Ernest Rister
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2001
- Messages
- 4,148
Hey Ernest--why no bold for "The Black Hole?" I know the movie was riddled with it's fair share of problems, but what's your take on it? I guess this question is kind of similar to my question about The Black Cauldron in that both movies made some noise before release, and then sank. They're mostly curiosity pieces now.
------------
Watching The Black Hole is an odd experience. There is some outstanding work in the film - what the film gets right, it nails (art direction, matte paintings, miniature work, lighting, music). But what it gets wrong, it gets wrong in an equally spectacular way...watching it is sort of like watching a baseball team with a roster including Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and the Bad News Bears pre-Matthau.
The movie is essentially a horror-film take on Disney's 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- travellers come across a ship that is commanded by a mad genius, and then they must struggle against the ship's crew (and each other) to escape. The Black Hole embellished this simple plot with haunted-house atmosphere, some ghoulish revelations, and a jolt of PG-rated violence. Disney's f/x department came up aces with terrific matte paintings and model work, and John Barry contributed a wonderful score.
How disconcerting it is to watch a movie with so much working great, and so much going wrong, all at the same time. Lurking at the center of any bad movie is a bad screenplay, and The Black Hole is no different, with characters who sound like they've been kidnapped from a 1950's B-movie. The characters are so bland, so stiff, that to this day, I struggle to remember their names. I just know them as "The Captain", "The Cocky Guy", "Ernest Borgnine", "Psychic Lady", "Mad Hairy Doctor with the Perm" and "Poor Anthony Perkins".
Sample Dialogue:
COCKY GUY
What does your intuition tell you, Kate?
PSYCHIC LADY
That Dr. Reindhart is walking a tightrope between genius...and insanity!
or
POOR ANTHONY PERKINS
So - he neglected his duty to his country for a higher ideal! So what! What basis in fact do you have for these macabre speculations? I agree that his style is somewhat unconventional, but he's willing and eager to share his knowledge with us! Doesn't that mean anything to you?
What is this, "Plan 9 from Buena Vista"? Did Ed Wood do an uncredited assist?
MAD HAIRY DOCTOR
The word impossible is only found in the dictionary of fools!
Oh, yeah, Mad Hairy Doctor? Where is the word "stilted" found?
Many films survive screenplays with thin characters and stiff dialogue (see Halloween and Titanic), but The Black Hole doesn't stop there. It is, in fact, only getting warmed up.
It is interesting to note that in a film where audiences struggle to remember the names of the human protagonists, everyone seems to remember the names of the following Black Hole characters: Vincent, Old Bob, and Maximillian. Vincent is a short wise-ass robot who has the voice of Roddy MacDowell and has a knack for quoting Ben Franklin during moments of high stress. Maximillian is the red, one-eyed homicidal robot who has a knack for killing Anthony Perkins during moments of high stress. Old Bob is the same type of robot as Vincent, only he has the voice of Slim Pickens. Old Bob has been beaten severely for years by Maximillian, and he has a knack for dying during moments of high stress (bless him, he even says that great ubiquitous line of all B-movies, "Go on without me!").
The robots are a hoot. They look as if they've been designed by Disney's feature animation department, complete with black pupils inside of white "eyeballs", and like a Disney cartoon character, they express emotion through body language and movement. In fact, they look like "audio-animatronic" versions of robot cartoon characters, and watching them interact with the human actors makes one long for a Black Hole blooper reel.
All films ask you to suspend your disbelief in one way or another. The robots in The Black Hole*beg* you to suspend your disbelief. In one amazing shot towards the end of the film, Maximillian and Mad Hairy Doctor even couple with each other in outer space, creating the first-ever moment of suggested Disney porn.
And that reminds me -- the film's notorious ending. Apparently the "Voyage through the Black Hole" sequence was always in a state of flux and indecision, even during production. Basically, the ending that was finally agreed upon was this:
The end of the film finds our remaining heroes forced to travel into a black hole. A Black hole is a collapsed star that has become so dense, light itself cannot escape its gravitational pull. In the film, the Black Hole is a wormhole of a sorts, zipping our heores to some distant corner of the universe.
As the ship descends into the phenomenon, the camera trucks in on the eyeball of "Psychic Lady", and we see her psychic vision. Mad Hairy Doctor and Maximillian get it on, then, the Evil Part of Mad Hairy Doctor's soul goes to Hell, which we see in vivid detail, while the Good Part of Mad Hairy Doctor's soul goes to Heaven. Hell is full of flames and figures in black cloaks walking in an endless line, sort of like the Santa Monica Department of Motor Vehicles (oddly enough, these images are the demonic flip side to the images in the "Ave Maria" seqeuence of Fantasia). The path to Heaven is seen as a long succession of crystal archways, or giant ice scultpures. Heaven is apparently clean, pretty, and expensive.
After having this vision of the death of Mad Hairy Doctor, we see the ship in some unknown part of space. A star peeks out from behind a planet. The ship moves towards it. Roll Credits as John Barry blasts triumphant music to try and convince you the story has ended on an up note.
The problems I had with this ending even as a kid were -- Where are they? How are they going to get home? How long until they run out of oxygen? What does Mad Hairy Doctor in Hell have to do with the rest of the movie? You are on your own in creating your own answers. The Black Hole comes on like a mass-market spooky space film, and then it ends like a bad dream Bergman had after eating too many tacos before bedtime.
Now for my confession -- The Black Hole was the first DVD I ever bought. In fact, because there was no laserdisc for The Black hole ever released in wide-screen in the U.S., not only did I buy the DVD, I bought my first DVD *player* in order to watch it. Why? Why go through all that trouble for such an incredible trainwreck of a movie?
Because, like many bad movies, The Black Hole is fun. Plan Nine From Outer Space is a riot if you watch it with the right people. Ditto The Black Hole. Also, it's part of my childhood, and just watching it today is a kind of silly nostalgic thrill. I can watch it with friends and we can laugh our heads off, or I can watch it alone and fast forward to the meteor storm, and turn up my sound system.
At the end of the day, why we choose to like certain films has very little to do with logic and reasoning. More often than not, emotion and affection determine why a certain movie can strike a chord with people. Sometimes liking a movie is no more complicated than a film reminding you of your childhood, and that's the way it is with me and The Black Hole. I would never argue that it is a "good movie". In fact, as a movie, it's absurdly awful. But does it make me smile? Yes, yes it does, and most days, that's "good enough" for me.
-- Ernest Rister
p.s. Oh, yeah -- "why no bold"
Because this is the reaction I was looking for:
"Hmmm. Never seen Thomasina. Those other movies that guy bolded are pretty good. Maybe I'll just go ahead and take his word for it and give that Thomasina movie a rental."
This is not the reaction I was looking for:
"HA HA HA HA HA! The Black Hole! What a piece of @!#$%$! HA HA HA HA HA!"
Hence, no bold.
------------
Watching The Black Hole is an odd experience. There is some outstanding work in the film - what the film gets right, it nails (art direction, matte paintings, miniature work, lighting, music). But what it gets wrong, it gets wrong in an equally spectacular way...watching it is sort of like watching a baseball team with a roster including Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and the Bad News Bears pre-Matthau.
The movie is essentially a horror-film take on Disney's 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- travellers come across a ship that is commanded by a mad genius, and then they must struggle against the ship's crew (and each other) to escape. The Black Hole embellished this simple plot with haunted-house atmosphere, some ghoulish revelations, and a jolt of PG-rated violence. Disney's f/x department came up aces with terrific matte paintings and model work, and John Barry contributed a wonderful score.
How disconcerting it is to watch a movie with so much working great, and so much going wrong, all at the same time. Lurking at the center of any bad movie is a bad screenplay, and The Black Hole is no different, with characters who sound like they've been kidnapped from a 1950's B-movie. The characters are so bland, so stiff, that to this day, I struggle to remember their names. I just know them as "The Captain", "The Cocky Guy", "Ernest Borgnine", "Psychic Lady", "Mad Hairy Doctor with the Perm" and "Poor Anthony Perkins".
Sample Dialogue:
COCKY GUY
What does your intuition tell you, Kate?
PSYCHIC LADY
That Dr. Reindhart is walking a tightrope between genius...and insanity!
or
POOR ANTHONY PERKINS
So - he neglected his duty to his country for a higher ideal! So what! What basis in fact do you have for these macabre speculations? I agree that his style is somewhat unconventional, but he's willing and eager to share his knowledge with us! Doesn't that mean anything to you?
What is this, "Plan 9 from Buena Vista"? Did Ed Wood do an uncredited assist?
MAD HAIRY DOCTOR
The word impossible is only found in the dictionary of fools!
Oh, yeah, Mad Hairy Doctor? Where is the word "stilted" found?
Many films survive screenplays with thin characters and stiff dialogue (see Halloween and Titanic), but The Black Hole doesn't stop there. It is, in fact, only getting warmed up.
It is interesting to note that in a film where audiences struggle to remember the names of the human protagonists, everyone seems to remember the names of the following Black Hole characters: Vincent, Old Bob, and Maximillian. Vincent is a short wise-ass robot who has the voice of Roddy MacDowell and has a knack for quoting Ben Franklin during moments of high stress. Maximillian is the red, one-eyed homicidal robot who has a knack for killing Anthony Perkins during moments of high stress. Old Bob is the same type of robot as Vincent, only he has the voice of Slim Pickens. Old Bob has been beaten severely for years by Maximillian, and he has a knack for dying during moments of high stress (bless him, he even says that great ubiquitous line of all B-movies, "Go on without me!").
The robots are a hoot. They look as if they've been designed by Disney's feature animation department, complete with black pupils inside of white "eyeballs", and like a Disney cartoon character, they express emotion through body language and movement. In fact, they look like "audio-animatronic" versions of robot cartoon characters, and watching them interact with the human actors makes one long for a Black Hole blooper reel.
All films ask you to suspend your disbelief in one way or another. The robots in The Black Hole*beg* you to suspend your disbelief. In one amazing shot towards the end of the film, Maximillian and Mad Hairy Doctor even couple with each other in outer space, creating the first-ever moment of suggested Disney porn.
And that reminds me -- the film's notorious ending. Apparently the "Voyage through the Black Hole" sequence was always in a state of flux and indecision, even during production. Basically, the ending that was finally agreed upon was this:
The end of the film finds our remaining heroes forced to travel into a black hole. A Black hole is a collapsed star that has become so dense, light itself cannot escape its gravitational pull. In the film, the Black Hole is a wormhole of a sorts, zipping our heores to some distant corner of the universe.
As the ship descends into the phenomenon, the camera trucks in on the eyeball of "Psychic Lady", and we see her psychic vision. Mad Hairy Doctor and Maximillian get it on, then, the Evil Part of Mad Hairy Doctor's soul goes to Hell, which we see in vivid detail, while the Good Part of Mad Hairy Doctor's soul goes to Heaven. Hell is full of flames and figures in black cloaks walking in an endless line, sort of like the Santa Monica Department of Motor Vehicles (oddly enough, these images are the demonic flip side to the images in the "Ave Maria" seqeuence of Fantasia). The path to Heaven is seen as a long succession of crystal archways, or giant ice scultpures. Heaven is apparently clean, pretty, and expensive.
After having this vision of the death of Mad Hairy Doctor, we see the ship in some unknown part of space. A star peeks out from behind a planet. The ship moves towards it. Roll Credits as John Barry blasts triumphant music to try and convince you the story has ended on an up note.
The problems I had with this ending even as a kid were -- Where are they? How are they going to get home? How long until they run out of oxygen? What does Mad Hairy Doctor in Hell have to do with the rest of the movie? You are on your own in creating your own answers. The Black Hole comes on like a mass-market spooky space film, and then it ends like a bad dream Bergman had after eating too many tacos before bedtime.
Now for my confession -- The Black Hole was the first DVD I ever bought. In fact, because there was no laserdisc for The Black hole ever released in wide-screen in the U.S., not only did I buy the DVD, I bought my first DVD *player* in order to watch it. Why? Why go through all that trouble for such an incredible trainwreck of a movie?
Because, like many bad movies, The Black Hole is fun. Plan Nine From Outer Space is a riot if you watch it with the right people. Ditto The Black Hole. Also, it's part of my childhood, and just watching it today is a kind of silly nostalgic thrill. I can watch it with friends and we can laugh our heads off, or I can watch it alone and fast forward to the meteor storm, and turn up my sound system.
At the end of the day, why we choose to like certain films has very little to do with logic and reasoning. More often than not, emotion and affection determine why a certain movie can strike a chord with people. Sometimes liking a movie is no more complicated than a film reminding you of your childhood, and that's the way it is with me and The Black Hole. I would never argue that it is a "good movie". In fact, as a movie, it's absurdly awful. But does it make me smile? Yes, yes it does, and most days, that's "good enough" for me.
-- Ernest Rister
p.s. Oh, yeah -- "why no bold"
Because this is the reaction I was looking for:
"Hmmm. Never seen Thomasina. Those other movies that guy bolded are pretty good. Maybe I'll just go ahead and take his word for it and give that Thomasina movie a rental."
This is not the reaction I was looking for:
"HA HA HA HA HA! The Black Hole! What a piece of @!#$%$! HA HA HA HA HA!"
Hence, no bold.
