Well well well, Happy Birthday to me! After a year of sword and sorcery films, it looks like we're diving right back into science fiction (which we technically did last year a number of times), with the very first Disney movie to ever earn a PG rating. Let's look at 1979's The Black Hole.
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| STOP! YOU! THE ONE READING THIS REVIEW! ANSWER ME! |
No, no, not that one. We're not doing that, there's none of that.
The Black Hole kicks off with the crew of the USS Palomino ending a deep-space mission. They come across the titular black hole and find what they first believe to be a derelict vessel but soon identify as the long-missing USS Cygnus. Curiously, the vessel is somehow in orbit around the black hole itself. Onboard, we have our cast of characters:
Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forster), a by the book sort of commander.
Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Holland's second-in-command who occasionally butts heads with him.
Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), the science officer aboard the Palomino.
Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimiuex), Durant's assistant who has an ESP link to the ship's robot (just go with it), has a blink and you miss it romantic interest in Dan, and...honestly the only real link to the actual plot. More on that later.
Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) is a journalist documenting the crew's journey. He's also a complete weasel as we see later in the film.
Lastly, we have V.I.N.Cent, who I will called "Vincent" from here on out. He's a robot voiced by Roddy McDowall.
...hang on, Roddy McDowall, playing a character named "Vincent". Something seems familiar about this...
The crew make their way aboard the Cygnus and find themselves hosted by none other than Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schnell). Reinhardt was the commanding officer of the last mission undertaken by Kate's father Frank, the same one in which the Cygnus went missing. Reinhardt informs her, sadly, of his passing over the last twenty years. In that time, however, Reinhardt has built a series of robots to aid him in maintaining the ship and continuing his study of the black hole in spite of his orders to return home.
If you're already guessing there's more going on here, then you're definitely right. Reinhardt is planning to actually travel into the Black Hole. Why? He wants the answer to the ultimate question in the universe...and unfortunately for him, the answer isn't 42.
It also just occurred to me, as I'm sitting here and typing this, that this film is not only ripped off by Event Horizon, but also Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
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| God, damn, it, Spooooooock! |
That's right, The Black Hole was doing celestial metaphysical questions before William Shatner!
All joking aside, The Black Hole actually does reach about the same level of depth about those questions that The Final Frontier does - that is to say, not at all. That isn't what we're here for, however.
The original intention of Disney in this endeavor was to make a disaster film in the same vein as The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno. However, the project got shelved by Disney until 1975 and by the time the film actually went into production, audiences were starting to lose interest in disaster films as a whole. The script for the film was rewritten not once, not twice, but at least three times in between 1976 and 1978 with a final draft being written by Jeb Rosebrook before being doctored up a bit by screenwriter Gerry Day. Only then did the film actually go into production.
The score was done by John "Yes, the guy who wrote the James Bond theme" Barry. Disney's own engineering department did the work on the visual effects in the film after renting equipment from Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic proved to be too expensive (which is rather amusing considering more recent events), and they did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects for their work on the film. Best Cinematography was also a nomination the film received, no doubt to the work of Frank Phillips, who was also known for his work on Pete's Dragon and Escape from Witch Mountain for Disney.
That, unfortunately, is about the only praise that the film got. Our old pal Roger Ebert called the film something that "takes us all the way to the rim of space only to bog us down in a talky melodrama whipped up out of mad scientists and haunted houses". A glowing endorsement from Ebert if ever there wasn't one! Other critics of the time were likewise not particularly kind to the film, their reviews ranging from damning from faint praise to calling the film "dull" (in the case of Gene Siskel). Contemporary critics also haven't been particularly kind to it, with our old stick in the mud astrophysicist pal Neil Degrasse Tyson calling it the least scientifically accurate movie of all time. Besides him just using his soapbox to be the version of the scientist that ruins everyone's fun with a megaphone...he was also in Sharknado 6.
Willingly.
Kind of ruins the opinion when you're supporting that crap, Neil.
Also, no, I am not reviewing Sharknado unless someone pays me. I watched Deathstalker, I'm only willing to go so far.
So, upon watching the film myself and looking at all the background information, does The Black Hole deserve all the crap it gets? Not really. At best, the thing is harmless and stylistically is a product of its time. After all, in 1979, Star Wars had just come out to massive critical acclaim that literally changed science-fiction even up to the present day. There wasn't a film in science fiction in the late 1970s to early 1980s that wasn't following in the wake of Star Wars.
...with two exceptions that we might get to this year. We'll see.
However, appearance-wise, The Black Hole actually reminds me more of one of those films: Alien. The look of the Cyngus has a weird combination of the sort of gritty "realistic" equipment you'd see on the Nostromo mixed with the bright lights to be found beeping and blinking and flashing on the starship Enterprise. While all of Reinhardt's robots are featureless say for being humanoid, something that could maybe be found as a pseudo- or proto-Westworld, you have Vincent clearly modeled in a way to try to appeal to kids in the same way R2-D2 does. It's really kind of an interesting blend of pre-Star Wars sci-fi and post-Star Wars sci-fi on the whole.
There were only three ships in the film - the Palomino, the Cyngus, and the escape probe - but a variety of models and older camera techniques done such as green screening to bring them to life onscreen. This has the benefit of really showing us the scale of the Cyngus in particular, you get the feeling that this is a very large ship that many people once lived on.
The problem that the film can't really shake is that the plot...really isn't there. It's only an hour and a half long, so the beats go through pretty quickly. The two to three rewrites really show, and altogether they don't really have much of a plot. It's largely done for the spectacle, and the spectacle is there. It just came out at a time where people had already seen it all done better. There is one absolutely balls out insane sequence at the end that, without wishing to spoil, probably put off the audience as well as and is where a lot of the Event Horizon jokes come from so readily.
It's an odd little film, but not an unenjoyable one. You have Roddy McDowall in it, which is almost always a mark of quality (almost, we're not ready to tackle the Planet of the Apes sequels yet). Slim Pickens has an appearance as the voice of another robot in the same style as Vincent and the two actually have a really good friendship and team up in the film. This was also, sadly, one of Slim's last roles before his unfortunate passing in 1983.
The only real problems with the film is that it manages to both take a while to get to its point and be very quick. The entire final sequence is a little bit of Star Trek III: Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as the survivors attempt to escape the black hole and end up going through a bizarre sequence of visuals before coming out the other side of it all.
It's...strange, and something that definitely could have stood a bit more development. It is a very interesting spectacle, but that's pretty much the only depth it reaches in its quest to bring us out into the stars. However, as I said at the beginning, it is notable as the first film produced by Disney to earn a PG rating. It is also notable as one of the films we've covered (that being Dragonslayer) that would eventually lead to Disney creating Touchstone Pictures, which would create more adult-oriented films.
I personally enjoyed the movie, but I could see why others might not. If you want to give it a go, it's available on Disney+ right now. If you've given into the corporate monopoly, look it up and give it a watch. If you don't like it, don't forward your complaints to me, but to Neil Degrasse Tyson, I am certain he'd love to start off 2021 hearing how right you think he is.
The Black Hole comes to us from Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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