Admittedly, the film’s notions of space travel are preposterous. The costumes are odd. The matte paintings and special effects undeniably old. Yet the cinematography is gorgeous, even sumptuous, bathing you in the greens, reds, violets of a mysterious ancient world. The production design is undeniably pulp, and quite frankly, pulp is really cool. Just dig on that gorgeous piece of cover art, one of the most iconic images in all of science fiction, with Robbie The Robot (more on him later) clutching some buxom space wench in his claws. The scene doesn’t appear in the film, but it nails the movie’s sexy, quirky tone perfectly. The cast - Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson, and the gorgeous Anne Francis - bring a substantial weight to their roles. And the script is mysterious, thoughtful, and serious, even borrowing some stuff from Shakespeare’s The Tempest of all places.

Though he’s billed third, Nielson’s really the lead character. He plays Captain J.J. Adams,a dashing ladies’ man of a galactic commander, in charge of a flying saucer in the 23rd century that explores space in the name of a United Federation of Planets. His orders take him to a distant planet named Altair-4 where a crew landed years ago and was never heard from again. Adams, his first mate, and the ship’s doctor, find only two survivors: Dr. Morbius (Pidgeon), who led the first expedition, and his daughter Altaira (Francis). The rest of his ship’s crew perished years ago at the mercy of a mysterious force that slaughtered everyone in sight and then disappeared, that is until Adams and his men arrived.

If the setup (right down to the configuration of the away team) sounds like STAR TREK, don’t be shocked - Gene Roddenberry would later cite FORBIDDEN PLANET as an inspiration for the first Enterprise. I always dug the first STAR TREK series, but where FORBIDDEN PLANET surpasses it is the impressive production values (which really do hold up well as a weird vision of an appealing lost future) and its sexy storyline, mostly provided by Francis who traipses around in outfits that would be flattered to be called skimpy and even has a skinny-dipping scene. The sexy alien babe might seem arbitrary but the plot explains it perfectly: this all-male crew is cooped up in a spaceship for light-years and suddenly this gorgeous blonde is all “Hey I’ve never met a boy before, let’s neck!” Well, what would you do?

And, of course, there’s Robbie The Robot, a lumbering metallic beast that doesn’t really seem to be much for walking around, but has been programmed by Dr. Morbius to reproduce human food and clothing, as well as to supply dryly witty comments. Robbie, too, is devilishly cool, with that big glass head filled with huge circuitry that has to whir and shift each time he wants to speak. My one regret? They named him Robbie! If the Mad Scientist Alliance of America found out that Dr. Morbius created a robot manservant and couldn’t come up with a better name than “Robbie” he would have been fined for sure.

There’s very little cheesy, or campy, about FORBIDDEN PLANET. It’s just a solid science fiction thriller that knows that some good special effects coupled with a sexy cast a good script makes for a really satisfying film. Other inferior movies from the 1950s bow their heads in shame and cross to the other side of the street when they see it walking their way.