After the unprecedented success of 1977's Star Wars, movie producers big and small rushed to cash in on the new sci-fi craze--ergo, Disney's 1979 The Black Hole (the company's very first PG-rated film), which boasts loads of special effects and cute talking robots. Exploring the deepest recesses of space, the spaceship Palomino stumbles upon another ship, the Cygnus, thought to be lost for 20 years, and now perched on the edge of a black hole (apparently impervious to its awesome gravitational pull). The Palomino's crew--played by Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine, and Joseph Bottoms--check it out, finding a mad doctor (Maximilian Schell) aboard (with a crew of mindless robots) who is just about ready to launch a probe ship into the black hole's center. Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens provide the voices for the R2-D2/C3PO-inspired good robots, the Palomino's VINCENT and the Cygnus's Bob, respectively, and composer John Barry--best known for the James Bond films--turns in the film's excellent and eerie score. Unfortunately, The Black Hole remains a somewhat ludicrous film, full of wooden expository dialogue, plot coincidences, and wild leaps of logic. The ending rips off 2001: A Space Odyssey with a cheap, psychedelic (not to mention physically impossible) trip into a bizarre nether-verse. Yet, for all that, the film still holds a strange "bad movie" fascination and carries a certain nostalgic value. Boasting a beautiful digital transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, the disc's extras include a 14-minute "making-of" featurette that interviews matte effects supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw. Optional. (J.M. Anderson)
The Black Hole
Walt Disney, 97 min., PG, DVD: $19.99 Volume 19, Issue 6
The Black Hole
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