"The Black Hole"...I don't want to think it's total crap, but...

Cafe Society
1

…I fear my esteem for this movie as a child may have been misplaced.

I made a terrible mistake: I used the largesse NetFlix allows, and started renting a bunch of these old Sci-Fi “classics” I loved as a ten-year-old. A precious few have withstood the test of time, I’m afraid, and for no film has this been so true as “The Black Hole”.

Good gawd, talk about a letdown. I loved this movie when I was a little tyke. Part of me doesn’t want to admit it, but my adult sensibilities have encroached to the point that I found large chunks of the film not just bad, but painfully bad. Earnest Borgnine: Ho-lee crap, one of the corniest hambone characterizations I’ve ever seen. Tony Perkins? What, was he on quaaludes for the whole movie? Maximillian Schell: He could make an over-the-top performance out of a coma. He leaves every scene with its masticated crumbs spilling out of his moutn. VINCENT and BOB: There’s a Star Wars trash compactor I’d like to toss these shameless ripoffs of R2D2 and C3P0 into. Gratingly annoying gimmicry. And what’s with the wires?!? Jeebus, the rest of the movie looked pretty good, but careful inspection clearly reveals the wires VINCENT is using to float around. What garbage! And That Fucking Ending: Sorta like somebody combined the gate sequence of 2001 with synchronized swimming, and tried to set it in one of the pits of Hell, as done by the Muppets.

Now some of the visuals were pretty damn cool (the big rolling asteroid), and Maximillian (the robot) was a decently sinister baddie. I found myself rooting mostly for him, and when Perkins’ character gets the chopper, I practically cheered out loud.

Now, before I went and rented this again, I saw some website (can’t find it now) where the “Black Hole” was touted as an under-appreciated dark Sci-Fi classic. Only the most jaded, snot-nosed art-house snob would declare otherwise. And so on.

Well, what can I say. I wanted to like watching “The Black Hole” again. Damned if I didn’t try very, very hard. But it seems to me that this movie just plain sucked nuts, and another of chunk of childhood nostalgia has gone down the crapper of adulthood-induced sanity. Am I just a jaded dilettante who’s lost his embracing acceptance of good clean sci-fi escapism, or is this flick as utterly bereft of any redeeming entertainment value, as I suspect? Is there a consensus on this movie, beyond it’s lackluster performance at the box office (many a gem was overlooked by audiences)?

2

Nope, it was a stinker. Logan’s Run was of the same general period and had far worse effects but it was original and holds up well. I recently purchased it on DVD after not having seen it for 15-20 years. I was not dissapointed.

Plus, Jenny Agutter was sooooo much hotter than Yvette Mimieux.

3

If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one. My epiphany came a couple of years ago, so I’ve had a little time to digest it.

Remember, these were the heady days post-Star Wars. All of a sudden, there was a bounty of effects-laden sci-fi films: Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and a host of others I’m sure I’m forgetting. If you were anything like me, you were at just the right age where a visual spectacle was really all you were looking for. If it involved lasers, spaceships, and robots, it was cool. It sparked your imagination, and half of the fun was using these films as a springboard for your own fantastic adventures.

Alas, we grow older and with age comes, like it or not, taste. With more demands on or time, we begin to mentally categorize our entertainment, so as to extract the maximum entertainment value for the minimum of time invested. A film that, at age 12, would have been an excellent afternoon at the show, at age 25 becomes a complete waste of time (Star Trek V anyone?).

Which brings us to The Black Hole. Perhaps the most painful lesson in the idea that you can’t go home again (or be young again). Wandering around the local Blockbuster one evening, my eye was drawn to the recently released DVD version of this film. “I haven’t seen this in years! I shall take it home with me, and for a couple of hours, I shall recapture the wonder and excitement that was my early teen-aged years!”

You know what came next, for you and I have trod the same road. Had I known that others would follow, I would have left signposts or messages for you along the way. I would, if I could, have spared you the same crushing disappointment I felt, and done everything in my power to leave you with your very pleasant memories from childhood, rather than have them ripped from your mind like an impacted wisdom tooth.

All we can do is mourn, and take solace in the notion that time does indeed heal all wounds.

And never, never, never, rent The Last Starfighter.

4

At least it has marginally funny jokes to ease the pain.

The babe factor helps this one, too. Catherine Mary Stewart :rrrowr:

5

I actually own the Black Hole on DVD now. I still do like the horror of some of it–especially the zombie-bots and the whole Maximillian-and-doctor-whatsisface-in-Hell thing–probably mostly because it’s a Disney movie, and I can’t believe Disney would make something like that.

Plus, that damn theme song is frickin’ terrifying. Like some drunken, murderous orchestra swaying through a dark hallway.

Other than that (and the aforementioned asteroid sequence, which is undeniably great cinema), it’s just planet-sized loads of poo.
One old film that I thought DID stand up really well was TRON. I rented the 20th anniversary edition on DVD and loved it. More amazing was the behind-the-scenes stuff, which showed you how very little computer effects–and how much brutal hand animation and optical compositing–the film actually used.

6

Nekkider, too, if memory serves.

:smiley:

7

One of my favorites in my collection. It also has the original theme music rather than the Journey song played over the end credits. TRON wasn’t exactly brilliant in the script department but the acting was passable and the effects were mind-blowing. Throw in Wendy Carlos’ score and it definitely stands up well against run of the mill sci-fi flicks.

8

Don’t think that wasn’t a factor in my decision to purchase it. :smiley:

9

Your post was very reassuring, as is the corroberation of other posters in this thread.

Alas! Seriously, at one point I just found myself muttering “gawd…damn!” under my breath, I was so exasperated with TBH’s crappyness.

I do agree, toadspittle, that the TBH theme song was most excellent. The music was probably the best part of the film, by a long shot, and it was a glaring omission on my part not to mention it. Did you know the beta band sampled it?
:smiley:

10

Damn, but I was disappointed in this flick when it first came out. It was Disney’s big foray into SF, using big name stars (Roddy MacDowell! Yvettte Mimieux from The Time Machine! Ernest Borgnine! Maximellian Schell!!! Anthony Perkins!) and their brand-spanmkin’ new ACES Camera-Control System. And the pre-production sketches of V.I.N.C.E.N.T. looked cool – not like the Goofy-eyed monstrosity it became. And the FX looked really good, too.

But what dfid we get? Rotten science (You don’t need super-science anti-grav screens to keep out of a Black Hole – just stay far enough away and orbit the damned thing!), a virtually nonexistent plot (cobbled together from 20,000 Leagues and Dante’s Inferno and God knows what else), Stupid Robots, Evil Robots, and screenwriters who had no idea where to go with the plot. This was the same period (and one of the same writers) that gave us the similarly confused Escape to Witch Mountain.
Argggh!

11

I had the same experience y’all did, except I watched The Black Hole on late-night cable TV. “Oh! I haven’t seen this for years! This’ll be cool!”

Nope.

Question: “the rolling asteroid” thingy was cool (IIRC, it was in all the trailers and TV commercials), but what the hell was it supposed to be? Was it really supposed to be an asteroid? How did an asteroid get inside the Cygnus? I thought it was supposed to be some kind of “energy ball” or something (which makes about as much sense, I know).

12

I loved the vector graphics and the music of the opening titles. The rest of the movie is drek, though. What a waste of money and talent.

13

It was a big frickin’ red-hot rolling asteroid, that’s what. Totally absurd. But it looked cool as all get-out, and that was enough. As CalMeacham quite rightly pointed out, this flick was a pretty egregious abuser of physics, so best not to think about it too much.

14

This will make you feel a little better. Why V.I.N.Cent is qualified to carry the Bad Muthafka Wallet**

Are you kidding? The Rylos car is the second-coolest sci-fi car (losing out only to the BTTF DeLorean), Robert Preston steals every scene he’s in, and the Starfighter was balls-out wicked! Too bad about the “Death Blossom” deus ex machina, though…

And besides, The Last Starfighter has a nice moral at its heart – if you really want to get out of Nowheresville, sometimes you have to take an opportunity, even if it’s a totally crazy one.

15

I had the same reaction a couple of years ago, when I did precisely the same late-night-cable let’s-relive-youth thing mentioned by vibrotronica. I was actively embarrassed for Robert Forster in particular, because I remembered how his career went into the shitter between Medium Cool and Jackie Brown. Long, long decades of agony.

But yeah, those last four or five minutes are pretty intense, aren’t they? I spent the whole climax thinking: “I don’t remember any of this. What the sweet antigravity fuck is this insanity doing in a Disney flick?”
(Oh, and TRON is the motherfuckin’ bomb. Way, way ahead of its time, as is clear in retrospect from our technologically suffused society. The 20th-anniv DVD gets regular spins in my machine. Oh yeah.)

16

I have never seen Tron. How I managed that I don’t know.

Mental note: Tron doesn’t suck. Go rent.

17

Holy crap! I just found out Slim Pickens was BOB! Aaaagh!

18

I know, which is why I never plan on renting this movie ever. I loved it, I remember all the positive things you describe. I am just terrified that it will not hold up. I’d rather remember it fondly than chance another Black Hole.

19

I had exactly the same thought! Perhaps we blocked it out. More likely, I probably was just totally confused by it, and hence never retained it. The whole Reinhardt-in-Maximillian thing especially made absolutely no sense to me as an adult, so why remember it as a kid. What, was that, like, some kind of “symbolic statement” about “evil” or some-such metaphysical gobbeldygook? Or are we to believe that Reinhardt, floating in the radiation-bathed vacuum in the belly of a black hole, somehow manages to literally float up and crawl inside of one of his robots? The fuck?

20

I agree about The Black Hole (and I didn’t even get to enjoy it as a tike, since I was already 17 when it came out; so I knew it sucked immediately).

But let me enjoy a nostalgic moment, remembering, not that long ago, when futuristic movies showed what would now be fairly routine computer graphics – that were actually done with animation and optical techniques, because real computer graphics would have been either too expensive or almost unworkable. Aah.

Rent Escape From New York, which is still a fun movie (in the “don’t make a lick of sense” category). An early scene shows what’s supposed to be a radar-based computer screen display, showing Manhattan buildings as glowing “wireframe” shapes on a dark background. Today that would be a pretty simple effect done on an actual computer, but in 1980, what they did was actually build models of the buildings in black, put flourescent tape on them, and move the camera through the setup. That was actually cheaper than a real wireframe 3-D computer graphic.