Review: The Black Hole (1979)

A good friend of mine likes to refer to Disney's The Black Hole as "the best '50s sci-fi movie made in the '70s."

He has a point. Of all of the movies and TV shows that came in the wake of Star Wars trying to capitalize on the sci-fi craze it generated--Battlestar Galactica, Moonraker, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Flash Gordon, Battle Beyond the Stars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture among them--The Black Hole is, in many ways, the most old-fashioned of the bunch--which, considering most of those titles listed above are outright remakes, is really saying something. Then again, The Black Hole is a remake of sorts, too--its basic plot follows the general outlines of the 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (also a Disney picture), with bits of Forbidden Planet (which featured the work of several Disney special effects artists on loan to MGM) thrown in and an ending that tried to out-trip 2001: A Space Odyssy.

The Palamino, commanded by Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forster), comes across the title cosmic oddity, and something even more odd: A large spaceship hovering close to the black hole, seemingly immune to its gravitational pull. The ship turns out to be the Cygnus, presumed lost with the father of Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux) aboard. The crew of the Palamino, which also includes Lieutenant Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Scientist Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), reporter Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) and a smartass little floating robot named V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (voiced by Roddy McDowell) who has an ESP connection with Kate (robots have ESP?), decides to get a closer look at the Cygnus.

Bad idea. Really bad idea.

After almost getting sucked into the black hole, Holland and crew board the Cygnus, only to find only one living human left: the brilliant-but-batshit-crazy Doctor Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell), who plans to sail the Cygnus straight into the black hole because he thinks he'll discover the answers to all of life's mysteries. Or something. His crew consists of nothing but robots (or so it would appear), including the psychotic Maximillian, who looks like a combination of Darth Vader and Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still dipped in red paint. (If he had been painted black, George Lucas would have sued for sure.) Holland just wants to make repairs to the Palamino and get the hell out of there, but Kate wants to know more about what happened to the human crew of the Cygnus (Reinhardt says they all died after abandoning ship...riiiiiight), and Alex has some kind of science-crush on Reinhardt. And, of course, Reinhardt has no intention of letting any of them leave--alive.

All of this would be fine as simple space opera, but a lot of time gets wasted following V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and another cute robot named Bob (voiced by Slim Pickens) around as they alternate between "funny" scenes of outwitting the robot guards and serious stuff as they discover what Doctor Reinhardt has really been up to all these years--and what he plans to do now.

The cutesy robots also highlight the weaknesses in the production design, which veers wildly from brilliant (the cathedral-like look of the Cygnus, complete with stained-glass control panels on the bridge, and the gritty look of the Palamino) to extremely cheap (V.I.N.C.E.N.T., whose "aw, isn't he precious!" look often doesn't match the harder-edged dialogue spoken by Mcdowell, or the tin-foil headgear planted on Kate when Reinhardt tries to kill her). Some of the design even looks like it came straight from outtakes of Forbidden Planet. There are brilliant, poetic moments--Harry Booth staring into the reflective face of a robot, or the descent of the Cysgnus into the black hole--and equally brilliant but highly improbable ones--during a cosmic storm, a huge meteor crashes into the Cygnus and rolls down the center of it, straight toward the majority of the cast; are meteors round enough to roll, and wouldn't everybody have been sucked into space? And do I need to mention that the black hole itself looks sort of like a swirling, Technicolor drain?

The script is just as inconsistent, trying to bring up major philosophical and religious issues (Dante's Inferno is mentioned) on the one hand while serving up unintentionally hilarious moments, like Reinhardt slapping his forehead repeatedly over Maximillian's incompetence or the twitching expression on the face of a Palamino crew member as Maximillian's whirling blades slice and dice. Characterization wanders all over the place, too--Alex seems way too smart to be so smitten with Reinhardt (and for no apparent reason), while Harry goes from cynical sidekick to self-centered coward in nanoseconds.

Even the music is all over the place, sounding moody and evocative in some places and cribbed from a Saturday morning cartoon in others. Some of it wouldn't even sound out of place in a James Bond film--perhaps because it was composed by John Barry, who scored many of the James Bond films.

The biggest problem with The Black Hole is the journey into the black hole itself. It's set up throughout the film as something amazing, spectacular and life-altering, but the head-trippy visuals and attempts at profundity, irony and closure instead provoke giggles--and that's from the potheads in the audience. The rest of us just stare and mutter, "That's it?"

Somehow, I don't think that's what Disney was going for.