Dated, comically corny but heavy-handed, pretty and production-designed to death but oh-so-sound-stagey, “Forbidden Planet” remains a touchstone film in the science fiction canon almost in spite of itself.

A lot of its cachet relates to the Cold War zeitgeist that produced it, an era more famous for B-movie sci-fi with aliens invading. and real-life fears of World War III with the Russians. A 1950s state-of-the-art special effects adventure labeled “cerebral” in the Golden Age of Flying Saucers and the peak years for Sigmund Freud worship, it merits the label “quaint” today.

“Forbidden Planet” has genuine “wolf whistles,” booze-based low comedy and sophmoric sexism of “The Seven Year Itch/Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” variety. One doesn’t have to recall the great Canadian clown Leslie Nielsen became to be amused by his hunky, womanizing starship captain, “notorious in seven planetary systems!”

The director was best known for “Lassie Come Home” before making this. The bulk of the screenwriter’s stand-out credits were for episodic TV to come — “The Rifleman” — and a B-movie of the late ’50s, “The Invisible Boy.” This isn’t “canonical” cinema in that regard.

But generations of future fangirls and fanboys grew up delighted by cutesy Robby the Robot, which underscores the cartoon nature of it all. Perhaps “Lost in Space” nostalgia contributes to enduring “Forbidden” love.

Loosely based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” it has long been a favorite of dewy-eyed English majors parsing its interpretation of the wizard Prospero, Miranda, Caliban, Stephano and Fernando.

So here it sits, on a (Short?) pedestal, the film whose “id” might have led to “Lost in Space” with the “ego” giving birth to “Star Trek.” Or perhaps it was the other way around.

But is it any good 66 years on? Yes and mostly no, I fear. There are intellectual flourishes that no one should mistake for literary. Some of the performances are amusing on purpose, some unintentionally.

Its futurism is saucer-driven, getting the “moon landing” wrong by a century, showing off communicators with string-wired microphones, “blasters” recycled from “Flash Gordon” and a big, roomy, split-level “bridge” filled with all different ranks of Navy-throwback “spacemen, a lot of tactile props, gauges, dials and switches and a single cathode ray tube “screen” that is as graphcially primitive as anything in Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” filmed thirty years before.

If you get past the creepy skirt-chasing of the ship’s senior leadership upon first encountering the mini-skirted Anne Francis there’s still the stunningly-dull parade of matte-paintings cyclorama backdrops, models and stage sets and props that comprise a tour of the planet’s buried “Krell” technology, a tour led by Walter Pidgeon at his most stentorian.

And don’t get me started about the way the cast “aim” their “blasters” in the damnedest directions when shooting bolts at the animated monster then menacing their parked C-57-D United Planets Cruiser (saucer).

The story? That saucer from the Earth of the 2200s is sent to a planet in the Altair system where the “colonize and conquest” starship Bellerophon was sent 20 years before, only to be never heard of again.

The space travel scenes feature the crew decellerating from hyper drive on pads that look a LOT like transporter modules from the “Star Trek” universe. There’s a huge, roomy split level bridge where everybody from the skipper (Nielsen) to the smart and religious ship’s surgeon — “The Lord sure makes some beautfiul worlds!” — (Warren Stevens) to the sailor-capped and aproned cook (Earl Holliman) is welcome and has a voice.

“Another one of them new worlds. No beer, no women, no pool parlors, nothin’. Nothin’ to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and we gotta bring our own tin cans.”

They are warned off this planet and their search for survivors by Morbius (Pidgeon), the previous expedition’s philologist (language expert) and apparently sole survivor.

“Turn back at once,” he demands via radio. “I wash my hands of all responsibility” otherwise.

The ship lands, the crew meets Robby the Robot, with the captain complimenting him on the “high oxygen content” of this seeming desert planet’s atmosphere.

“I seldom use it myself, sir,” Robby intones. “It promotes rust.”

The robot, the hard-drinking joker of a cook and the utter ogling of one and all when, 378 days into their mission, they get a gander at Morbius’s sheltered bombshell daughter, make the early middle acts of “Planet” a comedy.

The captain has a problem with all the other fellows leering at the woman he’s leering at, including his fellow officers (Jack Kelly is the horndog second in command). He disapproves of her (almost see-through) short skirts.

“It would have served you right if I hadn’t… and he… oh go on, get out of here before I have you run out of the area under guard – and then I’ll put more guards on the guards!”

The film takes a turn to the serious when we learn of what happened to the colonists, speculate on how Morbius survived and absorb the danger the saucer’s crew are in.

But there’s no flow to this allegedly building suspense. We’ve got to interrupt that to see the great Morbius’s daughter experience her first make-out session, and second. We’ve got to listen to pages of exposition as Morbius takes the captain on a tour of the planet’s underground lair of nuclear reactors, ventillation shafts and what not.

So many centerpiece moments here take one right out of the movie. Yes, engineer/IT guy and future “Six Million Dollar Man” boss Richard Anderson is listening to data coming in through ear buds, but the futurism lacks the imagination to be accurate or even interesting.

Pidgeon’s man at ease with his great knowledge character turns pedantic and dull. Nielsen’s Captain Adams is the obvious, going-out-of-date prototype for his fellow Canadian Shatner’s more savvy-and-sex-obsessed-than-smart starship captain.

Frances does what she can with a role written by older men in the 1950s, but smart and educated Alta is about as interesting as the most desperate Match.com profile you’ve ever read.

“I’ve so terribly wanted to meet a young man. And now, three of them at once!”

Elevating this as a “landmark film” when Robert Wise’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was smarter, more suspenseful, better-acted and more in tune with its times seems laughable. Yes, studgy MGM tried to show us the future and space travel and the eternal shortcomings of human nature. Yes, they took a shot at adapting a timeless Shakespearean plot to a futuristic setting.

That doesn’t mean they succeeded. Even grading it on the “product of its times” curve, “Forbidden Planet” seems best appreciated as MGM Cinemascope/Eastmancolored cheese.

But taken the way those of us who grew up with “Forbidden Planet” experienced it on on late night cable, in college cinema societies and the like, it remains what it’s not-so-secretly-been all along, sophisticated-seeming sci-fi for children, especially children of the 1950s and ’60s.

And even we have to laugh at a lot we maybe weren’t supposed to.

Rating: G

Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Richard Anderson and Earl Holliman.

Credits: Directed by Fred. M. Wilcox, scripted by Cyril Hume, loosely based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” An MGM release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:38