CineTV Contest: Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey

Space movies, I love them. Some are really good, and then there are some that are, well, less good. This week the challenge is great space movies. I am going to tackle two of them as the timing was perfect for the movies I want to cover.

First up, Forbidden Planet (1956), starring Walter Pigeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielson. And yes, Robbie the Robot (which would be used on numerous television shows for years after this). This is one of the best early science fiction films, and is unique in that the sound track, composed by the team of Bebe and Louis Barron using electronic devices that they designed (IMDB Trivia Electronic Music). When the soundtrack album was released back in the ‘70s (I think that’s right), I rushed out and picked up a copy, which I still have, even though I don’t currently have the means to listen to vinyl LPs.

Trailer for Forbidden Planet - youtbue.com

The film revolves around a spaceship and its crew visiting the distant planet of Altair IV. Two inhabitants are there, Morbius and his daughter, Altaira. With the exception of these two, and Morbius’ late wife, the rest of the expedition had been killed by strange creatures that inhabited the planet. A lot of mystery surrounds Morbius and his research, as he his very secretive at first, but giving in to showing some of his discoveries about the original inhabitants.

The film has a great cast and crew, cast including Earl Holliman who is best known for his role in the series Police Woman and the movie The Sons of Katie Elder, and Richard Anderson who went on to star in the series The Six Million Dollar Man as Oscar Goldman. Also, I have to have the obligatory Star Trek reference in that Warren Stevens, who plays Doc Ostrow, would appear in the Star Trek episode “By Any Other Name” as Rojan (this is the episode where Scotty gets one of the aliens drunk and quips “It’s Green”).

Timing was good for this part of my post as Svengoolie showed Forbidden Planet this recently, saving me from digging out my DVD (yes, we regularly watch Svengoolie). Sven also noted that James Drury, the star of the TV series The Virginian also appears in this film, as well as providing some interesting background on Robby the Robot.

All in all a great example of what a Science Fiction film should be like, and well worth watching again.

Next up, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention (no, I wasn’t there, although I have been to a couple of world cons - 1969 Hugo Awards List). The original basis for the film is Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”, which involves the discovery of an alien Relic, a Monolith, on the Moon. When Kubrick began work on 2001, Clarke was brought in to help write the screenplay and concurrently wrote the novel to accompany the film. This film was one of the first attempts to take science fiction seriously and get the science and engineering involved in space travel right, including the lack of sound in the vacuum of space.

Trailer for the 50th Anniversary of the release - youtube.com

Back when I was growing up, the only way one could see this film is when it made the movie theater circuit in a re-release. Yep, this was before the rise of the VCR. It was also a time when people would debate the meaning of the Star Child and the bit with the travel through the light show, which could have been a wormhole, Star Gate, or other cosmic construct for interstellar/intergalactic travel. General consensus amongst my friends was that you had to read the book to understand the film. And yes, I did read the book back in high school. That was a long time ago. Now you can google it up and look at what different people say about the film and its meaning. If you do, have fun. Read the book (which I am going to do again).

My copy of the novel, 1970s era edition, and contains a number of Black and White stills from the film.

The main stars of the film are Keir Dullea as David Bowman and Gary Lockwood (who played Gary Mitchell in the second Star Trek pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before”) as Frank Poole. There are numerous other actors in various supporting roles, but these two, as well as Douglas Rain, who provided the voice of HAL, are the main players in the film. One could also argue that the Monolith is also a main actor, as it certainly plays a major role and provides the motivation for the Jupiter Mission that Bowman, Poole, and HAL embark on.

The models for the space craft are all top notch, and realistic in design. The spaceship Discovery looks like what a spaceship designed for deep space would look like. From the Torus style space station orbiting Earth, to the PanAm Earth-to-Orbit spacecraft, and many other spacecraft are just lovely to look at. It is obvious that the production team went through great lengths to get a solid vision of what the future of spaceflight would look like. I am now wishing I had read The Making of 2001 from way back in the day, but, alas, a copy of it I do not have. There are newer takes on the making of this film. I may pick one of those up sometime.

2001 is, in my opinion, one of the best, and certainly most realistic, Science Fiction films ever made. It is also one of Kubrick’s best films (along with Spartacus and Dr. Strangelove). Kubrick’s films do have a reputation of either being very weird (A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut), or very artsy (Barry Lyndon). 2001 may be a little weird, surreal may be a better term, and it is definitely an artsy film that is quite enjoyable to watch.

The CineTV Contest for space films can be found at https://peakd.com/hive-121744/@cinetv/cinetv-contest-19-favorite-space-movie

My thanks to the CineTV crew for hosting these contests, and giving me some fun stuff to write about, and learn about films that the many contributors at CineTV have enjoyed. I do read a fair number of other entries, and am finding other films and performers that sound interesting on a global scale, which is one of the great things about the Internet.

Thanks for stopping by.