THE BLACK HOLE (1979) Disney's answer to Star Wars (!). What a dark and campy cult film.

Disney wanted to make a space adventure film, along the lines of a Thousand Leagues under the Sea. A spaced-themed disaster movie. So 1970s!

The Good:

The movie still looks great! Some SFX shots are noticeably green-screened, but for the most part, the look of this film is really cool.

The concept: (Spoilers for a movie released in 1979) The idea that Maximilian Schell turned his entire human crew into androids is messed up. Also, the bad robot Maximilian still holds up! Holy shit is that thing evil.

Then the insane end. The good crew ends up in Heaven, and Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Schell) ends up in Hell.

The actors are also great! (from wiki:) The film stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins and Ernest Borgnine, while the voices of the main robot characters are provided by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens (both uncredited).

But I think the biggest shocker of the movie is the Tony Perkins death scene. Holy crap was this intense for a Disney movie! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw2y3faZhUk&ab_channel=SynthesaurusRexSynthesaurusRex

Now the Bad/Campy

The Score - I don't like it. It's super repetitive with big orchestra sounds. They were trying to go for the Star Wars big theme style, but I wish they went more futuristic - with synth music.

I really wish Tangarine Dream scored this movie.

But my biggest complaint is having humans be able to mentally link with robots through telepathy. WTF? How can a human have a psychic link with a robot?!?!?! In the movie, this helps move the story along.

I wish they just used a coms device or an implant in the human to communicate with the robots instantly.

In the end, this movie goes from dark, to really campy with the robots, then back to dark.

If this was not a Disney product, I would love to see it remade. An updated version would be really interesting.

Submitted May 31, 2021 at 12:34AM by this_is_the_way_2000 https://ift.tt/3uB44ZG