Menacing robots and cute robots. Obvious aspirations for intelligent sci-fi ala 2001, devolving into a bunch of PEWPEWPEW laser gun fights that are clumsily edited and hard to follow. 1982’s The Black Hole was Disney’s leap into what they thought was sophisticated science fiction, except they made a film that could only possibly appeal to pre-teen boys. And I did fall for it pretty hard in its original release, as I was in the target market.
In my review of the same studio’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I remarked this movie is basically that one, only in space. Having revisited the 1982 film, I see this less as a restaging of the story in the future and more of a loose retelling. Very loose.
The long-lost ship Cygnus is basically the Nautilus, and Maximilian Schell is its Captain Nemo. He stopped communications with mission control back on Earth about 20 years earlier, with his ship in statis on the edge of a black hole. He claims he and his robot crew managed to create a gravitational force that pulls on the black hole as much as it pulls at the Cygnus, resulting in a draw in a cosmic tug-of-war. Just from this, you know the script isn’t going to be a stickler for scientific accuracy.
The crew of another ship, the Palomino, discovers the Cygnus, which appears to be abandoned. I just love how the crew determines which vessel this might be by watching their ship’s holographic display conjure up outlines of assorted vessels that look nothing like Schell’s, until it eventually tosses up the only one that looks remotely like this behemoth. Crew member Yvette Mimieux is so excited to see a match that I wish somebody would give her a prize.
She has good reason to be excited, as her father had been stationed on the Cygnus. But now it is seemingly lifeless, until it suddenly comes to life and it looks like a giant shopping mall in space. “It lit up like a tree on Christmas morning”, says lieutenant Joseph Bottoms, who also needs to be given some sort of prize. Maybe a trophy for “Every Crew Member Gets an Award” day.
There’s also adults on the crew of the Palomino. Robert Forster is appropriately cast as the stern, no-nonsense captain. Anthony Perkins is the kind of egghead who appears to be this film’s Spock, and who I think was just waiting to go full Stockholm Syndrome in submission to somebody with an ego like Shell’s.
Ernest Borgnine fares surprising well as the only crew member without a rank or doctoral designation. He largely serves as an exposition dump and the cynical guy who just knows there’s a conspiracy somewhere at all times. I can picture him with a workshop somewhere on board where he can tinker, when he isn’t yelling at kids to get off his lawn. His space lawn.
The last crew member isn’t even human. This is V.I.N.C.E.N.T., a very personable robot voiced drolly by Roddy McDowall. Curiously, he did this without credit, yet the voice is unmistakably his when spouting such maxims as: “A wolf remains a wolf even if it hasn’t eaten your sheep yet.” Despite usually being the wisest member of the crew, he is of a design which will appeal to children, and I fondly recall him from when I saw the movie as a kid.
Things don’t bode well when this crew boards the Cygnus, as they first encounter a empty waiting room. There are probably even old magazines on the tables, but I couldn’t see if there were. Almost as bad is the laser that zaps their weapons out of their hands.
Schell reveals no weapons are allowed on his ship, hence why our heroes were disarmed. Still, it seems he could have gone about it a nicer manner like, I don’t know, simply asking.
And his own bots are largely hostile, though they look largely like rejects from Battlestar Galactica. Then there’s Schell’s right-hand bot, also named Maximilian, who has giant spinning blades for hands. My wife commented, using a phrase normally used to describe cat paws, “Now those are murder mittens.” When those eventually get put to good use, the result is very surprising for a Disney-branded film and a mite stronger than the PG rating would imply.
At least there’s one friendly bot on board and that is B.O.B., as voiced by Slim Pickens. He is of the same model as McDowell’s bot, only beat-up and on his last…whatever those stumpy antenna-like things under him which enable him to float around. Given his appearance, and how he shakes in terror around Maximilian, he gets our sympathy. That said, I realize he also basically foretells Mater from the Cars series.
Also on board are a great many cloaked and masked robots that seem to do everything but security and, well, whatever it is B.O.B. normally does. These particularly interest Grandpa Borgnine, who finds one supervising a farm which is much larger than what would be necessary to feed Schell, as he is the last remaining human on board. Even weirder, the droid farmer walks away with a limp. Forster also sees these bots engage in the curious behavior of conducting what appears to be a deeply personal burial in space.
It’s no mystery what has happened to Schell’s crew, and I’m guessing this was meant to be something kids could figure out and feel then proud they came to the right conclusion. An even lesser surprise is Schell is going to be venturing into the black hole and he’s going to be taking the crew of the Palomino with them.
Borgnine gets a great speech about Schell’s arrogance, and this brought to my mind somebody recently starting their term as president and who is currently destroying democracy in pursuit of their own personal vendettas: “[Schell] had the knack of making his own ambitions seem like a matter of national pride. Why, he talked the Space Appropriations Committee into the costliest fiasco of all time. And refused to admit failure.”
This is probably as good as time as any to talk about the film’s greatest asset, and that is its score. John Barry’s work here is gorgeous, particularly a recurring seven-note motif that churns in a manner suitable for the titular abyss, which is in the background in many scenes as light steaks appearing to swirl down a giant drain. Odd bit of trivia: The Beta Band would go on to sample this tune for the track “It’s Not Too Beautiful” on their debut album. Barry’s score also has an overture that feels more appropriate for a superhero movie like the original Christopher Reeve Superman. Also, it is strange to have an overture for a feature which is only 98 minutes long.
This is a movie with many flaws, and its greatest offense will be that inevitable journey into the abyss. It is astonishing production started without the script having an ending. I mean, when you call your movie The Black Hole, it seems a given you wouldn’t have even started writing unless you already knew what was going to happen when you journey into the black hole.
I won’t go into everything that happens there, but the bit which appears to take place in Hell is interesting. We see the two Maximilians, actor and robot, face-to-face and it looks like the cyborg is moving in for some sweet, sweet loving. Perhaps his approach is a bit too forceful, as the two end up merged together and appear to rule over a literal hellscape populated by their minions from the ship. I felt horrible for those people, under the thumb of Schell in life and now eternally subject to him after death. Altogether, this scene is equally startling and ridiculous.
But it isn’t as goofy as what happens to the crew of the Polaris, who do little more than spin around in the confinement of a tiny capsule while we hear their inner monologues, including the thoughts of V.I.N.C.E.N.T. For a change it isn’t just Mimieux hearing his thoughts. I neglected to mention before she has an E.S.P. connection with him. Muse upon that unprecedented moment in cinema history for a moment: a human-robot connection via mental telepathy.
There is enough stupidity like that here to make this picture a disappointment overall, which is a shame, as there are some remarkable moments in it. Much of that involves the special effects. One of the best action scenes has a giant, fiery meteor rolling through the length of the ship. At least people in the foreground are not transparent in that effects shot, though they were in an earlier action piece on that same bridge, and that is far from the only subpar effect. Perhaps my favorite visuals are at the beginning, when the Cygnus is silhouetted against a field of stars, which is surprisingly beautiful. I also liked when the vessel is lit only by a single light from the Palomino as it investigates what appears to be a ghost ship. And that moment when it comes to life is as beautiful as Bottoms says, though I would not have made the Christmas tree analogy.
Their initial approach of the dead vessel reminded me of assorted moments from the Alien series, and there is much here that recalls other sci-fi films, both preceding and following it. Schell has a very fancy dining room which brought to my mind a similar area of the ship in the original Solaris. A bit with Mimieux telling the ship computer to zoom in on different areas of a still image seem to foretell a similar moment in Blade Runner. Animated laser blasts recall similar work the same studio did a couple of decades earlier for Forbidden Planet.
The Black Hole was a critical and financial disappointment, but that wouldn’t deter Disney from going in even deeper on their next sci-fi venture. There are elements here which foretell that picture, including it being another disappointment, though not quite so disastrously for the studio. The opening credits are a lengthy computer-animated sequence that I found quite beautiful not in spite of it being only line illustrations, but especially because of that. And Maximilian seems to be an amalgamation of the guards and the “recognizer” ships from that later picture, which would be, of course, Tron. Alas, while I may love that later film, I only like parts of, and continue to be intrigued by, the earlier film. A disappointment overall, but an interesting failure, nonetheless.
Dir: Gary Nelson
Starring Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster
Watched on a blu-ray produced for the late and lamented Disney Movie Club