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Poster for Cult 101: Forbidden Planet (1956) 4K Restoration
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Cult 101: Forbidden Planet (1956) 4K Restoration

Opens on August 30

Director: Fred M. Wilcox Run Time: 98 min. Rating: G Release Year: 1956

Starring: Anne Francis, Jack Kelly, Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, Warren Stevens

Country: United States
Language: English


Cult 101 at Gateway Film Center

A celebration of the best cult films of all time.

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About the film:

In this 1956 sci-fi classic, loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a spacecraft travels to the distant planet Altair IV to discover the fate of a group of scientists sent there decades earlier. When Commander John J. Adams and his crew arrive, they discover only two people: Dr. Morbius and his daughter, Altaira, who was born on the remote planet. Soon, Adams begins to uncover the mystery of what happened on Altair IV, and why Morbius and Altaira are the sole survivors.

Featuring sets of extraordinary scale and the first all-electronic musical soundscape in film history, Forbidden Planet is in a movie orbit all its own.

About the filmmaker:

Fred M. Wilcox began his career in film by working in the New York publicity department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1929, he became an assistant to King Vidor and worked with on Vidor’s masterpiece Hallelujah (1929). Following this experience, he worked as a director shooting screen-tests of new talent, then began an apprenticeship as an assistant director on three of his brother-in law Edgar Selwyn’s pictures.

After working his way up through MGM, he had to opportunity to direct his first feature film, Lassie Come Home (1943), a classic family film that was enshrined on the National Film Preservation Board’s National Film Registry in 1993. Wilcox also helmed the two sequels The Courage of Lassie (1946) and Hills of Home (1948). In 1957, Wilcox left MGM to become an independent producer and director. Wilcox’s film Forbidden Planet (1960) is hailed as a sci-fi classic and was nominated for Best Special Effects at the 1961 Academy Awards.

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