Review of The Black Hole (1979) by Andreas O — 21 Apr 2011

Once again, we're in late 1970's Disney, aka, their dark period, where suddenly they were exploring slightly weirder and darker subject matter with their movies and animation. The Black Hole may be one of the weaker movies in this period.

It's not neccesarily bad, it's just somewhat clunky in terms on the story and special effects (eg, the things you were coming in to watch the movie for). The team of Robert Forster and company do a pretty good job of good guy astronauts trying to convince bad guy Maxmillian Schell not to drive his spaceship, yes, into a black hole.

Schell has many secrets, unfortunately for the good guys, will they find out all of them in time? The robots here (hey, it was a little after Star Wars, give Disney a break) are probably the worst part of the movie.

Both the good guy bots and the evil Maxmillian (the robot, not the actor!) are way too clunky and somewhat goofy looking. The movies does have it's good points though. The drones who run the ship are HELLA scary looking, and there's some splendid special effects in the end (maybe THAT'S where the budget went) and the 2001 ending is rather amusing, considering it's 10 years too late.