review: "The Black Hole" (1979)

First off, yes this movie was made to cash in on the Star Wars craze, and yes it doesn’t quite live up to the standards like all too many other sci-fi attempts of the late 70s/early 80s. And yes (again), the merchandising could have been handled better, but this was Disney’s attempt at making a science fiction film for the families (family-friendly, younger audience oriented), and they were indeed trying to cash in as much as they could in the wake of Star Wars.

 

“The Black Hole”, while flawed on many points (especially the “science”) does have a certain charm. At times it feels more like one of those 1950s space-oriented films, at others it is firmly planted in the 70s – the casting was surely done to attract the adults into the theaters (Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine and Maximilian Schell) as they weren’t the fresh faces for the target audience (and obviously long before the Hollywood youth culture obsession set in).

 

In terms of failings, we might point out the wire work during the weightless scenes and hovering robots (my DVD copy shows quite a bit of those), the obvious mime work for the sentry robots, the all-too cerebral aspects of the themes explored (more on that at another date), the “hero”/”rescue” theme which not only drags on for too long in one scene, but actually repeats it’s motifs to make sure it’s being hammered away properly. Surely there are others but these are those that pop up to mind immediately.

 

However there are good points in this film. Uncredited Roddy McDowell voicing V.I.N.Cent was one of the main reasons I purchased this film on DVD, and the overall acting by everyone is at the very least decent, if not above average (granted, one needs to remember what the actors were left to work with). Ernest Borgnine is always a great character to watch at work even though I feel he did not have much to do here. Anthony Perkins is wonderful, turning up a very sober performance as an intrigued scientist, something to pull him out of the obvious typecasting he may have had to deal with around that era of his career. Robert Forster manages to pull of a convincing space ship captain, and Yvette Mimieux is interestingly more “multi” dimentional than most of her co-stars. Again, one must remember the script they had to work with.

 

However it is in Maximilian Schell’s rather stunning performance as the “mad scientist” of the story who truly delivers a screen presence. He manages to evoke a sense of grandeur beyond his character, and is at times both oddly charming and restrained menacing. I did not realize it at the time but when I saw this film in the theaters back in 1979, he was my first exposure to a “demented” mad scientist in a film, something which I grew to enjoy in such films in terms of characters that actors seem to enjoy “chewing” through.

 

Another great aspect of the movie is it’s highly evocative soundtrack by John Barry (except for the aforementioned “hero”/”rescue” theme which was obviously done to emulate Star Wars). From the opening sinister waltz main title theme to the ending “inferno” journey into the hole, Barry’s soundtrack creates in itself a unique atmosphere which creates so much of the film’s tone that one simply can not imagine the movie with another soundtrack. In itself, the score stands up quite well, and I would even venture to claiming that I find this may be Barry’s best soundtrack work even put to use. While many will categorically label it as this or that, parodying it and mocking it for it’s use of repeating themes and somewhat melancholic progression, I find it to being the most (and I am quoting the character of Dr Hans Reinhadt here) “romantic” of his scores.

 

In terms of special effects, we must situate ourselves that this was an era before CGI (this was about 3 years before the original Tron was out) and when models and matte paintings, superimposed images (blue/green screens et al) and such were the height of special effects technology. While some effects will seem dated, the fact that, for the most part, actors were placed on real sets with real props meant a more realistic interaction with their environments, which held solidify the film’s somewhat “realism” in it’s own created world. Both ships (the Palomino and the Cygnus) have a weight to them and appear well used, as opposed to many science fiction films presenting us with a much too clean technology. Buttons, levers, and other manual controls also add a weight to the overall production design which is quite impressive.

 

And of course, as some may have already mentioned it or seen it/heard it somewhere in this interweb online world, the best robot death scene ever – considering one is basically watching puppets voiced after the fact in ADR and with Barry’s score added to thicken the sauce. I am sure many will laugh and cheapen the scene in question but if you happened to pay attention to the interaction and the discussions between said robots in the film up to that point, the scene is quite touching, actually tapping on the whole sentient / artificial consciousness theme.

 

In terms of the more “adult” themes of the film, we won’t touch the completely “wrong” “science” aspect of the film’s title “character”: what we know of black holes today will make one cringe and wince at how they are explained and theorized in this movie. However the film does touch aspects of the continual search for knowledge (and that even beyond human comprehension/understanding), mortality, and how far we are willing to go to explore the depths of the unknown and our own inner selves. There’s an obvious Frankenstein reference as well which seems all too flat-out exposed for today’s audiences, but was all-too-subtle for my pre-internet 8 years old self back in 1979.

 

In closing, I will say the film is quite dated considering what is being churned out by CGI Hollywood since the Y2K, and with the average attention span of tablet/cell phone addicts. But “The Black Hole” doesn’t pretend to be anything else than what it is, which is post-Star Wars family-friendly sci-ci firmly planted in the 70s with a slight 50s flavor.