Thank you for that review, Tom. I've had people try to defend the Black Hole to me as somehow a good movie, but I've long suspected they have VERY rose-colored glasses from the past. This movie tops my list of "worst films" I've ever seen (and that includes everything John Waters ever made plus a lot of Roger Corman movies). The Black Hole is, was, and always will be, dreck.
What a fantastic poster! Boughtened.
Event Horizon was an execrable movie.
My 9 year old self completely disagrees with this.
This was a bad movie, but I loved it once. The red killer robot with the Osterizer blade attachment, the concept of a ship 1km (1 mile?) long. The neat floating robots, one with battle damage but still neat. I think the reason I remembered the movie as well as I did was because I also had the pop up book (no way in hell my parents took me to see the Black Hole more than once!). The pop up book was neat because I wasn't afraid to take it apart and see how those pop ups and things worked (not like it was a Star Wars pop up book or so,etching equally valuable!).
Shame on you. (Cry) Baby can't be put in a corner like that!
Wow, that is awesome, Marshall. It makes me sad the movie wasn't better in the same way Daft Punk's Tron Legacy soundtrack makes me sad that movie wasn't better.
I seem to recall having plastic models of the robots as a kid. You know, the kind you had to glue together. I think they came as a package deal, with Vincent and Maximilian in one box. I recall not caring one whit about the Vincent model.
The number one trick to enjoy movies or TV is to ignore the plot even if it's good and paced well.
I don't remember The Godfather for the story. I remember and enjoy it for how it looked and sounded.
Near Dark is a bit of a mess but those oil rig pump thingies looked damn moody when set to Tangerine Dream.
Event Horizon is a crazy house of nutso stuff best enjoyed as a special effects showcase.
(Hey, if I'm gonna spend two hours consuming entertainment it's on me to enjoy myself.)
I did see a Macimilian model (friend's older brother--glue together or even snap-tite was probably out of my league then). It was battered, red, and slightly busted. If it was a package deal with a Vincent robot, then I would surmise that the Vincent met an untimely end, either lighter fluid and pliers (good for applying "battle damage") or perhaps a firecracker. Great memories from my murky pre computer games youth ha ha! Thanks Tom. This sort of thing is why I frequent QtT!
There's a lot of hate out there for this. My 9-year-old self still loves this movie. Then I saw it again as an adult with friends as part as a double-feature with Tron a few years ago.
I can't say it was all that terrible. It wasn't "good," for sure. There weren't even enough unintentionally funny bits on their own to really keep it going. And I often find it hard to watch "classic" movies because the cinimatography's awful and pacing's so different compared to today.
We still had enough fun munching snacks. There were a couple Disney fans who were a little surprised about how much it was NOT for kids. The visual style was weird, but had sensibilities that were unique to the studio, even if their technique hadn't quite moved on with the times.
Maximillian was still freaky. The mirror-faced humanoids were still creepy. Max, Vincent, and B.O.B. were my favorite actors in the movie back then; seeing the human actors again hasn't changed that.
Compared to other 1979 sci-fi epics like Alien, Star Trek, or Mad Max, there's no contest. But there were only 1-4 memorable wide-release sci-fi featues a year back then, & The Black Hole was certainly memorable.
I also suppose there's some historical intrest. It had the longest CGI sequence to date in a movie, which I remembered being mentioned when Tron came out. It also made Disney want to do stuff for older audiences, thus Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, and aquiring Miramax. There were some other technical neat things about it... but then again, watching movies for their historical import takes a certain kind of attitude. I have yet to make it all the way through Metropolis.
I still think it's too often undeservedly bashed. And I'm gonna say it: I have seen or walked out of many movies worse than Event Horizon.
The Black Hole was All About the Robots. Murder robots. Robots dying. We were eight or ten or twelve for Christ's sake--Anthony Perkins had nothing to do with anything.
Robots.
I disagree. Event Horizon is better.
It's fragile, sluggish and, as a special someone once said, "gothic in all the wrong places", but it's occasionally scary, has some tense moments, and the core premise of the story is actually nice.
I agree with most of the thoughts you express and I still have a soft spot for this train wreck of a film. Even the trailer is plagued with horrible pacing and questionable choices. The previously mentioned rescue of the tin foil lady stops the moody thing in it's tracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think the movie must have suffered from too many cooks pulling it this way and that. Part haunted mansion, part Dr. Moreau, part 20,000 Leagues, part Star Wars, makes a lot of crap. You can see all those mixed messages in the trailer.
That image you selected of shadows crossing a frail bridge before a giant orange space rock is still a striking shot that gives me chills.Real craftsmen worked hard to bring the Cygnus to life. This movie held the record for most matte paintings ever used at the time and they were done by the great Academy Award winner Peter Ellenshaw. He retired after The Black Hole.
If you view the film as a courtship between the Perkins character and Reinhart it becomes a scream. So many longing looks and unintentionally funny lines about black holes. "In, Through, Beyond!" Anthony Perkins really sells you on the agony of his death scene, but Reinhart's follow up to Max always puts me in stitches. And the Max meets Max to rule over Dante's Inferno ending is one of the greatest WTF deals in all film. I just can't get on the hate train with you Chick. There's too much fun to be had with this Disney classic.
I saw this movie in the theater when it came out. I was 13. I couldn’t remember anything about the details, so I knew it must have been a disappointment. My only memories were of having built model kits of the Cygnus, V.I.N.C.E.N.T, and Maximilian.
So with almost no memory of it given the 45 years that have passed, this was like a new movie to me. And wow, what a bizarre ride. Had to come to Qt3 to see if there’d been discussion about it and I was delighted to find @tomchick’s essay!
Tom covered it sooo well in his article that I’ll just add what else stuck out to me:
The Bad
-
The Palomino sets and the scenes in the first part of the movie felt like a 1950’s sci-fi film. The crew being pulled around on cables to simulate weightlessness, the unnatural banter between crewmembers and stilted delivery (I mean, hey, even Ernie Borgnine can only do so much with poorly written dialogue), the costumes, etc. Except for the 70’s level SFX, it could have been a 1950’s SF film. Were they intentionally doing an homage to Rocketship XM? Also, why did it look like a 50’s set when this was released the same year as Alien and ST:TMP?
-
It’s quickly established that Kate has ESP. And she uses it to… communicate mentally with the cute robot? Um, I’m not sure that’s how telepathy is supposed to work.
-
The Palomino docks with the Cygnus and fires its thrusters downward for the landing? Um, either the Cygnus has an insane gravitational field for some reason and that’s never mentioned, or the Palomino should have shot off the other direction when it ignited its rockets. Because that’s how physics is supposed to work.
-
The robot designs. Such subtlety. Let’s make the evil robots red. And the most evil of them, give him salad spinner blades for hands, just in case nobody realizes he’s Designed to Kill.
-
I mean, c’mon, 70’s movie pacing and all that, but it felt like the robots trying to beat each other for the arcade shooter high score went on for like 10 minutes. And the middle hour of the movie is just talking…
-
Tin foil. Tom cited this, but I have to reiterate.
-
That ending. What. The. Heck? Reinhardt and Maximilian get combined (I actually do remember thinking that was cool when I was a kid, but wondering where Reinhardt’s legs went) and they’re now the administrator of Hell? And the good guys… Follow an angel through a wedding arch and we’ll just steal a note from 2001 and make their fate unknown and weird.
-
Oh! At the beginning of the movie where they’re scanning the Cygnus trying to figure out what kind of ship it was. “Not this Russian space station… Not this Japanese probe… Not this… Oh, it’s the unique mile-long horizontal skyscraper American ship that your father was lost on 20 years ago, Kate.” Kate: “Oh, I didn’t recognize it. Not really into ships, and too distracted reading V.I.N.C.E.N.T.'s prurient thoughts.”
The Good
-
I did like V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and BO.B. C’mon, when you can get Slim Pickens to voice your robot, you’re winning.
-
Anthony Perkins’s death scene. PG Disney having your chest ground up so we’ll have him hold up a ream of paper and show it being shredded. Also, let’s have Tony emote for the first time in the entire film.
Fun Wikipedia trivia! Sigourney Weaver was originally considered for the role of Kate, but the casting dept lead balked at her weird name.
But at least it’s still better than Interstellar.
I remember watching this as a kid my freshman year in HS on a weekend, and I have the clearest memory that Monday morning of walking out of my first period class, English, down the hall to take the steps to the first floor for Biology all while humming the movie’s main theme. Which was the best part of this very mediocre-bad movie.
And you were doing so well. : )