I guess there's just something about me personally you don't like.
You always look just beautiful.
Then why don't you kiss me like everybody else does?
Everybody?
Hasn't your father taught you anything?
Well, he says I'm terribly ignorant...
but I have had poetry and mathematics...
Iogic, physics, geology and bi...
Ology?
Of course, that's mostly on the theoretical side.
Well, so far.
What's wrong with theory?
This.
It's all right. He's my friend.
I'm sorry, Alta. I had to do that.
He didn't recognize me.
He would've killed me. Why?
- You really don't know, do you? - No, I don't.
- Is he still in there? - Hasn't come out.
Wait a minute, Skipper. After all, it is his house.
What's the matter?
Doc, something new has been added.
That's gonna complicate things a bit.
Not even a window.
The robot lied. Morbius hasn't been in here.
Doc, he's up to something.
Look at this, Skipper.
- Hieroglyphics? - Maybe.
But it doesn't look like Egyptian or cuneiform...
or Chinese.
You'll find the household silver in the dining room...
and my daughter's jewelry on her dressing table.
Dr. Morbius...
last night our Klystron monitor was sabotaged.
And you suspect me?
Then the time has come for clarification.
Sit down.
In times long past...
this planet was the home of a mighty and noble race of beings...
which called themselves the Krell.
Ethically, as well as technologically...
they were a million years ahead of humankind...
for in unlocking the mysteries of nature...
they had conquered even their baser selves...
and when, in the course of eons, they had abolished sickness...
and insanity and crime and all injustice...
they turned, still with high benevolence...
outward toward space.
Long before the dawn of man's history, they had walked our Earth...
and brought back many biological specimens.
I see. That explains the tiger and the deer.
The heights they had reached...
but then, seemingly on the threshold of some supreme accomplishment...
which was to have crowned their entire history...
this all but divine race perished in a single night.
In the 2,000 centuries since that unexplained catastrophe...
even their cloud-piercing towers...
of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel...
have crumbled back into the soil of Altair-4...
and nothing, absolutely nothing remains above ground.
What were they like?
No record of their physical nature has survived...
except, perhaps, in the form of this characteristic arch.
I suggest you consider it in comparison to one of our...
functionally designed human doorways.
That recording was made by Krell musicians a half a million years ago.
If you will follow me, I will show you some of their other remaining artifacts.
Krell metal. Try your blaster there, Commander.
This spot should be molten.
It's not even warm, and no trace of radioactivity.
The molecules are many times more densely interlocked...
than in earthly steel...
yet it drinks up energy like a sponge.
This is just one of their laboratories.
You will notice that much of the equipment is familiar...
though designed for nonhuman technicians.
What's this?
On this screen may be projected...
the total scientific knowledge of the Krell...
from its primitive beginning to the day of its annihilation...
a sheer bulk surpassing many million earthly libraries.
- You're able to read this? - A little. It's my profession.
Twenty years ago, I began here with...
this page of geometrical theorems.
Eventually I was able to deduce most of their huge, logical alphabet.
I began to learn.
The first practical result was my robot...
which you gentlemen appear to find so remarkable.
Child's play.
I've come here every day now for two decades...
painfully picking up a few of the least difficult fragments of their knowledge.
A thing like this, it's too big to evaluate.
Think what a discovery of this kind...
what is this device over here?
I call it their "plastic educator."
As far as I can make out, they used it to condition and test their young...
in much the same way as we once employed finger-painting...
among our kindergarten children.
I often play with it myself for relaxation...
although working here, I sometimes wish I'd been blessed...
with multiple arms and legs.
Now, you can see that this headset...
was designed for something much bulkier than my human cranium.
Now, over here you see...
the electromagnetic waves of my brain...
sending that indicator up about halfway.
I gather that one of their own young...
comparable to a seven-year-old child...
was normally expected to send that all the way to the top...
which by Krell standards classifies me as a low-grade moron.
Yet I have an officially recorded IQ of 183.
Now then, for the primary function.
Actually, to operate...
Well, I'll choose a familiar subject to start with to save time.
There now, gentlemen.
What's that?
What's happening there?
A statue.
That's Altaira.
Simply a three-dimensional image, Commander.
But it's alive!
Because my daughter is alive in my brain from microsecond to microsecond...
while I manipulate.
There.
Something of a strain.
Aladdin's lamp in a physics laboratory.
Would you gentlemen care to take the Krell test of your intelligence?
- Yes, very much. - You may be disappointed, Commander.
Suppose we start with the good doctor.
- What do I do? - Just sit down there, and I'Il...
Move forward.
There now.
Now, Doctor, you can read it here.
There's something wrong here.
I have an IQ of 161...
yet I don't register a third what you did.
Now the commander.
It's all right, sir. A commanding officer doesn't need brains.
Just a good loud voice, huh?
Do I pull this switch to make an image?
Stop! You'd never survive.
Our Belerephon skipper tried it, and it was instantly fatal to him.
Oh, I see. So you're immune to this too?
In my first attempt at creating an image here...
my brain pattern there was scarcely any larger than yours.
Afterwards, I lay unconscious for a day and a night.
Yet you came back for a second go at it.
It was a question of science, Doctor...
but you can imagine my joy when I discovered that the shock...
had permanently doubled my intellectual capacity.
Otherwise, my researches here would have come to nothing...
poor as they have been.
Recently I have turned up some rather puzzling indications...
that in those final days before their annihilation...
the Krell had been applying their entire racial energies...
to a new project...
one which they actually seemed to hope...
might somehow free them once and for all...
from any dependence on physical instrumentalities.
A civilization without instrumentalities?
Incredible.
Dr. Morbius, everything here is new.
Not a sign of age or wear on any of it.
Young man, these devices, self-serviced, self-maintained...
have stood exactly as you see them for 2,000 centuries.
2,000 centuries?
And during all this time, what was their power source?
That's a good question.
May I draw your attention to these gauges...
all around here, gentlemen?
Their calibrations appear to indicate...
that they are set in decimal series...
each division recording exactly ten times as many amperes...
as the one preceding it.
Ten times ten times ten times ten...
times ten times ten, on and on and on...
row after row, gauge after gauge.
But there is no direct wiring that I can discover.
However, when I activate this machine...
it registers infinitesimally, you see...
down there in the lower left-hand corner.
And then...
when I activate the educator here...
it registers a little more.
But this much is negligible.
The total potential here must be nothing less than astronomical.
Nothing less.
The number ten raised almost literally...
to the power of infinity.
Gentlemen, would you care to see some more of the Krell wonders?
- Indeed, yes. - Yes.
If you will, step in this shuttle car.
How often the Krell technicians have ridden in this little vehicle.
What now, Dr. Morbius?
Prepare your minds for a new scale...
of physical scientific values, gentlemen.
Twenty miles.
Listen.
Circuits opening and closing.
And they never rest. This is one of their ventilator shafts.
You can feel the warm air rising. Look down here.
Look down, gentlemen. Are you afraid?
7,800 levels.
And 400 other shafts like this one.
Yes, a single machine.
A cube 20 miles on each side.
For 2,000 centuries it has waited patiently here...
tuning and lubricating itself, replacing worn parts.
I have reason to believe that 16 years ago...
a minor alteration was performed...
throughout the entire 8,000 cubic miles of its own fabric.
But what's it all for?
Sometimes the gauges register a little...
when the buck deer fight in the autumn or when birds fly over in the spring...
and nearly a whole dial became active...
when your ship first approached from deep space.
I'll show you a section of one of the power units.
These units are sunk in the body of the planet...
fifty miles right below our feet.
Now, be sure and look only in the mirror.
Man does not behold the face of the Gorgon and live.
9,200 thermonuclear reactors in tandem.
The harnessed power of an exploding planetary system.
All hands, stand clear of fence area.
All right, Quinn, turn it on.
- Have you tested it yet, Bosun? - Right away, sir.
- There you are, sir. - Very good.
Lieutenant? Having completed my washing-up duties after chow...
I request the lieutenant's permission to take a walk...
outside the perimeter, sir.
- There's nothing out there. - But there is, sir.
I mean... well, I thought it might brighten the boys' mess up a bit...
if I could find a few wild radishes or something.
I don't know what you're lying about, but you better get back...
before the skipper does, or we'll both be skinned.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Quinn, this is Farman. Kill the power on the fence.
All right, put it back on.
480 pints...
as you requested.
Total: 60 gallons.
Genuine Kansas City bourbon!
It's smooth too.
Robby, I ain't never gonna forget this.
Any time you're hard up for lube oil, let me know.
What's up? Somebody coming this way?
No, sir. Nothing coming this way.
The fence is shorting!
Shall I shut down the current, sir?
No. It's stopped now.
Check over the whole system in the morning.
Aye, sir.
It's strange how that fence just shorted out.
You're too arbitrary, Commander.
Perhaps I do not choose to be dictated to in my own world.
Dr. Morbius, a scientific find of this magnitude...
has got to be taken under United Planet supervision.
No one man can be allowed to monopolize it.
For the past two hours I've been expecting you...
to make exactly that asinine statement.
Just one moment, Commander.
For close on 20 years now I've been constantly...
and I hope dispassionately, considering this very problem...
and I have come to the unalterable conclusion...
that man is unfit as yet to receive such knowledge...
such almost limitless power.
Whereas Morbius, with his artificially expanded intellect...
is now ideally suited to administer this power for the whole human race.
Precisely, Doctor.
Such portions then of the Krell science...
as I may, from time to time, deem suitable and safe...
I shall dispense to Earth.
Other portions, I shall withhold.
And in this, I shall be answerable exclusively...
to my own conscience and judgment.
Dr. Morbius, in the absence of special instructions...
you leave me in a very awkward position.
- Commander Adams. - Speaking, Lieutenant.
Skipper, the chief's been murdered.
Quinn? Murdered?
Yes, he was alone, working on the monitor.
The rest of us were outside on guard duty. l...
- How was it done? - "Done"?
Skipper, his body is plastered all over the communications room.
Leave everything as it is. We're on our way.
It's started again.
Is that it?
I tried to make a plaster model from the footprints we found.
37 inches by 19.
Why, it's fantastic.
Doc, I don't understand.
Whatever walks on this would be quite an opponent for a man with a club...
but with our weapons, Quinn could have...
No. This thing runs counter to every known law of adaptive evolution.
What do you mean?
Notice this structure here.
Characteristic of a four-footed animal.
Yet our visitor last night left the tracks of a biped.
Primarily a ground animal too.
Yet this claw could only belong to an arboreal creature...
like some impossible tree sloth.
Just doesn't fit into normal nature anywhere in the galaxy.
This is a nightmare.
Is that what you made out of that footprint?
I think it's fairly close.
Pardon me, Commander. Are you ready to hold discipline on the cook, sir?
Yeah, let's have him.
I'm obliged to remind you that I gave him permission to go out last night.
Did you give him permission to get falling-down drunk?
Drunk, sir? Me, sir?
Ask Dr. Ostrow, sir.
Four pints of 120 proof bourbon without a trace of hangover in it.
That ain't natural.
Besides, why did that Robert argue me into drinking all that whiskey?
You were with the robot last night?
Yes, sir.
Him and me, we kind of got to toasting each other's good health...
just for cordial interplanetary relations, you understand.
Now, that's all the time? Even while the chief was being killed?
Certainly, sir.
I hope you don't think I got that stiff in five minutes.
All right. Dismissed.
I guess that kind of washes the robot up.
Where does that leave us for suspects?
Maybe it leaves us with the same one.
Maybe we should drop over to that Krell laboratory...
and get our IQs boosted a couple of hundred percent.
Sir, burial detail is ready.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
- Dismissed. - Company, dismissed.
Fine technician.
Good shipmate.
That's a good epitaph for any man.
Good day, Dr. Morbius.
I daresay neither of us slept any last night.
That's a pretty close guess.
I warned you while your ship was still in space.
I begged you not to land on this planet.
Believe me, Commander, that is only a foretaste.
The Belerephon pattern is being woven again.
Remain here and the next attack on your party...
will be more deadly and general.
How do you know that?
Know? l...
I seem to visualize it.
If you wish, call it...
a premonition.
What do you make of that, Skipper?
I'd say it sounded like an ultimatum.
- Bosun. - Aye, sir.
Bosun. I want a clear field of fire in all directions.
- Aye, aye, sir. - Randall?
How soon will radar be operational?
- Operating right now, sir. - Good. Keep on it yourself.
- Aye, aye, sir. - The M.A. alert is completed?
- Aye, aye, sir. - Fine.
Activate main batteries.
Alarm for test.
Fire!
Check good.
Lieutenant, you got your trouble squad in hand?
Yes, sir, but they're a little trigger-happy.
They're sort of edgy to see whatever's out there.
Oh, Jerry.
This may be a big deal coming up.
I'm sorry if I've leaned on you...
Stop knocking yourself out, Skipper. She picked the right man.
- What is it, Randall? - Radar just picked up something.
- Where away? - At the head of the arroyo.
- Moving? - This way. Slowly.
Automatic control.
Batteries, fire!
Batteries, hold fire.
Do you see anything out there?
Nothing.
Batteries, fire!
Batteries, cease fire.
- Randall. - Dead on target, sir.
Good.
- Give me audio-com. - Aye, aye, sir.
Attention!
This may have been a ruse to divert us from some other part of the perimeter.
Continue watching on your own immediate fronts.
That is all.
What?
It just stopped at the foot of the pass.
Are you sure you've got a real blip there?
Big as a house, and we were on target with both bursts.
It's coming on again!
- Straight across? - It shows here.
It's still coming!
Gray, Strong, set up a cross fire on those rocks.
Fire!
The blasted thing's invisible!
Jerry! Hold fire!
Fire!
Father!
Alta!
- Alta, where are you? - Father!
What is it? What's the matter?
I just had a terrible dream!
There was blood and fire and thunder...
and something awful was moving in the middle of it.
I could hear it roar and bellow.
Now, now. You know a dream can't hurt you.
Not me. Not us.
The thing I saw was trying to break in the camp.
It was gonna kill...
You'll take care of him for me, won't you? You'll protect him.
My darling, I'm completely helpless as long as he remains here so willfully.
Come now.
- Bosun. - Yes, sir?
Get those graves dug. Keep the men busy.
- The busier the better. - Randall?
Give me audio-com.
Well, men, whatever it was, our main battery stopped it.
You believe that?
No, it just went away for some reason. It'll be back.
Doc, an invisible being...
that cannot be disintegrated by atomic fission.
No, Skipper. That is a scientific impossibility.
Hypnotic illusions don't tear people apart.
That's true enough...
but any organism dense enough to survive three billion electron volts...
would have to be made of solid nuclear material.
It would sink of its own weight to the center of this planet.
You saw it yourself standing there in those neutron beams.
There's your answer.
It must have been renewing its molecular structure...
from one microsecond to the next.
- Bosun! I want the tractor. - Ready, sir.
We pick up the girl and her father whether they like it or not.
Section 86A:
"Evacuate all civilians from disaster areas."
You left out two very important words.
"Where feasible."
If you remember the Belerephon expedition...
their ship was vaporized trying to lift off.
Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one of us...
gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost.
- Bosun. - Aye, sir?
I'm leaving you in command. Get the ship operational.
Do your best to wait it out for me and the doctor...
but the second that fence starts to short again, lift off...
and report back to Earth base on conditions in this sector.
Right, Skipper.
All right. Get everything aboard ship. We're pullin' out!
No lights showing.
Look, Doc, in case we make it into that lab...
I'll take the first go at the IQ booster.
You hear me?
I hear you.
I am monitored to admit no one at this hour.
That sounded final.
Maybe if we reasoned with him.
My beams are focused on your blasters, gentlemen.
Hasn't he got a built-in rule against wringing our necks for us?
That is true, sir.
Yet I am monitored to admit no one.
- Let them in. - This is your father's order.
- Get out of the way. - Quiet.
Emergency cancellation Archimedes.
Why are you here?
We were attacked.
Three more men dead, including Jerry Farman.
I don't know. It was...
just some kind of big outline in the disintegrator beams.
And you can't explain it?
Well, anyway, we fought it, and we lost.
- I figure it'll be back. - You must leave, now.
I'm not going without you.
But I can't possibly leave him alone. I just can't.
- Then we'll take him. - By force?
I can't agree to that either.
Can't you? You don't realize what's loose on this planet!
But I'm immune, like both my parents.
That's what he says. Nothing could be immune to that thing...
Oh, darling, please go.
Oh, please. If you love me, go.
Alta. Doc, will you talk some sense to this girl?
I'm in over my head. Doc?
Doc?
On the sofa, Robby.
So you took the brain boost, huh?
You oughta see my new mind.
Up there in lights. Bigger than his now.
Easy, Doc.
Morbius was too close to the problem.
The Krell had completed their project.
That big machine.
No instrumentalities.
True creation.
Doc, let's have it.
- But the Krell forgot one thing. - Yes, what?
Monsters, John.
Monsters from the Id.
The Id? What's that?
Talk, Doc.
Doc?
How romantic!
The fool! The meddling idiot!
As though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell.
Father, he's dead.
He was warned, and now he's paid.
Let him be buried with the other victims of human greed and folly.
Morbius, you wanted me to make a choice.
Now you've chosen for me.
I'm ready to go with you, darling.
I will place him in the tractor, sir.
Thank you.
She mustn't do this. She must be prevented.
Morbius, what is the Id?
My daughter is planning a very foolish action, and she'll be terribly punished.
- What is the Id? - Id! Id! Id!
It's an obsolete term...
I'm afraid, once used to describe...
the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.
Monsters from the Id.
Monsters from the subconscious.
Of course. That's what Doc meant.
The big machine... 8,000 cubic miles of Klystron relays...
enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses...
operated by remote control.
Morbius, operated by the electromagnetic impulses...
of individual Krell brains.
To what purpose?
In return, that machine would instantaneously project solid matter...
to any point on the planet, in any shape or color they might imagine...
for any purpose, Morbius!
Creation by mere thought.
Why haven't I seen this all along?
Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger...
their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.
The beast. The mindless primitive.
Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.
And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious...
had access to a machine that could never be shut down.
The secret devil of every soul on the planet...
all set free at once to loot and maim...
and take revenge and kill!
My poor Krell!
After a million years of shining sanity...
they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.
Yes, young man.
All very convincing but for one obvious fallacy.
The last Krell died 2,000 centuries ago...
but today, as we all know...
there is still at large on this planet a living monster.
Your mind refuses to face a conclusion.
What do you mean?
- Morbius! - What?
Something is approaching from the southwest.
It is now quite close.
- Could Robby be wrong? - No, never.
There it comes.
I feel sorry for you, young man.
Feel sorry for your daughter, Morbius.
It's listening.
- Alta, go into my study. - You still refuse to face the truth.
- What truth? - Morbius, that thing out there.
- It's you. - You're insane!
You have led it here where Alta must see you torn to pieces!
You think she's immune? She's joined herself to me!
- Yes, and whatever comes, forever. - Say it's a lie.
Let it hear you! Tell it you don't love this man!
Not even if I could.
Stop it, Robby! Don't let it in! Kill it!
It's no use.
He knows it's your other self.
We're safe.
Why did you jumble that combination?
Whatever you know in here, your twin self in the tunnel knows too.
I'm not a monster, you...
We're all part monsters in our subconscious!
- So we have laws and religion. - Let me go!
You've got to listen. We don't have much time.
Here's where your mind was artificially enlarged.
Consciously it still lacked the power to operate the great machine...
but your subconscious had been made strong enough!
- I won't hear you! - You've got to listen!
Twenty years ago, when your comrades voted to return to Earth...
you sent your secret Id out to murder them!
Not quite realizing it, of course, except maybe in your dreams.
What man can remember his own dreams?
At least when we approached from space, you remembered enough to warn us off.
But when you thought we were a threat to your little egomaniac empire...
your subconscious sent its Id monster out again!
More deaths, Morbius. More murder!
And now this too? Harm my own daughter?
But now she's defying you, Morbius...
and even in you, the loving father, there still exists...
the mindless primitive...
more enraged and more inflamed with each new frustration.
So now you're whistling up your monster again...
to punish her for her disloyalty and disobedience!
And if you don't do something about it soon...
it's going to be coming right through that door.
Solid Krell metal, 26 inches thick.
Look at your gauges. Look!
That machine is going to supply your monster...
with whatever amount of power it requires to reach us.
Look now!
Red-hot. Soon it'll be white-hot.
Then it'll soften and melt.
Alta, say you don't believe this of me! Tell me you don't!
Then it must be true.
Yes, I must be guilty!
Then help us, darling!
I've known you great and noble like the Krell.
Guilty! Guilty!
My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!
Stop! No further! I deny you! I give you up!
Father. Oh, Father.
Son...
turn that disc.
The switch. Throw it.
In 24 hours...
you must be 100 million miles out in space.
The Krell furnaces...
Chain reaction...
They cannot be reversed. Alta!
98.6 million. We're clear now.
Quite an astrogator.
A genuine privilege, Commander.
Activate main view-plate.
Aye, aye, Skipper.
That's Altair-4, the bright speck below the star.
Fifteen seconds.
Yes, Alta, your father, my shipmates...
all the stored knowledge of the Krell.
Five seconds, four...
three, two, one...
Alta, about a million years from now the human race...
will have crawled up to where the Krell stood...
in their great moment of triumph and tragedy.
And your father's name will shine again...
like a beacon in the galaxy.
It's true, it will remind us...
that we are, after all, not God.