein in Lust For A Vampire. He does the whole meet and greet thing and explains that Robby is a robot
(really?) who can pretty much do anything, including replicating matter that he
has been given a sample of. Naturally, Commander Adams is worried that Robby
is going to whip his ass and make him look bad in front of the men so Morbius
explains that even though the robot will do whatever Morbius tells him, it will
not harm humans. In fact, if given an order that contradicts his programming
he will short out and probably smell like the burning oil emanating from my
1984 Dodge K car. Then Morbius demonstrates this by taking Adams' blaster (if
you are on earth you would carry a gun, but if you are in space or on another
planet you would have to carry a blaster), giving it to Robby, and telling
Robby to murderlize Adams. Robby can't do it, but it makes you wonder just how
super-intelligent Adams is that he would let a guy (who "couldn't guarantee his
safety") he just met let his Mechagodzilla-wannabe robot try to shoot him. Is
that what they teach you in Starfleet Academy, Leslie?  After Morbius proves that Robby is harmless and Adams proves that he is a
complete idiot, they get down to brass tacks as Adams insist on knowing what
happened to all the others. Morbius continues to give some vague explanation
that I don't even remember, but it involved their ship getting vaporized as
some of the survivors tried to leave the planet. As for Morbius, he's made a
good life for himself - he's got a nice split-level hideout with impenetrable
shutters, a robot man-servant and who's this? Suddenly this young woman shows
up and Adams and the other two crew members he brought along (hey, watch how
this robot almost kills me!) all go va-va-voom! That's what they said back in
the fifties, right? This woman is Altaira (catchy name, how'd they come up
with that?) and it turns out that she is Morbius' daughter. Immediately, one
of the crew men is all over her showing her the benefits of stimulating the
human body through hugging and kissing. I guess her daddy never quite got
around to telling her about space herpes or anything, because before the movie
was over, she was all over Adams as well. I guess when all you've got is a
robot that speaks 187 languages (and I bet the language of love isn't one of
them!) and your ultra-creepy dad, you take what you can get. There's more blah
blah (most of this movie is blah blah if truth be told) about this and that and
it turns out that because Adams doesn't have any orders for this "special
circumstance" (i.e. survivors, mysterious deaths, horny space babe) he will
need to radio back to
Earth to get further instruction. Then he will meet with Altaira and get
orders for his "special purpose." If you've seen The Jerk, you'll know what I'm talking about, if not go see it and come back when you're
done. All this communicating is going to take some time and keep the crew and
Adams on the planet awhile, so Morbius offers Robby's assistance to help them
build their big space cell phone. With Robby helping out around the spaceship, it allows us to get some brief
moments of comic relief. These chiefly involves the ship's cook, named Cookie.
Cookie is one of those crazy kind of dudes that likes his liquor and he likes
it Kentucky bourbon style. See, he's heard that Robby can replicate stuff so
he and Robby go out and sneak off behind a rock (known on Altair-IV as The
Drinking Rock) and Cookie swigs some of his juice and tells Robby that he's
almost out and he needs some more. Robby takes the booze and chugs it, even
burping (hawhawhaw) and indicates to Cookie that it is a simple recipe he can
duplicate and would sixty gallons be enough? Can you say par-tay? Robby says
he can have it ready tomorrow. So Cookie leaves and goes back to the ship.
Meanwhile that night something enters the ship unseen and wrecks part of the
space cell phone. So the crew sets up an electrified perimeter. Cookie goes
out beyond the perimeter and hooks up with Robby again behind The Drinking
Rock. There in a gigantic pile is several hundred bottles of Kentucky bourbon.
Cookie is understandably jacked, but back at the ship the rest of his
non-alcoholic ship mates are getting attacked by some giant invisible creature.
Now before that happened, Adams and his right hand man Doc, met up with
Morbius in his secret lab and are given a tour of the remnants of the Krell
civilization. The Krell we would learn through a very long and drawn out
lecture from Morbius were really advanced and built a buttload of machinery
that still runs beneath the surface of the planet. We get a walking tour of
some of it, and you get some nice special effects shots that manage to convey
the immensity of the gizmos as well as their vastness. There is also some
machine you can strap on to your head that makes you smarter. I guess this is
futuristic version of those pumps you can buy in the back of certain
gentlemen's magazines if you feel inadequate in other areas of your life.
Morbius has used it and is now super smart and super egotistical. He proclaims
that he and he alone will choose which Krell inventions will be released to the
public since he's the only one smart enough to decide. Hey, sounds good to me.
I ain't got time to mess with that crap, I got a living to make. We can leave
the tough decisions about our lives up to scientists and our elected leaders.
That never fails.  After the attack on their spaceship by this really big invisible monster (you
can see its outline as it hits the electric fence) Adams and Doc head back to
see if one of them can you use the Brain Pump to get smart enough to figure out
what's going on. Adams says he'll be the one to use it, but he gets distracted
when he sees Altaira and talks to her for a few hours before he realizes that
Doc is gone. Doc shows back up being carried by Robby and the marks on his
head make it clear that he has been using the machine. He's dying, but as all
self-sacrificing people do, he makes a dying declaration that clears everything
up. See, the Krell were real advanced and their final project was a machine
that allowed thoughts to materialize physically. It worked well except it
allowed all the fears and hatreds of the unconscious Krell mind to materialize
as well and those things wiped them out. Now, the machine is making Morbius'
id run amok, his secret desire to destroy those that would interfere with his
life on Altair-IV taking on life as a monster - the monster that killed
everyone else when they all voted to leave Altair-IV twenty years ago and the
monster that now threatens Leslie Neilsen and The Naked Gun movie franchise. Well, somehow, Morbius kind of renounces his id, collapses,
has Adams hit the self-destruct button the Krell so thoughtfully installed,
then he, Altaira, and Robby escape and watch Altair-IV get blown to kingdom
come from their spaceship. Pretty good though not much in the way of action and Leslie Neilsen isn't
really all that good in it either. He vacillates from tough guy barking
orders to guy making dull-witted faces when someone else is talking to touching
his crewmates with a friendly smile so that we think he may have been in space
way too long. A very bland and uninteresting protagonist. Morbius is more
interesting and the fact that he is so smart yet cannot control his own
subconscious desires is a neat theme. The movie stands out precisely because of
that theme. At a time when science fiction movies were openly anti-commie
propaganda like the aforementioned Red Planet Mars or secretly anti-commie propaganda like Invaders From Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this movie dared to say that the scariest threats and most dangerous monsters
do not come from external sources but reside within each and every one of us,
even us smartie-pants types. Aren't we all a little frightened about what
would happen if we would ever lose that self-control that our parents and
society have instilled in us? I know my ex-wife and her new husband are (and
they better be - I mean, hey that's cool, no problemo). Morbius also seems to
have an unnatural attachment to his daughter, even going so far as to visualize
her when he's demonstrating the Brain Pump! Some of what his subconscious mind
is up to may be that he doesn't want anyone to come and take his little girl
from him, because he loves her and doesn't want to be left, like his wife left
when she died (that's just like a woman, ain't it?). Did Sigmund Freud write
the screenplay? I guess that makes Robby the Robot the manifestation
of the doctor's desire to be physically powerful, to be strong enough to
protect his little girl and to dare I say, please her (umm, maybe I daren't).
Or Robby could just represent a guy who's too lazy to do his own work. In any
event, you can read what you want into the relationships and situations in this
movie, but it's kind of weird that this guy is living all by himself with his
scantily clad daughter and tries to kill anyone who goes near her. In any
event, a much more entertaining and thought provoking movie than most of its
era. It had the guts to fly in the face of almost all space movie stereotypes
(What? The robot is a good guy? The bad guy isn't really bad? A cook named
Cookie?) and succeeded because of it.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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