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

[toadspittle]

@Loopydude

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?

I believe it was purely metaphysical–look at the heroes, whose adventure continues and they get to explore wondrous new worlds. The evil Reinhardt, meanwhile, becomes trapped inside his own hellish creation.

[CalMeacham]

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.

They did the same thing in Megaforce, make about the same time (which was 1981-2). Megaforce is a quintessentially so-bad-it’s-good film, in the MST3K way.

I like Escape from New York in a non-MST3K way. Good flick. By the way, when Snake flies his glider into NYC, that’s a small model with pictures of the buildings pasted on.

[Zebra]

For me it was the Disney flim 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I loved that movie and I loved the ride at the park. (which is gone now) and then I visited Disneyland Paris and they have the ship there in great detail so I got the movie…

What a piece of crap!
Of course The Blackhole is historically significant because it’s Disney’s first PG film. (IIRC)

[Shirley_Ujest]

I have instant memories of Black Hole that are when I realized I was offically the Black Sheep of the family.
My trekkie dorkaromasus brothers were all jones out about going to see Black Hole and I went along. I was maybe 12ish.

I hated it. Just hated it. I just remember begging my brother to give me the keys to the car so I could sit out there in silence rather than be tortured any longer.

I sat through the entire debacle, which my brothers’ liked and I knew…just knew…I was different forevermore.

[ouryL]

Which version did you see? The uncut version?

[spiralscratch]

And now you understand how I felt when I watched V again twenty years later.

YIKES that’s bad.

[middleman]

@CalMeacham

Escape to Witch Mountain

[hijack]
Did you know that the girl from Et/fWM was Paris Hilton’s aunt?
[/hijack]

[JohnT]

@CalMeacham

… This was the same period (and one of the same writers) that gave us the similarly confused Escape to Witch Mountain.
Argggh!

A movie which I adored when I was 8 and refuse to watch again for fear of the same thing happening to me as happened to the OP.

However, I kind of recognized TBH as the boring schlockfest that it was when it was originally released.

[Podkayne]

@Baldwin

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.

Hah! That’s fabulous! We watched it on TV a while back and I remember saying, “Hah. I scoff at your pitiful computer graphics.” And it wasn’t even real computer graphics? Priceless! I might have to watch it again!

[Lochdale]

Wow, this brings me back.

I always that that at the end the good guys go to heaven and Rheinhart is sent to hell to spend eternity trapped in his robot. That’s how it looked to me then.

[Don_Draper]

Just out of curiosity, one of my favorite early 80s sci-fi extravaganzas was the monster movie Q, about a stop-motion dragon (actually a giant-sized snake with wings) that lived inside the vacant top floors of the Chrysler building. I haven’t seen that flick in 20 years, but since we’re reminiscing, has anyone seen it recently, and can relate how well it holds up / how badly it aged? Being a pessimist at heart, I suspect the latter case, and so can’t bring myself to even look for it in the video / DVD store.

[CalMeacham]

Q wasn’t exactly an extravaganza – it was a low-budget Larry Cohen film that snagged the services of David Carradine and some surprisingly good stop-motion animation. It’s more interesting and thoughtful than you’d expect, but I was never a big fan of the film. (Nobody even seems to notice when Q is out flying around the skyscrapers in broad daylight!) My guess is that, unless you had really high expectations, it’s about as good as you remember it.
To tell the truth, I never thought all that much of The Black Hole or V or the other flicks listed in this thread. The ones I fondly remember from my youth – Forbidden Planet, Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing – still seem to hold up pretty well.

[Frankenstein_Monster]

Great thread! I saw the thread title, read the “reviews” here, and immediately went to Amazon.de to buy the DVD. I am so looking forward to hearing that music again…