Happy Boxing Day with Robbie the Robot

Today dear readers we celebrate Boxing Day with two film classics from the 1950s staring the one and only Robbie the Robot.

Robby the Robot is a fictional character who has made a number of appearances in science fiction movies and television programs after his first appearance in the 1956 MGM science fiction film Forbidden Planet. 

For your viewing pleasure we present on Far Future Horizons two science fiction film classics - Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Invisible Boy (1957). We also present from Caltex Radio Theater a production of  Forbidden Planet adapted for radio which aired on September 6^th, 1959.

Forbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred M. Wilcox, with a screenplay by Cyril Hume. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. The characters and its setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its plot contains certain story analogs. Forbidden Planet was the first science fiction film that was set entirely on another planet in deep space, away from the planet Earth. It is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of what was to come for the science fiction film genre in the decades that followed.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Forbidden Planet (1956) Part 1

Forbidden Planet (1956) 1/2 by heapsoflovehide
Forbidden Planet (1956) Part 2

Forbidden Planet (1956) 2/2 by heapsoflovehide

The Invisible Boy (1957) is a science fiction film, directed by Herman Hoffman, and starring Richard Eyer and Philip Abbott. It is the second film appearance of Robby the Robot, a famous science fiction character, who first appeared in Forbidden Planet (1956), which is set in the 23rd century. Released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, this film's earlier title was S.O.S Spaceship. According to a subtle backstory, the robot in The Invisible Boy is the same character as that in Forbidden Planet, brought back to the era of the film through time travel. However, that fact appears to play no other role in The Invisible Boy.

 

The Invisible Boy is a curious mixture of lighthearted playfulness and menacing evil. As it begins, ten-year-old Timmie Merinoe (Eyer) seems only to want a playmate. After he is mysteriously invested with superior intelligence, he reassembles a robot that his father and other scientists have been ready to discard as unrepairable junk. No one pays much attention to the robot after Timmie gets it going, until Timmie's mother becomes angry when Timmie is taken aloft by a huge kite that the robot builds.

When Timmie expresses a wish to be able to play without being observed by his parents, the robot – with the aid of an evil supercomputer – makes him invisible. At first Timmie uses his invisibility to play simple pranks on his parents and others, but the mood of the film soon changes, when it becomes clear that the super computer intends to take over the world through a military satellite.

The Invisible Boy (1957) (Direct Link)


Watch The Invisible Boy (SF, 1957) - with Robby the Robot.avi in SciFi & Fantasy  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Both Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy can be purchased through Amazon Books. 

Forbidden Planet (Caltex Radio Theatre, 1957)

"Forbidden Planet" from Caltex Theater which aired on September 6^th , 1959 adapted for radio from the 1956 science fiction film and a subsequent novelization by W.J. Stuart. In the early 2200s, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D is sent to the planet Altair IV in the Altair star system, sixteen light-years from Earth, to find out what happened to the Bellerophon expedition, sent out some twenty years earlier. 

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