The Black Hole (1979)

This movie has a lot going for it right from the start. Darker than the average Disney movie? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in space? An all-star cast? Sign me up! Will this story suck me in as completely as the first time? Or will it just plain suck?

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I’m so excited about this movie I can’t even tell you. I’ve never seen it. I’ve actually never heard of it before this blog. But you tell me 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and you immediately have my attention. But more importantly… IT’S THE LAST MOVIE OF THE 70s!!!! Have I mentioned we’ve been in the 70s for three years of real time? I’m so over it.

By the early 1970s, it was becoming apparent that the formulaic Disney fare was starting to wear thin on audiences. I’ve said that about a dozen times now, so clearly it didn’t stop them from continuing to stick to that formula like their lives depended on it. But it did inspire writers Bob Barash and Richard Landau to look to the popular disaster movie genre for inspiration. The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno had been smash hits, so they came up with the idea to take those ideas to the stars for a draft called Space Station One. Winston Hibler of the True Life Adventures series (remember him?) came on to produce, suggesting the inclusion of a recently discovered black hole.

Production on this film was not smooth. After many, many rewrites and the replacement of Barash and Landau with William Wood, Hibler ended up retiring from the studio. The project languished on the shelf until 1975 when Space Probe One was returned to active production because if you may remember, they were so desperate to put something out they were willing to try anything anyone remotely connected to Walt stood vaguely near.

Hibler came out of retirement shortly after to help nudge the languishing production, dragging with him our old friend Peter Ellenshaw to bring his magic touch to the lavish sets. Unfortunately, he died shortly after, and the project returned to Ron Miller. Escape to Witch Mountain director John Hough signed on, which feels like a much better fit than what we actually got. But with a script that was still an unqualified disaster, Hough quit. His replacement initially read the script and declined, which, after close to five years should probably have been a clue that this was a bad idea. However, Ellenshaw’s trademark incredible matte paintings and impressive models convinced him to direct.

Said replacement was Gerry Nelson, best known for Freaky Friday and a bunch of TV work, not exactly the resume one would expect for a big-budget space adventure but here we are. The new writers, Jeb Rosebrook and Gerry Day, were also best known for their TV work, proving once and for all my insistence that film and TV are different mediums that require different skill sets. Not to say that someone can’t have both skill sets, but there’s a reason filmographies filled with nothing but TV don’t fill me with confidence.

Part of the reason the script had to be completely redone five hundred quintillion times was that the original drafts really weren’t very good. The other part is that throughout the movie’s ridiculously long production cycle, the disaster movies that inspired this film in the first place were falling out of fashion. And what replaced them? Ironically enough, another sci-fi movie, one that turned the entire movie industry on its head. Suddenly every movie studio in the world wanted to replicate the mindblowing success of Star Wars, Disney included. While I don’t believe Black Hole exists solely to rip off Star Wars, having been deep in production long before the other film came out, it’s true that the script was hastily retooled to include the robots and laser fights that were so popular.

Star Wars was a family movie in a sense that hadn’t been seen in a very long time: a family movie for the whole family, adults included. I say this as someone who’s never actually seen Star Wars despite quoting memes all the time. But I’m trying to make a segue here. The Black Hole, too, was specifically designed not to appeal solely to kids and to buck Disney’s reputation for being out of touch, uncool, and exclusively for babies. Better late than never, I guess. Not only did they specifically include some mild swearing and off-screen gore to court a PG rating, but the very themes of this movie were sure to go over kids’ heads. Eventually, this desire to create movies with more adult themes led to the creation of Touchstone Pictures, a segment of the studio that existed just for that purpose.

Even with all those rewrites, expectations for The Black Hole were high. This was going to be the movie that put Disney back on top, ushering in a new era of grittier, edgier films that could actually compete at the box office. So, on top of the astronomical $20 million budget, the struggling studio set aside another $6 million for marketing. This included a comic book, a novelization by Alan Dean Foster of Star Wars novels fame, a Read-Along storybook, and a metric crapload of toys and action figures. Many of these are still popular and highly valued by collectors even now.

So did it work? Well…. Star Wars, this ain’t. Contrary to popular belief, this movie didn’t lose money and is far from being Disney’s biggest flop ever. Still, a net $35 million gross over a combined $26 million budget isn’t exactly the return on investment anyone hoped for. Nor did it impress critics. While the effects were impressive, especially compared to most of Disney’s other 70s films, the writing and acting were pretty uniformly derided, and it was criticized for having too much talk and not enough action. The intended audience was unclear, with parents complaining about the deaths, cursing, and depiction of Hell. Because Karens gonna Karen.

Still, even after reading all these bad reviews, I’m still pretty hype. There’s got to be a reason The Black Hole is considered a cult classic, and there are few things I love more than a good cult classic. Camp is a surefire way to my heart. And a campy version of 20,000 Leagues? Sign me up! And hey, even if they weren’t entirely successful, I’ve been complaining for three years about Disney doing the same thing over and over again. This time, they’re actually trying something different in tone, subject matter, and material, and you know what? I respect that even if it isn’t entirely successful.

STORY

We begin on an auspicious note: two and a half minutes of black screen. This was one of the last Hollywood movies to begin with an overture, but even other movies I’ve seen with overtures played them over the credits. Not The Black Hole. When the credits do kick in, they’re a series of neon green gridlines, the longest computer graphics imagery scene ever animated up to this point. I always thought Tron was the first use of CGI ever put to film. I learned something today. Thanks, Black Hole.

Fade in on the resident plot convenience droid reading the log of the spaceship Palomino, 537 days into its mission here in the year 2130. The droid is called Vital Information Necessarily Centralized, or V.I.N.CENT for short, and as the weirdly redundant backronym suggests he’s ostensibly a knowledge base. Buuut we’ll quickly find out he can really do whatever the script says. He’s quickly joined by Captain Dan Holland, science officer Dr. Alex Durant, and First Officer Lieutenant Charlie Pizer for a bunch of technobabble that basically translates to “oh no we’re lost.” Dr. Kate McCrae and Harry Booth, a journalist who’s there for some reason, come up to see what pushed them off course: the biggest black hole any of them have ever seen.

Just seeing the holographic model of the black hole gives everyone the creeps. They take turns waxing poetic about the incredible destructive power of a black hole, taking turns to get increasingly hyperbolic about how evil this thing is. The best one is Charlie straight up saying black holes are the devil. Do you get it? Do you get that black holes are evil? Aren’t you glad we won’t be going anywhere near one of those awful monstrous things? They’re so very scary. Oh, wait, no, VINCENT (I’m not typing all that punctuation every time) picks up a strange reading: a ship drifting dangerously close to the black hole without getting sucked in. Weird. And intriguing.

VINCENT and Charlie sift through records of past ships that have passed this way. The only match is the USS Cygnus, which went missing twenty years ago on a mission for… sigh… habitable life in outer space. You’d think with the revolving door of writers and revisions this script went through, they would have caught a line that utterly nonsensical. But no, I guess the Cygnus and the Palomino are looking for organisms that they can occupy. Sure. Anyway, the Cygnus was supposed to return to Earth but vanished before it did. One of the scientists aboard was Kate’s father. But their leader, as Harry helpfully exposits, was Dr. Hans Reinhardt, an eccentric and notoriously arrogant genius who would surely hate to have to abandon such a great scientific undertaking.

The Palomino signals to their sister ship, but no one answers. Charlie offers to explore with VINCENT, but it’s too dangerous. Still, there must be a reason the black hole hasn’t swallowed the ghost ship, so Dan finally relents. But they don’t make it out of the ship. As they fly towards the Cygnus for a better look, the gravity of the black hole shakes the Palomino like a ragdoll. Then, all of a sudden, the violent tremors stop. They’ve hit a field of zero gravity, unexpected with the powerful force of the black hole right next to them. Alex quickly realizes the field has something to do with the Cygnus, so they pull under the massive ghost ship for a closer look.

They go too far under. The turbulence starts up again, worse this time. It’s so bad that the Palomino’s oxygen lines snap, and the ship begins to break apart as they plummet toward the black hole. VINCENT floats out to try to repair the moving ship, knowing he may well never come back. Charlie panics when his communicators can’t make contact with VINCENT through all this interference, so they call on Kate’s ESP. Because she has ESP. That only works on robots. Um. Okay. Well, it works, and she sees that VINCENT is just fine. At least, he was, until his tether snaps and he starts to drift away to his doom. Charlie panics but Dan won’t let him risk his life to save his little robot buddy. Besides, VINCENT’s fine, he has a built-in grappling hook. Programming as the plot demands, I’m telling you. Oh, and throughout all of this Alex and Harry try and fail to make repairs with what I swear are hot glue guns.

Hot glue probably won’t fix a broken spaceship, so the Palomino returns to the relative safety of the Cygnus’s zero gravity field. They have no choice but to land somewhere and make their repairs where the black hole can’t get them. Suddenly, the Cygnus lights up. Maybe it’s not abandoned at all! All the more reason to investigate. If there are people on board, maybe Kate’s father is alive! Dan, ever the voice of reason, doesn’t like any of this one bit, but they have to make their repairs. So he lands the Palomino on a docking elevator. Oh, did I mention the Cygnus is GORGEOUS? More on this in Artistry, but my jaw dropped when those lights came on. I forgive you for the hot glue guns, movie.

Apparently, the zero gravity field only extends to the outside of the Cygnus, because no one has any trouble walking through a jetway into a pod to the Cygnus. Dan tasks Charlie with returning to the Palomino to stand watch, much to Charlie’s annoyance. Then they can start examining their surroundings. Suddenly, a laser zaps Dan’s gun right out of his hand! A second one knocks VINCENT to the ground, but he’s fine. Still, looks like the ship isn’t as friendly as we hoped. Two hulking red sentry robots march into the disarming pod and lead them to their transport pod. And this is an observation, I have no actual evidence for this, but I swear the way the pod is configured had to have inspired Rise of the Resistance. The way the droid is in front of the two rows of seats looks too similar to be coincidental. If nothing else, someone was definitely hoping for a Black Hole ride, because the pod carries them up a lift hill surrounded by a glass tunnel that looks exactly like a roller coaster track.

As they move through the ship, Kate stares around wide-eyed in the hopes of seeing her father. I’m staring wide-eyed as they make it to the control room. Because oh my god this set. This set. Is incredible. It’s this massive colorful cavern filled with bleepy bloopy lights, manned by humanoid figures all in black with mirrored faces. None of them answer when Kate calls out for her father. VINCENT picks up on why immediately: they’re all robots. Their leader, a devil-red monstrosity floats down to glare at them from the one glowing red eye in the middle of its face. Almost immediately, the thing’s hands whir open to reveal a set of blender blades it’s only too happy to address the crew.

At the most dramatic moment possible, Dr. Hans Reinhardt himself turns his chair out of the shadows to call off his giant evil blender, named Maximilian. He welcomes his new guests to the Cygnus and reveals that Kate’s father is dead. He’s totally broken up about it really for real you guys. Just like he’s really for real shocked that the Cygnus’s crew never made it back to Earth. He lost contact with them after they encountered an asteroid field, and he’s been here on the Cygnus ever since. His robot crew only disarmed them all to protect the Cygnus, and they mean no harm when they march Charlie down to the control room to join the rest of Team Good Guys. Every word is obviously the truth. This man is absolutely not a villain.

Within seconds, Alex is enamored with Reinhardt and apologizes on behalf of his crew. He offers Reinhardt a ride back to Earth, but this is 20,000 Leagues in space so of course our eccentric mad scientist doesn’t want to leave his crazy awesome ship to rejoin the society he rejected. His anti-gravity force field keeps him safe from the black hole, and he has everything he needs up here… especially now that this bunch is here. He invites Dan, Charlie, and VINCENT to go with Maximilian to find the parts they need for the ship while he picks the brains of Alex, Kate, and Harry. The giant evil blender bullies VINCENT, who refuses to be intimidated much to Reinhardt’s amusement. He compares them to David and Goliath, establishing a running theme that Reinhardt really, really, really loves his Bible imagery.

After Dan warns everyone to be careful in full earshot of Reinhardt, the party splits up. Reinhardt explains to his audience that there’s so much yet to be explored. He can’t possibly return to Earth just because human governments said so, giving the poorly-aged example of what might have happened if Christopher Columbus hadn’t murdered millions of indigenous people. Maximilian, still trying and failing to bully VINCENT, leads the other half of the team to another room containing another droid not unlike VINCENT if someone took a baseball bat to him and then ran him over with a semi-truck. Maximilian knocks the ruined robot over and that’s the last straw for Dan. He leaves Charlie to the tender mercies of the Cuisinart from Hell, and Charlie bravely lists off everything they need while VINCENT politely introduces himself to the ruined droid.

Reinhardt takes Harry, Kate, and an awestruck Alex on a tour of the Cygnus. Just like Nemo went out of his way to show Aronnax his nuclear power, Reinhardt boasts about the energy source he created, creatively called cygnium. Alex gushes that he’s the greatest space scientist of all time, and gee if only there was a word for that. Reinhardt doesn’t even try to play humble, going as far as to call all other astrophysicists failures. Alex notices Harry is missing but doesn’t think too much of it when there’s science to do. So that means Dan and Harry are free to do a little exploring.

Dan takes one of the little Rise of the Resistance pods to a hallway, where he finds the old crew’s dormitories. The bunks are in curiously good condition for a ship that’s had no humans on it for twenty years. Many of them still have personal belongings, like family photos and uniforms in closets. There’s no dialogue in this scene, making for some nice visual storytelling. It makes me wish they’d brought up Kate’s father here, maybe showing one of those family photos with him and Kate for some heavier impact. But instead, Dan follows the hallway to the end and spots a huge group of humanoid robots reverently carrying a long, thin metal box. They toss the coffin out of the airlock and watch with heads bowed as it vanishes into the black hole. But robots don’t have funerals. That would be absurd.

As for Harry, he finds a room where a humanoid is hard at work monitoring more bloopy lights. He tries to make polite conversation, but it doesn’t look like the robot can talk. So he takes the liberty of looking around some more. It turns out that the humanoid is monitoring the conditions of a lush greenhouse teeming with edible plants. The foliage goes on for miles and could feed a small nation. And yet, it’s here on this ship with only one human on board. Weird, and getting weirder- the humanoid gets up and Harry catches him limping.

Something’s definitely not right here. Dan fills Charlie in on the funeral, and they agree that Reinhardt’s absolutely lying to them and they have to get out of here. Nice of him to let them fix the Palomino, though. One member of the crew is still completely enamored with Reinhardt’s brilliance, and Reinhardt is happy to soak up Alex’s praise. He keys in on why almost immediately: Alex has ambitions of greatness all his own, ambitions Reinhardt is more than happy to encourage over dinner.

Somehow, probably through Kate’s ESP, Dan and Charlie get the dinner invite, too. VINCENT doesn’t want to leave them but his constant attempts to one-up Maximilian won’t help anything. He’s left behind in some kind of weird robot rec room with a bunch of sentry robots practicing their marksmanship. The broken robot from earlier introduces the leader of the sentries, a shiny black model called Special Troops Arms Regiment, or S.T.A.R. He’s never really gotten over being replaced by Maximilian as the head of all the robots, and he has a habit of taking his frustrations out on the poor little old-timer.

Dinner with the first humans he’s seen in twenty years is a special occasion, so Reinhardt changes into a devil-red suit with a Dracula medal. You know, in case the symbolism was too subtle thus far. He explains that their food comes from a tiny garden he keeps that’s just barely enough for himself, earning an arched eyebrow from Harry. Dan assures him they’ll be out of his hair soon but Alex the suck-up has no desire to leave. Nor does Reinhardt really want them to. He needs someone to bear witness as he achieves his life’s dream: to fly inside the black hole!

To give that time to sink in, we cut to a scene that was almost certainly added after the success of Star Wars and its droids and laser battles. STAR beckons the two VINCENT-type droids forward to challenge them to a shooting match. The filmmakers have to show off their shiny new CGI, after all. STAR wins handily, but only because the broken robot is so intimidated he lets him win. Well, VINCENT doesn’t like bullies, so he challenges STAR to a rematch. He wins handily, with lots of trash talk, angering STAR so much that he short circuits. That’s the end of him. The busted robot is so impressed that someone finally stood up to STAR that he leads VINCENT to parts storage for a reward of exposition.

Speaking of exposition, Reinhardt holds a Q&A session about his mad plan to fly straight through the black hole. He’s convinced that the speed of the vortex will send them safely through to whatever is on the other side, where he’ll discover the ultimate knowledge. You can see the hearts in Alex’s eyes as he half invites, half orders them to witness his greatness. Maximilian calls Reinhardt away, leaving the crew alone. Everyone but Alex comes to the same conclusion: Reinhardt is out of his mind. Nothing he says adds up, especially the humanoids’ strangely human behavior and the tiny garden that’s actually a huge jungle. Harry has an idea: they can hijack the Cygnus, reprogram the robots, and take Reinhardt to Earth with them. That way, Alex doesn’t have to pass up this opportunity and none of them get murdered horribly probably.

Once the two droids are alone, the ruined robot introduces himself as BIO-Sanitation Battalion, or BOB, the last of VINCENT’s brother robots. He explains that Reinhardt has no intention of letting anyone leave this ship alive. We kind of figured that out already, but things are worse than they could ever have imagined. The sleek black robots aren’t humanoids at all, they are human. Reinhardt killed the original crew and transformed their bodies into mindlessly obedient cyborg zombies. And the same fate awaits the crew of the Palomino if they don’t get out of here. Yikes.

Even now that the rest of the crew has resolved to get away from Reinhardt as fast as physically possible, Alex won’t hear a word against him. He keeps making excuses for every messed up thing he’s done. Of course he cast off the shackles of conventional morality! There’s science to do! Just then, Kate gets an ESP message from VINCENT sending for the rest of the team. He has something important to tell them. So, Dan, Charlie, and Harry head out to meet him while Alex continues to rhapsodize at Kate about Reinhardt seeing the mind of God.

Reinhardt jumpscares them, quoting scripture out of pretty much nowhere. Kate explains that everyone else went back to the Palomino, and Reinhardt is too fascinated by Kate’s plot powers to be annoyed that they disobeyed his orders. He invites Alex to take his notes back to Earth after he accompanies him into the black hole, and Alex’s face lights up. Meanwhile, BOB fills the rest of Team Good Guy in on the horrible truth about the Cygnus’s crew. There’s one new detail: Frank McCrae led a mutiny against Reinhardt, leading the crew to try to return to Earth against the Captain’s wishes. So Reinhardt killed him personally before turning everyone into the spooky humanoids.

That explains everything: the abnormally large greenhouse, the funeral, the limping robot, everything. It also explains that they have to get out of here like yesterday. Dan’s willing to hijack the ship now, but Harry’s soured on that plan given the very real possibility of being lobotomized. There’s nothing else for it. They rush back to the Palomino to escape, leaving VINCENT to call Kate (and Alex) back to the ship. Kate gets the transmission just as Alex asks to stay with Reinhardt forever and ever. He’s long since stopped seeing reason and refuses to go back to the Palomino now that Reinhardt has readied the ship for its journey into the black hole.

Kate reacts with mild surprise when VINCENT sends another transmission, relaying the gruesome truth about her father’s fate and the humanoids. Everyone’s flat reactions to everything have to be a directing choice and this particular underreaction is absolutely wild. Kate begs Alex to come to his senses, stage whispering everything she’s learned loud enough for the whole ship to hear. It’s the fourth time we’ve gotten this exposition, and it’s a real shame that repeating it so often lessens its impact so dramatically. What follows could hit really hard if it came after the first reveal- or even before. As it stands, we’re still earning that PG rating. The zombified face that rasps at Alex when he removes the humanoid’s mask is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen from Disney. But it could really pack a punch with some better direction.

All of Alex’s illusions crash down. Reinhardt tries to smooth over the discovery, insisting he’s the only thing keeping these poor wretches alive. But Maximilian favors a more direct approach. Alex and Kate try to run while Reinhardt starts monologuing. The doors slam close. The spinning death blender reaches forward. Alex tries to shield himself with Reinhardt’s notes, using knowledge to protect himself from evil. But it doesn’t work. And MAXIMILLIAN SHOVES HIS BLADES INTO ALEX’S CHEST AND TURNS ON PUREE. There’s no blood because as much as this movie wants to be darker and edgier, it’s still a Disney movie, but the shredded paper gives you a pretty good idea of the gore splattering just out of frame. Kate screams as Alex’s body falls into some kind of giant bug zapper thing. And he’s gone.

Those deadly blades keep spinning until Reinhardt scolds Maximilian for wasting such a brilliant man. Then he steps between Maximilian and Kate, begging her for protection. It’s a weird line, and tellingly, it was actually an ad-lib so this wasn’t part of the script. The idea of Dr. Frankenstein here losing control of his monster is a fascinating one that sadly doesn’t go very far, but Kate’s not inclined to help her friend’s killer anyway. She hopes he dies in that black hole. So Reinhardt orders his sentries to haul her off to the hospital. She knows too much.

Reinhardt calls up to the Palomino to give them permission to launch, expecting them to bear witness to his historic flight into the black hole. He says Alex and Kate chose to stay by his side, but VINCENT quickly gives the team the real story. Alex is dead, and Kate is in trouble. So Dan and the robots spring into action to save the girl, leaving Charlie and Harry to guard the ship again. Just then, the sentries find a robot that VINCENT and BOB destroyed earlier, making Reinhardt realize he might not need witnesses after all.

Alarms blare throughout the Cygnus, and sentries swarm into the hangar. Reinhardt prepares to drag them all down into the depths of the black hole with him. Dan finds Kate in the hospital where humanoids are lobotomized, wrapped in tin foil like a baked potato. With his awesome double-barreled laser revolver he pew pews the lobotomy laser into tiny pieces and scoops Kate up while VINCENT and BOB blow up sentries. Kate hugs her rescuer and Dan gives her a peck on the cheek, and it all comes off as very platonic relief that she’s safe! Yay! I love it when the male lead and female lead aren’t arbitrarily forced to be a couple in a movie that doesn’t need to be a romance! It’s a rare treat, let me tell you.

Two humanoids slink past two sentries in the hall when suddenly laser blasts from beneath the cloaks blast the sentries to pieces! It’s Dan and Kate, disguised in the humanoids’ robes to rejoin VINCENT and BOB and sneak safely back to the Palomino. It’s a genius plan, but it doesn’t work. Reinhardt sees them through his monitors and orders his sentries to fire on all the humanoids. Better to rebuild his crew members than leave these two alive. So the sentries line up nice and neat on a catwalk so Team Good Guys can pew pew pew away at them and we can have our big zappy laser battle. Because it worked for Star Wars.

Reinhardt facepalms in rage because his robot death army was defeated so easily by two humans and two droids. At this point, the best thing to do is just to let them get back to the Palomino, then kill them. While mowing down more sentries, Dan calls up to the Palomino to tell his friends to get the ship ready. They’re almost there, but four more sentries bar the way. For some reason, these four mooks give them a lot more trouble than any of the other mooks so far, so Charlie bursts in to bust some heads.

For all Harry’s talk about heroics, when push comes to shove he’s a big old coward. He starts off right at Charlie’s side, then fakes being shot in the leg so he can stay behind. The second he’s alone, he runs back to the Palomino and fires up her engines. A golf club putter rises out of the control panel and it seems like Harry has stranded everyone else in the belly of the beast. But maybe it’s for the best. Reinhardt’s robots fire on the Palomino and blast the poor ship to bits. And Harry with it.

Their friend paid for his life for turning traitor, but Harry’s betrayal may have saved everyone else’s lives. Still, it won’t do them any good if Reinhardt kills them all in the black hole. VINCENT comes up with the brilliant idea to steal the probe ship that apparently exists. Maybe I missed something. I don’t know. But it’s a better plan than going up against Reinhardt and Maximilian to hijack the Cygnus, so off they go.

Out of freaking nowhere, a meteor storm kicks up. Red-hot glowing rocks smash the Cygnus to pieces. Our heroes run for their lives to the little roller coaster track tunnel. It seems the black hole is sucking in most of the meteors, but that’s small comfort with the ship falling apart around them. No one seems particularly concerned about the giant holes in the ship letting all their oxygen escape, or the risk of being pulled into the cold void of space with no helmets on, though. So there’s that.

To make matters worse, sentries follow our heroes to the greenhouse, pew pew pewing away as they hide in the foliage. The good guys pew pew pew right back until a meteor rips through the greenhouse roof. The cold void of space freezes the humid greenhouse in an instant, but for some reason only BOB- who, may I remind you all, is a robot- is affected. Everyone almost gets sucked out of the ship but BOB and VINCENT save them with their rocket thrusters and no one suffocates.

Even Reinhardt’s control room isn’t safe from meteor ex machina, but the danger only fuels the deranged captain’s determination to fly into the black hole. But it’s too late. The Cygnus is completely self-destructing. Monitors erupt into clouds of sparks while debris knocks out humanoids like bowling pins. Reinhardt’s only chance at achieving his goal is the very probe ship our heroes are trying to escape to. Before Maximilian can fire it up, a monitor crashes down onto him, crushing him beneath its weight. He pleads for his robots to help him, but the giant evil blender and the zombies turn their backs on their creator. He dies alone, begging for help.

As another explosion rocks the ship, Maximilian bursts from a door and traps our heroes between his evil blender blades and the exploding ship behind them. Pew pew pew go the lasers, and VINCENT full-on tackles the behemoth. Maximilian catches him between two electrified arms and it looks like it’s over for our little robot buddy. But wait! VINCENT has blender blades too! And they cut through Maximilian’s casing with brutal efficiency, destroying the monster Cuisinart from the inside just like he did to Alex.

Our heroes clamber around the outside of the ship, still unaffected by the lack of oxygen, gravity, or logic. Charlie falls off the ship, but VINCENT saves him and that’s the end of that. And then tragedy strikes. Somewhere during the fight with Maximilian that I didn’t catch despite watching this movie four times, BOB took some serious damage. And it can’t be repaired. VINCENT begs him to get up but he’s done. It’s okay, though. He’s happy in the knowledge that he did something to help his friends. And he shuts down for good.

At the very last second, what’s left of Team Good Guys scrambles onto the probe ship. The ruins of the Cygnus explode, and the wreckage tumbles down into the black hole. The probe ship blasts off and for one shining moment, it looks like they’re home free. Unfortunately for them, when Reinhardt tried to prepare the probe ship, he programmed it to automatically fly into the black hole in the Cygnus’s stead. The probe ship won’t respond to the controls. And the black hole pulls them in.

Then things get weird. Echoes of lines from earlier in the movie reverberate through their minds. The camera spins around and around itself enough to make me motion sick, and I don’t get motion sick. Charlie cries a little bit. Everyone closes their eyes against the sensory onslaught. And then just as suddenly… silence. We finally find out what’s beyond the black hole. And it’s…. the Judeo-Christian Hell?

Throughout the making of this movie, the actors weren’t allowed to read the last 25 pages of the script. Why? Because after all those rewrites, after the screenplay passed through dozens of hands, after getting all the way to the filming stage… they never had an ending for this movie!!!! Gary Nelson just had to wing it! And what he came up with looks like he watched 2001: A Space Odyssey once and took it as a challenge to out-weird it. And then they saw Reinhardt’s obsession with becoming God or whatever and threw it in.

Okay, time to attempt a recap. Reinhardt’s body and hair extensions float over a burning hellscape. Maximilian floats above him. Reinhardt’s eyes snap open. He stares at him. Maximilian stares back. They reach for each other and it looks almost romantic which is really off-putting. Reinhardt’s arms close around his creation and they’re pulled out of frame. When they rise back up, Reinhardt is trapped inside Maximilian for all eternity. Reinimilian stands on a flaming volcano surrounded by the lost souls of the humanoids. Then a bright light flashes and we’re pulled into a heavenly crystalline hallway led by a chroma-keyed angel. One swirly thing later the probe ship bursts out the other side and our heroes fly towards a planet haloed by the sun. Earth? Maybe.

Yeah, I have no idea what that was. But you know what? I still enjoyed the rest of it! It’s like a gothic horror mystery set in space, and the plot is just as intriguing as it was in 20,000 Leagues if not pulled off nearly as well. The direction was really, really janky, and you can tell this big ambitious space epic was way out of Gary Nelson’s wheelhouse. The result is some bananas writing choices and incredibly stiff performances from some of the best actors in the world… and yet, they’re charismatic enough that they’re not not entertaining. I’d rather have the studio shoot for the moon and miss than stick to what’s safe for another twenty years. This is a very “no thoughts, just vibes” kind of movie, and the vibes are immaculate.

CHARACTERS

Captain Dan Holland is the leader of the group. Practical and pragmatic, he does his best to round up the crew and do what needs to be done. They don’t always listen to him, but it’s telling that the ones that go rogue tend to be the ones that die. Due to the subdued direction, none of the characters’ personalities really shine, and that hits Dan particularly hard. It’s a shame, because the long-suffering only sane man could be an interesting source of friction within the main conflict. He’s one of two Ned Land analogs in this 20,000 Leagues adaptation- the part of Ned Land that tries so hard to get everyone out of there. Robert Forster was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Jackie Brown, but a modern viewer would know him best as Ed from Breaking Bad.

First Officer Lieutenant Charlie Pizer is the other Ned Land analog, this time as the feisty, hot-headed upstart ready to throw hands with anyone who keeps him aboard this tin can. Yet for all his battle prowess, the youngest member of the crew always seems to be the one who gets stuck guarding the Palomino. Maybe it’s because he’s too reckless and could put them in danger, but it’s never really explored. Joseph Bottoms (The Dove) is the last member of this cast who’s still alive at the time of this writing.

Dr. Kate McCrae was added to the story in the interest of having a female character around. Also, she has ESP with the robots for some reason that’s never adequately explained. She falls into several obligatory female character tropes, notably that she’s the one who needs rescuing late in the film. Could be worse, though. At least she doesn’t die. And they did manage to buck the trend of throwing in a girl just so the male lead has someone to smooch! There’s no hint of romance between her and any of the men, just one chaste cheek kiss that’s really not necessarily romantic at all. So that was nice.

Casting Kate was something of a fiasco. Gary Nelson’s first choice was an unknown actress named Sigourney Weaver, but the casting director rejected her because of her unusual name. So, she went off and filmed another little sci-fi movie called Alien, which came out shortly before The Black Hole. I’m sure that casting director is kicking himself. The second choice was actress-model Jennifer O’Neill, known at the time as a spokeswoman for hair care products. To make the zero-gravity sequences more believable and easier to film, the studio asked her to cut her hair short. She reluctantly agreed and brought her personal stylist to the studio, steadying her nerves with a glass of wine for every inch they cut. She got into her car drunk and got into a severe accident leaving the studio. She survived, but her injuries were so severe she had to be recast. They ended up with Yvette Mimeux, best known for The Time Machine and previously seen on this blog as the girl in Monkeys, Go Home. Ironically enough, my greatest praise for her in that movie was her shiny shiny hair. So that’s awkward.

Dr. Alex Durant is our Aronnax, but without any of the grandfatherly charm. That sounds like a negative but it’s actually a very interesting take on the archetype. Alex doesn’t want to use Reinhardt’s discoveries for the betterment of humanity like Aronnax wants Nemo’s. He’s just as power-hungry and ambitious as the evil doctor, looking to make a name for himself. He’s not a bad judge of character, he’s seizing an opportunity. And then, just as he starts to realize the error of his ways, he dies horribly in one of the most shocking moments on this blog thus far. Part of what makes me think of Alex as almost a secondary villain is the cold, dead-eyed performance by Psycho’s Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins. He’s one of those actors who I think is always going to be creepy. Yay typecasting?

Harry Booth also probably didn’t need to be here. His major contribution to the plot is discovering the greenhouse, but that could be handed off to one of the others. Maybe let Charlie out of the background for five minutes, I don’t know. And again, it’s a missed opportunity that his character does next to nothing because most of his dialogue is trying to urge Dan to make a big heroic escape, leading up to his abandonment of the rest of the crew to save his own skin. Again, could have been another sub-conflict! God, this movie needs a remake. The legendary Ernest Borgnine is pretty wasted here, but audiences would have been thrilled to see the lead from McHale’s Navy and a Best Actor Oscar Winner for Marty. And for my animation buffs, he’s also the voice of Mermaid Man on Spongebob Squarepants!

V.I.N.CENT is our Conseil, the sedate voice of reason among all this discord. He’s also the biggest sign that this is, in fact, a Disney movie underneath all the swearing and death. The guy looks like toy bait, and that’s pretty much what he is. But I can’t say it bothered me too much. You expect cutesy sidekicks in a Disney movie way more than you expect somebody getting eviscerated, so this, at least felt like familiar ground. And I always love Roddy McDowall’s particular brand of snark. After That Darn Cat, Bullwhip Griffin, and Cat From Outer Space, I’m really going to miss the guy! He’ll be back one more time, but not for quite a while.

B.O.B. is a nice counterpoint to V.I.N.CENT., a little folksy where VINCENT is cultured, older and wiser where VINCENT is feisty and ready for action. The two play off each other well, and it’s hard not to feel bad for BOB every time you see how poorly the shiner, newer robots have treated him. Not quite bad enough that the death scene lands, because the circumstances of that death are ridiculous, but enough that the guy’s likable. Nelson wasn’t satisfied with the original design for BOB, so he smashed the model with a baseball bat and that’s what we see on screen. Brutal. Slim Pickens’ cartoonish cowboy voice stands out like a sore thumb in this very grounded cast, but it doesn’t not work. I’ve warmed up to the guy since Apple Dumpling Gang, and it’s sad that this is his last Disney movie before his death in 1983.

Dr. Hans Reinhardt is obviously Captain Nemo, but a much more overtly evil Captain Nemo than the bastion of black-and-gray morality from 20,000 Leagues. Now, the anti-hero Nemo has become one of my absolute favorite characters in anything ever since seeing Leagues for the first time, so while Reinhardt isn’t quite as fascinating a character, I still thoroughly enjoyed watching him. The shallower characterization allowed Reinhardt to play the theatrical, scenery-chewing drama queen we all love in our Disney villains. It’s the first time in a while we’ve seen a performance like that from our bad guy, and it’s clear that Maximilian Schell is having the time of his life fulfilling a lifelong dream of being in a Disney movie. The Best Actor nominee (Man in the Glass Booth) had seen Snow White as a child, and it stuck with him. It’s always kind of fun when the actors react just like we would!

MUSIC

The Black Hole was the world’s first digitally recorded film soundtrack, which gave John Barry a whole new sandbox to play in. The James Bond composer mixes orchestral and electronic music to create a sound that’s both familiar and completely unique. The spooky black hole theme repeats throughout, representing the omnipresent entity looming over our cast throughout, creating a nice sense of dread, and the bombastic march that represents our heroes amps us up for the action sequences. This score might actually be a little too good, as it overshadows the actors at points. Nelson’s directing just can’t keep up with the story the score is trying to tell.

ARTISTRY

This movie is gorgeous, you guys. Yes, some of the effects are dated, but that only adds to the charm. This was one of the last movies where the special effects were created under the studio system, meaning that all the effect work was done by Disney and not outsourced to another company. They did try to lease equipment from Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic, but the equipment was both unavailable and prohibitively expensive, so Disney invented a computer-controlled camera to track across scenes that would be added in post-production and create more convincing composite shots.

But of course, we can’t forget our practical effects work. Disney Legend Peter Ellenshaw came out of retirement to provide 150 of the magical matte paintings that did so much for the visuals of Mary Poppins and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Only around 13 were actually used, but hey, a few matte paintings is better than no matte paintings. When used well, they’re gorgeous, and really transport you into another time and place. Speaking of paint, the swirling, ominous black hole is a whirlpool mixed with paint filmed in a tank of water then rear-projected behind the actors. We know now that that’s not what a black hole looks like at all, but you know what? It looks cool.

Speaking of looking cool, the model work in this movie is unbelievable. The 12-foot model of the Cygnus took my breath away the first time it lit up. It’s based on Victorian conservatories, giving it this Gothic, skeletal look that I was really, really into. And if you can sometimes see the strings on the Palomino or the droids? I’m willing to give it a pass. There’s a reason this film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. And there’s no shame in losing to Alien.

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

Parts of this movie were made for the theme parks. You cannot convince me otherwise. Around this time, an old Tomorrowland ride called Adventures Thru Inner Space was closing. What better replacement than a surefire hit set in space? Imagineering planned an elaborate, interactive ride where Guests would sit in a pod and shoot at enemy robots that really don’t resemble the sentries or humanoids at all but go off I guess. Of course, when the Black Hole fell short of expectations, the ride was scrapped. But if the concept sounds familiar, it would be resurrected twenty years later in the form of Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters/Space Ranger Spin/whatever your home park calls it.

Another possibility that never came to fruition was a simulator attraction that would take Guests on another adventure with the Palomino crew. Even cooler, Guests would have been able to choose their own adventure, similar to Horizons at the upcoming Epcot. Again, the concept fell through, but a partnership with George Lucas would resurrect the space-themed simulator in the form of Star Tours. The second iteration of the attraction, Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, even incorporates the variable adventures, though it’s set on a randomizer instead of audience choice. And as a nice little nod to the attraction’s origins, V.I.N.CENT appears in the queue as part of the luggage scan! As far as other things that actually exist go, Maximilian’s full-sized filming model once appeared in the Backlot Tour at Disney’s MGM-Studios, and his miniature model can still be seen at Planet Hollywood at Disneyland Paris.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is such a strange movie. Most of its issues come from a director who has absolutely no business making a movie like this, and a curious lack of script editing considering how many times the script was edited. That’s why everything feels so slow and clunky. But the ideas are good ones, and they’re executed extremely well considering what we’re working with. The last movie of the 70s has quickly become one of my favorite movies of the 70s. That’s really not saying much, but it’s nice to end such a difficult decade on a high note.

Favorite scene: The Cygnus lighting up for the first time, and the pod gliding up the hill to give us a good look at it. It’s so pretty.

Final rating: 7/10. Leagues got an 8 and it’s not as good as that, but Unidentified Flying Oddball got a 6 so I cannot in good conscious rate it lower than that. I should really come up with a rubric or something instead of assigning scores arbitrarily.

Next time, we finally, finally, finally, FINALLY start a new decade! A decade with some ups, some downs, some new faces, and a whole lot of turmoil. A decade where the entire family entertainment industry lost its mind. A decade where the cherry on top is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s the 80s, baby!!! Hope you’re as excited as I am!!!