Before Leslie Nielson became one of the funniest men in the movies with such classics as "The Naked Gun" series, he was actually a very serious actor. Most people today would have no idea of this fact. But yes, there was a time. One of his greatest films was the classic science fiction "Forbidden Planet" which was made in 1956. It was directed by Fred Wilcox and written by Irving Block and Allen Adler.

The premise of the story was actually very simple. A spaceship, commandeered by Commander John Adams, played by Nielson, was sent to the planet Alta to investigate the strange and sudden silence from the planet and the colony that was living there. When the spaceship arrives, they discover that all but two of the colonists have died. The survivors are Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira. Somehow, they survived the attacks of a terrible monster. Morbius was played brilliantly by Walter PIdgeon and his daughter was played by the beautiful Anne Francis. The movie did a great job of showing her off.

Morbius explained to the crew what happened and all might have been well with his explanation but when Adams decides that they're going to stick around for a while Morbius almost goes into a rage and practically orders them to leave the planet, telling them that he couldn't be held responsible for what might happen to them. Well, that's all Adams had to hear. Now he was more determined than ever to stay and find out what was "really" going on.

Needless to say, this prompted the "monster" to come out and attack one of the crew members in the ship itself. Morbius, upon hearing of this, told Adams that he was warned to leave. But Adams took it as more of a threat and was convinced that Morbius knew more than he was letting on.

Finally, Morbius gives Adams and Doctor Ostrow, played by Warren Stevens, a tour of the facility. This is when he tells the story of the Krell, the civilization that lived here millions of years before, a civilization more advanced than anything they had ever seen. When asked what happened to the Krell, Morbius gave a vague answer. But during the tour he showed Adams and Ostrow a mind booster machine. This would ultimately lead to Adams discovering the terrible secret.

If you haven't seen the movie, we won't ruin the ending for you. It was one of the most intense finishes in movie history and a film that even today stands up to anything that modern day film makers put together.

It should be noted that in this movie we see for the first time Robbie The Robot. While Robbie wasn't anything more than a man in a suit, he was very realistic as robots go and turned out to be one of the most famous robots in all of movie history.

This movie has everything that anyone could want in a science fiction. Robots, pretty girls and a great story with a real surprise ending.

Don't miss this one the next time they show it on the Sci-Fi channel.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Films.