<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Forbidden Planet Soundtrack. A unique film in many ways, this science fictional rendering of Shakespeare's The Tempest also boasts a soundtrack like none other in movie history, and can be mistaken for none other. The groundbreaking MGM film was released in 1956 starring Leslie Neilsen, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and, of course, Robby the Robot, and is considered by many to be a forerunner of Star Trek.

The score is an exercise in electronic “music” by the husband and wife team of Louis and Bebe Barron, recognized now as pioneers in electronic film music. Interestingly, the Barrons eschewed the use of that cliché of SF music, the theremin, instead designing their own custom circuit boards whose functioning was allegedly patterned after the human nervous system. Utilizing some of the theories of cybernetics as espoused by Norbert Weiner, the boards (based on a patent for which Weiner was a co-author) were supposedly able to "react" to certain varieties of input.

Whether or not they could, it remains true that no one who hears the music that the Barrons produced (taking the better part of a year to do so) can easily forget it. At once oddly emotional and futuristically daring, the cues for Forbidden Planet pull one in with their strange combination of sound effects and meandering lines of what cannot really be called melody, but that retain a recognizable pattern and even recurring themes.

The Barron’s score for Forbidden Planet drew critical praise, but problems with the American Federation of Musicians resulted in their names being omitted from the film's Oscar nomination. They never scored another movie.