I'm no Hollywood authority, but I have to wonder if The Black Hole doesn't rank as one of the more significant films in the history of the Walt Disney company. Not because it's a masterpiece or some landmark achievement in cinema. I could be wrong, but I think this movie was largely both the death knell for a type of live-action filmmaking that had been synonymous with Disney for decades and the inspiration for the development of a sort of sub-studio system where films could be produced and marketed without having to put the Disney name on them. Of course, I could be wrong about all that. In which case, this would just be an example of the sort of Disneyfied storytelling that some people came to absolutely loathe.
As the spaceship Palomino travels between the stars, it encounters an amazing phenomenon. The lost exploration and research vessel Cygnus is found balanced perfectly on the edge of a black hole, seemingly indifferent to gravity so powerful that even light itself cannot escape it. Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forester) agrees to check it out, though he's not happy at taking the risk. Dr. Kate McRae (Yvette Mimieux) hopes that her father, a member of the Cygnus' crew, has survived its 20 years missing. Journalist Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) is more interested in the famed leader of the Cygnus' mission, the brilliant and egocentric Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell). Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms) just wants something to shoot at, while Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins) is entranced at what the Cygnus' survival and current circumstance suggests.
Joined by a hovering, spherical, maxim-quoting robot named Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowall), the Palomino crew ventures onto the lost ship. They discover Hans Reinhardt is alive and planning to take a voyage into the black hole and the great unknown beyond. They also uncover what happened to the rest of the Cygnus' crew and find themselves facing off with Reinhardt's mechano-minion, Maximilian. Can they escape before Reinhardt's fateful journey? What exists beyond the event horizon of the most destructive force in the universe? Do really huge sets and matte paintings hold up against modern CGI wizardry?
What you need to know about The Black Hole is that it is the one and only horror movie ever made with the Walt Disney name on it. There are some deeply disturbing things that go on in this motion picture. Or at least they were to me when I saw it in the theater as a kid. It may bear a PG rating but compared to the expectations the audience had for a Disney film at that time, they might as well have slapped an "R" on it. And it's not just the substance. The whole tone and look of this movie is dark and cold and creepy and some of the sound track reflects that.
Some. Not all. The rest of the music of The Black Hole fits with the corny, cloying, clownish, "family friendly" elements that have been jammed into the film because the people making it didn't understand that it was something different than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or That Darn Cat. There are scenes here that are positively Jar Jar Binksian in their badly forced humor and awkwardly intrusive sentimentality.
While the special effects are primitive, the sets and overall imagery of the movie remains fairly strong. It's kind of in between the futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the stylized fantasy of TV's Star Trek, closer to the latter than the former. The Black Hole succeeds in being visually interesting on screen, something sci-fi flicks in the decades that followed often failed at due to a fetish for realism.
Ernest Borgnine is good, like that's some sort of surprise. Anthony Perkins commits to his small role and pulls it off. Joseph Bottoms is energetic and that's about all, which still places him above Yvette Mimeiux, who can be distractingly wooden, and Robert Forester, who frequently looks like he doesn't know how he ended up in this kind of production. Maximilian Schell is artfully restrained for this sort of part but, again, he's playing a very un-Disneyifed villain here. There's nothing about Reinhardt that lightens or alleviates his cold, menacing insanity.
As I mentioned, I saw this when it first came out as a child and I think I can remember there being a negative reaction to it from generations raised to expect a certain kind of live-action movie from Walt Disney. The Black Hole is not that kind. It falls so completely apart at the end and resorts to some badly staged action scenes, so I can't call this a good film. It is enough of an oddity that it might be worth a look, though, if you've ever wondered what a Disney horror flick would be like.
As the spaceship Palomino travels between the stars, it encounters an amazing phenomenon. The lost exploration and research vessel Cygnus is found balanced perfectly on the edge of a black hole, seemingly indifferent to gravity so powerful that even light itself cannot escape it. Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forester) agrees to check it out, though he's not happy at taking the risk. Dr. Kate McRae (Yvette Mimieux) hopes that her father, a member of the Cygnus' crew, has survived its 20 years missing. Journalist Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) is more interested in the famed leader of the Cygnus' mission, the brilliant and egocentric Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell). Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms) just wants something to shoot at, while Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins) is entranced at what the Cygnus' survival and current circumstance suggests.
Joined by a hovering, spherical, maxim-quoting robot named Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowall), the Palomino crew ventures onto the lost ship. They discover Hans Reinhardt is alive and planning to take a voyage into the black hole and the great unknown beyond. They also uncover what happened to the rest of the Cygnus' crew and find themselves facing off with Reinhardt's mechano-minion, Maximilian. Can they escape before Reinhardt's fateful journey? What exists beyond the event horizon of the most destructive force in the universe? Do really huge sets and matte paintings hold up against modern CGI wizardry?
What you need to know about The Black Hole is that it is the one and only horror movie ever made with the Walt Disney name on it. There are some deeply disturbing things that go on in this motion picture. Or at least they were to me when I saw it in the theater as a kid. It may bear a PG rating but compared to the expectations the audience had for a Disney film at that time, they might as well have slapped an "R" on it. And it's not just the substance. The whole tone and look of this movie is dark and cold and creepy and some of the sound track reflects that.
Some. Not all. The rest of the music of The Black Hole fits with the corny, cloying, clownish, "family friendly" elements that have been jammed into the film because the people making it didn't understand that it was something different than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or That Darn Cat. There are scenes here that are positively Jar Jar Binksian in their badly forced humor and awkwardly intrusive sentimentality.
While the special effects are primitive, the sets and overall imagery of the movie remains fairly strong. It's kind of in between the futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the stylized fantasy of TV's Star Trek, closer to the latter than the former. The Black Hole succeeds in being visually interesting on screen, something sci-fi flicks in the decades that followed often failed at due to a fetish for realism.
Ernest Borgnine is good, like that's some sort of surprise. Anthony Perkins commits to his small role and pulls it off. Joseph Bottoms is energetic and that's about all, which still places him above Yvette Mimeiux, who can be distractingly wooden, and Robert Forester, who frequently looks like he doesn't know how he ended up in this kind of production. Maximilian Schell is artfully restrained for this sort of part but, again, he's playing a very un-Disneyifed villain here. There's nothing about Reinhardt that lightens or alleviates his cold, menacing insanity.
As I mentioned, I saw this when it first came out as a child and I think I can remember there being a negative reaction to it from generations raised to expect a certain kind of live-action movie from Walt Disney. The Black Hole is not that kind. It falls so completely apart at the end and resorts to some badly staged action scenes, so I can't call this a good film. It is enough of an oddity that it might be worth a look, though, if you've ever wondered what a Disney horror flick would be like.