Forbidden World – 1982 – Mutated Evolution

Forbidden World is one of those movies with a kick-ass title, a kick-ass poster, and a kick-ass storyline. Well, at least the first two claims are true. As a matter of fact, I didn’t really know the story that Forbidden World was supposed to tell until I saw it. I was expecting some space traveler to land on a planet where he wasn’t supposed to be and where he would encounter monsters like those on the poster art. Well, it’s not all true. There is a space traveler, heading for home, accompanied by a robot named Sam. However, new orders arrive and as Sam wakes the space traveler up from his cryosleep he is informed of the new orders. They are to go to this place and assist or something. It’s not really clear what they are going to do, or maybe I was not paying attention.

It’s kind of hard to pay attention too. The movie isn’t very good to begin with. There are horrible space fights where ships explode and shots are used all over again. At least that’s what it seems like to me. But eventually, he gets where he’s supposed to be and we find ourselves in a space station or a research facility on some planet. There’s no mention that it’s supposed to be a Forbidden World in any way which seems a bit odd to me. At least they could have made use of the title to state the fact that they were there illegally or something.

Something Else

Now Forbidden World becomes something else. It’s not about shooting down spaceships in combat anymore. It becomes some kind of Alien knockoff. With a twist maybe, but still, the main elements are there. There is some form of organism deadly and dangerous for the crewmembers. They have it contained to begin with though and it’s not hidden somewhere in the ship as it was in Alien. I don’t know how to describe the being. It kind of has a non-form. It doesn’t look like anything, certainly nothing scary. It’s soon revealed that it’s in a cocoon form and is about to evolve into something else. Something unknown.

Appearalty this isn’t the first time it has evolved either. The crew, the doctors, or whatever they are, are telling some parts of the story to our lone space traveler who immediately sets out to kill the creature. He is stopped by the crew though. To kill it isn’t an option but they are very reluctant to say why. Apparently, the experiment is about creating a food source and it’s implied that it also has human DNA. That’s probably why they didn’t want it killed even if that would be the sanest thing to do at this point.

Unintentional Humor

The feel of the movie is often very humorous. I don’t think that it was the intention at all but it’s very silly. The acting is quite bad most of the time and there are way too many sensual scenes for it to make any point other than to lure the audience into watching some sleazy space saga. There are both love- and shower scenes that display the females in a way that should attract the male audience. I guess those were the days. Of course, this is still done to this day but at least they could have written in some plausible explanations for women running around in corridors looking “sexy”.

To be fair, even if the story is pretty stupid most of the time. The monster, or the alien or whatever you choose to call it, becomes better over time. At first, it’s just annoyingly stupid but at the end it’s not too far-fetched that it’s kinda of scary. It still looks like rubber fetishism but at least it is charming. You know those old-school practical effects that no one does anymore. They are charming even if they’re still ugly.

The End

I can’t help but think about the final scenes in John Carpenter’s The Thing. Where they choose to remain and die instead of risking spreading the thing further into society. I was thinking that this would be the end here as well. at least telling a compelling story about self-sacrifice for the greater good. I was also thinking about Alien of course, where the monster is defeated at the last possible moment and blasts into space. How it really ends is for you to find out. But I must say that the latter half of it was way more entertaining than the first half. It was still pretty stupid at times but when you got to know the characters a bit better at least you understand where they were going with this. Oh, and yes, there is self-sacrifice at the core of this movie.