Forbidden World
The seed is planted... the nightmare grows.
Year of Release: 1982
Genre: Horror/Science Fiction
Rated: Not Rated
Running Time: 85 minutes (1:25)
Director: Allan Holzman
Cast:
Jesse Vint ... Mike Colby
Dawn Dunlap ... Tracy Baxter
June Chadwick ... Dr. Barbara Glaser
Linden Chiles ... Dr. Gordon Hauser
Fox Harris ... Dr. Cal Timbergen
Raymond Oliver ... Brian Beale
Scott Paulin ... Earl Richards
Michael Bowen ... Jimmy Swift
Don Olivera ... SAM-104
Summary:
On the planet Xarbia, an experimental life-form known as "Subject 20" has been created by an elite group of scientists in hopes of preventing a major galactic food crisis. However, instead of prolonging life, Subject 20 is destroying it, and the man-eating organism poses a double threat because it constantly changes its genetic structure. Bounty hunter Mike Colby is called in to investigate but soon suspects that the scientists are keeping something from him, and he discovers why ... Subject 20 is half-human!
Review:
Forbidden World, the movie that makes it abundantly clear that God simply wants the universe to starve to death. He fired the warning shot when he made gluttony a sin, but apparently that wasn't good enough. These well intentioned scientists way off in the future, are working to make... something or other that will ensure the universe's food supply lasts longer than Mother Teresa's virginity. But with the prospect of the entire universe looking like the patronage of a Logan's Roadhouse in Georgia looming large, somebody put the kibosh on that, and the experiment gains sentience and rebels. So, why's God hate the impoverished planets of the universe so much? Do they not celebrate Easter? Are they Atheists? Do they all work for Activision? If the Pope is telling it right, we're supposed to reproduce at an irresponsible rate until this food shortage occurs, so why's He being such a jerk? Surely He saw this coming. Of course He did, he's God. He's got it all planned out. He knows what is SUPPOSED to happen, and having a steady food supply is not part of that. This leads me to the truth of the matter. God is part of a super intelligent fancy pants genius race of beings. But God is only 6 years old, and the Earth is simply a toy that his yuppie parents got Him to shut Him up during the long car ride home from the airport. And like any 6 year old, He gets bored with things pretty quickly and decides to sabotage his play thing when it starts to get too big for it's britches. Explains natural disasters, the hole in the ozone layer, the over abundance of criminals, and Justin Bieber. So what I'm trying to say here is, God is a jerk, and we're all screwed. Especially the Catholics.
So the movie starts out with Rob the Robot piloting a space craft that comes under fire by the cast of Space Invaders and he has to wake up Captain Colby who's making like Michael Jackson, taking a nap inside Hyperbaric chamber. Rob wakes up the Captain an tells him these flying whatzits are trying to pew pew them to kingdom come and he'd better get back on the clock. The Captain drags ass a little until Rob tells him the guys that're shooting at them claimed he had more than one facial expression. Now the Captain is pissed, and he's a man on a mission. He blasts all their ships into astro dust and refrains from changing his facial expression, just to regain his street cred. So the Captain's feeling pretty good now, but Rob explains that they've got a new mission. They're to land on the planet Xarbia so the Captain can sex up the women there and not enjoy a moment of it. So they head for Xarbia where the doctors there explain that they're growing a monster that tastes like chicken, and can self replicate it's cells so there'll be plenty of chicken for everyone. Everything seems okay, the monster is taking a nap, and the doctor's have a rocket scientist in charge of keeping an eye on the monster while it's cocooned, so the Captain grabs some dinner and rocks Dr. Slutbag like a hurricane. Meanwhile, the rocket scientist has tried 3 or 4 stupid tactics to get the monster to kill him, but to no avail. Like most things, it happens naturally when he gives up and leaves the chamber door open. The monster latches onto his face like Jenna Jameson on a penis and he runs around the room screaming and causing as much damage to the ship as possible. The doctors find him after the fact and wheel him back into an observation room where they explain he's still alive, in spite or looking a lot like a kiddie pool full of jello that's been run through a paper shredder.
So then the doctors and the Captain go back to one of the various rooms in the facility that looks just like all the other rooms and start yelling at each other about how the monster can't be killed because if they do that the movie would come in well under the projected run time. So they decide to try to catch it, but don't really discuss how they're going to do it, and head back out, sans plan, to rack up the body count and take every opportunity to get the two lady doctors nekkid. Shortly thereafter (I think, the scenes in this movie kinda run together, I blame the editor) the second lady gets nekkid so she can take a sauna, then the Captain shows up to "check on her", ya know, cause the monster's sliming around an such. The second doctor was apparently so deprived of affection as a child that she's awestruck that he'd bother to make sure she was alive and gets ready to do squat thrusts with him, when the monster drops down through the vent like 007 an tries to splat onto the lady's keister, only she's the only person in the universe that looks up and sees it coming an bounces her jigglies on out of there. The first lady doctor gets catty with the second lady doctor, which is only natural considering she'd invested 2 whole hours into her relationship with the Captain prior. She gets over it and eventually they decide to go outside dressed like Sand People on a planet that looks exactly like Tatooine and find the monster. Or another portion of the same monster, I dunno. They find it slung up and cocooned again amongst some rocks and shoot a rocket up it's ass until it falls down to ground level and the head doctor gets between the monster and the Captain, who by this time is getting a little pissed off about nailing only one of the two ladies on the crew, and has had just about enough of Doctor Jay Leno Hair's bullshit. Then the monster escapes down a big grate in the ground an I forget what they're saying cause I'm looking around the background for Jawas, then all of the sudden the monster (who has taken on an actual form now and is pretty decent looking) jumps back up out of the grate and goes Little Shop of Horrors on Dr. Jay Leno Hair.
So they head back inside and the only guy without a PHD besides the Captain, and thus, the smartest, gets electrocuted while he's groping around on the floor trying to find his contact lens. The lady doctors are tired of being mad at each other so they go get naked so they can talk things over. They figure the men folk have the wrong idea, and that instead of killing the monster they need to talk to it to see if it had a happy childhood or not. (That's what I took away from it, if they wanted me to pay attention they wouldn't have gotten the women naked before discussing the advancement of the plot for absolutely no reason) So after a brief fuzzy rub, the women doctors head into the central control room where the monster is hanging out, and the blonde one (of course) strikes up a conversation with the monster, asking the usual questions like "a/s/l?" The monster can understand her and makes like he's gonna play nice but then he pulls the ole spiked tentacle through the torso routine and the blonde is on the floor even quicker than she was when the Captain first showed up. The remaining doctor runs screaming back to the remaining cast members (The Captain, Coughing Scientist, and Rob) and pretty much continues screaming for the remainder of the film. With Dr. Jay Leno Hair out of the way they're tired of this mugga fuggin monster in this mugga fuggin science lab and they're gonna kill the hairy scary monster. Coughing doctor has devised a way to do so, he's got cancer, and they're gonna force feed the monster his tumor. I won't give away the rest, but if you're epileptic, or learning to become a film editor, I recommend you stop the movie at this point. There are approximately 188 jump cuts in the next 45 seconds of the film right around this point in the movie.
The Star Wars style space effects are pretty bad, from the perspective of someone who might be watching this movie and grading it on the same scale as they would a main stream Hollywood movie. By B movie standards, they're fine, if a little bright. They go from darkness to blinding light every few seconds, so really, if they are good effects, you'd never know it because you end up shielding your face until the sequence is over. Or you could just watch the movie with the light on, but I prefer to watch movies in the dark. The editing in this movie is just awful. And speaking of that opening Star Wars scene, what the fuck did it have to do with anything? The Captain blows up the space bogeys, no idea who they are, why they're attacking, or why they can't get real ships instead of double exposed lights in random geometric shapes. The jump cuts come fast and furious, and at seemingly random times, or at least of seemingly random flashbacks. If I wanted to watch the sex scene over and over I'd just watch the sex scene over and over, I don't need a half a second of it flashed back at me every 15 minutes. I understand what they were trying to do, which is to show us what is running through the mind of the character we're looking at's mind during that time, but there are better, less seizure inducing ways of doing this. The editing is just a mess, it's really amateurish even for a Corman movie. And I'm not sure who's idea it was to have the two lady scientists nude as they discuss their plan of action, but it is the textbook definition of gratuitous. And worse than that I can't stop focusing on the tits long enough to pay attention to the discussion, which is a rather important discussion as far as the plot is concerned. So my recommendation, if you're going to get the women nude for no reason, give em more strap on and less dialogue. Good boobs, bad use of them.
Overall, Forbidden World is a fun movie. It's not a work of art. Although you could say it's a work of drive-in art. It's fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously, although the Forbidden World disc in this set does. As I understand it, Forbidden World is really the same movie, but with the comedic sequences taken out. Although the running time difference between the two is 5 minutes, and I really can't see 5 minutes worth of comedic material that could have been taken out to make Forbidden World. In the event that I'm making no sense, the DVD release is 2 discs, the first disc is "Forbidden World", which is an alternate title, and the original Theatrical title. The second disc is "Mutant", which was the original film before Roger Corman wanted the comedic aspects taken out of it, to make it more serious. It reads as "The Director's Cut" on the disc, and this is the one I watched for the review. I have to say, though I have not watched the other disc, I suspect the comedic elements help the movie, not hinder it. I wonder if the nude doctor scene is in the Forbidden World disc... cause there's no way that's getting taken more seriously. Anyway, don't take it seriously, it's a fun movie, and you'll enjoy it a great deal more if you're not spending all your time trying to analyze the motivation of the characters involved, or why they're doing the things they're doing. Why they've got no sexual morals or why they think it's a good idea to stick their heads inside the monster's cage. You remember when you went to the zoo as a child and your parents told you not to stick your hands inside the cage? That guy never went to the zoo. And most of the characters are about as sharp as marbles. If they'd just watched Alien they'd have known exactly how to deal with their problems, since it's pretty much the same movie. If you're not stuck up, check it out.
Rating: 71%