The thing was, up until Airplane! (which totally changed the trajectory of his career), Nielsen (note correct spelling) was more or less a dramatic actor. So being that I was born in 1973, my main exposure to him was via Airplane!, Police Squad, etc. Well, there was Forbidden Planet, but I'm not sure I'd seen that yet when I was 10 or 11. I think I knew that movie at the time more from reading about Robbie The Robot or the "Id Monster" sequence in Starlog.
Then one day, I found myself watching this movie he did in the late 60's called Dayton's Devils (also starring Lainie Kazan, SSgt Barry Sadler, and Rory Calhoun), and he's delivering all of his dialog with the exact same tone, intonation, cadence, etc as when he was doing comedy. I knew this was a "serious" film, but it was hard to not expect something funny to happen, and of course it never does.
Of course, I've seen Forbidden Planet many times since then. The scene of the Id monster attacking the crew is still one of my favorite special effects sequences, and Louis and Bebe Barton's "electronic tonalities" still sounding as stunning today as they must have back when the film was made.
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