The Black Hole

The Black Hole (1979)

Runtime: 98 minutes

Directed by: Gary Nelson

Starring: Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux

From: Disney

This movie has an interesting backstory, as I explain below:

I can only recall some of the movies I saw on broadcast television in the evening when I was a real little kid. It was on an independent station that became a FOX channel. I saw the entirety of Cloak & Dagger that way, and amazingly I actually saw parts of D.C. Cab; no, I can't explain how they made a TV edit of a movie that had a lot of vulgar dialogue and other R-rated material. The Black Hole was another one of those movies; I know I only watched parts of it; among other things, I would have remembered such an odd ending. Finally, after last night I saw it complete; I will say that it's fine, although it goes off the rails in the final act.

To think that both this and Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in the same month (December 1979) and both made it rather obvious they were aping 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mean, the two had overtures at the beginning, which is the last time you saw that until... well, I guess the roadshow version of The Hateful Eight. Hole was also heavily inspired by Star Wars, as I'll get to in a moment. The plot: the U.S.S. Palomino is a spaceship returning home to Earth when they suddenly stumble upon a giant black hole and a mysterious ship is found right by it, somehow resisting the effects of the black hole. Yes, in part it's Event Horizon. The brig in question is an old spaceship ran by Maximilian Schell; to me, it's not a spoiler to say that he's the bad guy, because it's Maximilian Schell. Plus, he's a brilliant scientist (who has become a mad scientist) says the rest of the crew left to go home (but never made it home) and he has robots running everything.

The movie does look pretty, with plenty of great matte paintings and special effects that at least at the time were nifty. Some of them you can see the seams almost 40 years later but because almost all of it was done practically, I won't get mad. I always enjoyed looking at this motion picture. Plus, what a cast: Schell, Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster, and Yvette Mimieux. Plus, you hear the voices of Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens. This wrestles with both being full of grandeur and big ideas like 2001 and zip-bang action like Star Wars, and the two don't always mix well. I am not surprised there were once plans to remake this, as it's the sort of motion picture which should actually be remade.

Yet this was the first Disney movie rated PG (years before they created other studios to release movies of all different ratings) and I can't get mad at the ambition. I understand those that may think it's boring but that wasn't a real problem with me. It just becomes goofy in the final act and you don't need to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to figure out this is the opposite of being scientifically accurate and in fact, Tyson himself once said this is the “most scientifically inaccurate movie” he's ever seen. The final 10 or so minutes... what it was trying to be will be blatant, and it is not quite successful at that task. Yet I thought this was fine overall as it kept my attention and like I said, it was pretty.

Oh, and one of the ways it tried to be like Star Wars: a cute robot. To describe V.I.N.CENT, imagine a floating BB-8 who speaks English (and usually says random sayings) and unfortunately has a pair of googly eyes. That had to be an inspiration for BB-8, I am pretty certain.