And while not every Disney film is the height of all excellence, one would be hard pressed to find one that is inherently "bad"...except for this one. In 1985, Disney came out with The Black Cauldron. Nobody knew what to make of this film, an adaptation of the Lloyd Alexander novel "The Black Cauldron"...or, rather, a bit of a Frankensteining of the first two novels in Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" series - "The Book of Three" and "The Black Cauldron". This isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's an adaptation. Sometimes, you have to cut out some of the original work so that things blend over more smoothly.
This can be good - like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, or this can be bad like Peter's Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. So where does The Black Cauldron fall in? For this review, I'll look at it from two perspectives, that of someone who's read the books, and someone who just enjoys movies as I do (or don't, if you look at the record of some films I've reviewed).
The film begins with Gandalf from the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit (John Huston) doing narration about a king so twisted and evil that he was feared by the gods themselves. Apparently this wasn't enough to keep him from being burned alive and sealed in the iron of a magnificently Gothic-accented pot - the titular Black Cauldron. Then it disappeared and a bunch of evil men searched for it, because apparently he who controls the Cauldron controls the universe.
Okay, to get the minor niggles out of the way - that's not even close to the Black Cauldron's origin story in it's book. Nobody knew where it had come from, except the three witches who owned it before Arawn Death-Lord (think Voldemort if he never bothered to show up until the last five minutes of the last Harry Potter book). However, given that the Cauldron does exactly the same thing that it does in the book, the "controls the universe" part is not an understatement - literally using the bodies of the dead to create and control an army that literally cannot be slain, does not tire, and does not need to be fed.
After all, an army that carries the Ark before it is invincible, am I right?
Elsewhere in the land of Prydain, however, an old man known as Dallben the Enchanter (Freddie Jones...no, not that one) speaks some exposition to his cat about an infamous villain known as the Horned King (John Hurt). Apparently, he hasn't done something evil in a while and the Enchanter thinks he's up to something insidious. But enough about that, because we have to be introduced to the real star of the show - Taran (Grant Bardsley). In the books, at least at the beginning, Taran is an annoying little whelp of a boy who wants to take the Dungeons & Dragons approach to being a man - that is to say, taking up a sword and killing things and taking their loot. In the books, his journey is a transformative one where he grows from boy to man and he learns that wars do not make a man great, that being a hero has its prices, and that sometimes by doing the simplest acts of goodness we can make the world a little better.
Here...he's an annoying little whelp of a boy who wants to be a hero. And is only a little bit wiser by the end of things. He laments tending to the magical pig Hen Wen and that he will never be a real hero because he's never had a chance to fight in the wars. However, the pig starts squealing to be made bacon and Dallben takes this as a sign that she's about to have a vision. She puts her snout in a bowl of water, and they determine that the Horned King is mucking about trying to find the Black Cauldron.
And, since the Horned King knows of Hen Wen because...plot convenience...Dallben throws a sack with a rusty dagger and some gold for starting equipment into Taran's hand before chucking him off to go run and hide at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, no doubt hoping that the centaurs will aid in their hiding. Thus, despite his protests that he wants to kick ass and take names, Taran heads off for his grand adventure of roughly an hour from this point.
It's about seven minutes of an introduction, and it's a fairly good one. Again, I'm not gonna rag on them too much for adapting. Truth be told, while Lloyd Alexander does do an excellent job of explaining many of the concepts in the books, they can be disorienting for new-comers when putting them into a film. After all, this was made in 1985 - long before the invention of the internet. So no Wikipedia, no wikis, nothing one could draw upon except by reading the actual books the film was based off of.
In the next scene we get introduced to the villain, and really probably the only reason to see this movie - the voice of John Hurt as the Horned King. He is chilling, he chews the scenery only just enough, and his performance is accented by the atmosphere of him in a darkened castle, surrounded by hideous draconic beasts and entire slews of skeletons lying about in astounding detail. It's grizzly, chilling, and one hell of an introduction as the Horned King declares his intention to raise his army and rule the world.
Through the rest of the movie, we are introduced to Taran's other companions, the first being Gurgi (John Bryner). In the books, Gurgi was a man-beast who was more concerned with eating than about fighting evil, but...well, no he was still concerned by the end of the books about his "crunchings and "munchings", but still possesses a noble heart and wants to do good. Here, he's much the same, though relegated to adorable Disney animal sidekick status. His design is less man-beast and more bipedal sheep dog, and he sounds like someone put Andy Serkis's version of Gollum on a higher pitch. But he pretty much serves exactly the same function he did in "The Book of Three", that is to say a source of comic relief and irritation for Taran and the others.
The next up is Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan), a princess and the latest in a long line of enchantresses who Taran meets a bit later on. Like in the books, she's head-strong, takes no nonsense, and is strong independent enchantress who don't need no man. She's also more than happy to call Taran of Caer Dallben out when he's being pigheaded or flouting his ego about. Unlike the books, however... they have a throwaway line of the Horned King wanting to use Eilonwy's magic to find the Black Cauldron, which kind or works but also kind of doesn't considering how a majority of magic works in Prydain, but having to go by Rule of Adaptation I'm willing to let it slide. Needless to say, she - like Gurgi and Taran - pretty much fills the same role as in "The Book of Three".
And last, but certainly not least, we have the most excellent Bard in the world - Fflewddur Fflam. Though he's portrayed as being much older in this version, he is pretty much the exact same character as he is in the books - a bard who likes to...test the elasticity of the truth and has a harp that calls him out on it by its strings breaking when he does so. Even more so than Gurgi, he's a source of comic relief, but it works enough for a Disney film.
So, they, the Fab Four - that is to say, the main four characters - are pretty fairly well adapted from the story, so I can't ding the movie any points there. Wherre I can ding the movie is for the adaptation of two books into one film instead of just doing two separate films, which they could have very easily done. Of course "The Book of Three" admittedly doesn't have the same ring to it as "The Black Cauldron" for a grand adventure. Nevertheless the story, for what they gave, isn't too bad. It's an interesting hybrid, if nothing else and - again - the Rule of Adaptation applies. To adapt a book to film, you occasionally have to juggle things around, we've seen it many a time.
Unless you're Peter Jackson, in which case you look for more material to turn what should be one film into three...but that's neither here nor there.
So, why exactly did this film not do well when it was released? Most because, design and feel wise, it was completely out of Disney's wheelhouse at the time. Many of the scenes are very dark and even grizzly when they're not intending to be. I mentioned before the opening scene of the Horned King, the dark castle littered with corpses and draconic creatures flying about shrieking. There's even notably a few scenes where actual blood is seen, something that one wouldn't even think of in a Disney movie today.
Ultimately, they didn't know what to make of it because it was something that Disney hadn't tried before. Sure, they'd done dark before with films like Sleeping Beauty, but the dark didn't really come in until Maleficent conjures up "all the powers of Hell" and the tone was still fairly light and pretty much Disney-esque throughout. The tone remains fairly consistent in "The Black Cauldron" to the end, trying to create a very dark and gritty world, even to the point of the Horned King being destroyed by being sucked into the Cauldron - the flesh literally flayed off of his bone in one of the goriest Disney
...which is kind of jarring when, right after it, the Horned King's comedic goblin sidekick runs off making faces that would make Woody Woodpecker look subtle and laughing like a maniac in what was clearly supposed to be a gut-busting moment for the audience.
So, there were moments where this film was clearly trying to do something rather dark more mature, and then clear moments where the directors remembered it was a Disney film and comedy and merriment are shoved in. It makes for some awkward mood whiplash and I can understand why many people were turned off by it. Like many things, it's gotten a cult following since and I admit to liking it as a kid...but this is really a case where the books are better.
Still, it isn't all that bad. The voice acting is good - particularly that of John Hurt as the Horned King are amazing - and the moments where the dark is allowed to be played up without comedic relief are great...it's just a shame that there are so few. A lot of work clearly went into the designs of both the characters and the environments - and even objects, as The Black Cauldron stands as the first Disney film to ever use computer generated animation - particularly the Cauldron itself. And, as I said before, the main characters that appear at all adapted pretty faithfully, with some quirks thrown in because it is a Disney film. While the Chronicles of Prydain do deserve a good film adaptation and I'd be the first in line to see them when they do come out, this was definitely not the best way to go about it.
The Black Cauldron is now available from Walt Disney Pictures.
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