The very first time I saw The Black Hole was in a movie theater with my father. I was fifteen years old then, and was readily anticipating a new science fiction epic, this time produced from the Disney Corporation. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) had opened the week before, but at that point I still hadn’t seen it. My Dad decided to splurge and make it a double-feature, SF-flick weekend for the both of us, and we saw The Black Hole first. We would see Star Trek: The Motion Picture the following day (my retro-review of ST:TMP is forthcoming).
Re-watching The Black Hole forty years later, I’m struck at how good the film is--at least in its first twenty minutes. The deep space exploration vessel Palomino, under the command of Dan Holland (the late, great Robert Forster) finds a massive black hole along its flight path. But it also discovers something even more amazing: a large ship that’s parked right on the black hole’s event horizon, seemingly unaffected by it. A search through the spaceship registration files identifies the vessel as being the Cygnus, a previously thought lost vessel commanded by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (the always good Maximilian Schell).
The Cygnus was a wonderfully designed spaceship that seemed to evoke a nineteenth century greenhouse in space, while still being an impressively monstrous behemoth of a ship. The crew of the Palomino get the shock of their lives when the darkened Cygnus abruptly lights up, proving that it’s not a dead ship--and neither is its captain. Hans Reinhardt welcomes the crew of the Palomino aboard his massive vessel, which is now crewed by robots that he built after he ordered his crew to evacuate when the Cygnus was badly damaged after a meteor shower--yet he is dismayed to learn that his crew never made it home.
But even within these surprisingly good opening twenty minutes, there are cracks here and there: Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux, from George Pal’s The Time Machine) has ESP, which enables her to psychically communicate with Vincent, the Palomino’s resident cute robot (voiced by veteran character actor Roddy McDowell, who received no credit in the film). Psychic communication with robots? Ooookay. As The Black Hole progresses, it becomes clear that this early indication of sheer stupidity was just the tip of the iceberg, as the laws of science are basically flung right out the window in favor of empty spectacle.
Which is a shame, because, in its opening, The Black Hole actually showed some promise. The Palomino was a nicely designed ship with a realistic crew that were played by some great actors. Along with the aforementioned Forster and Mimieux, the Palomino is crewed by Joseph Bottoms as Pizer, the hotshot second in command; Ernest Borgnine as an embedded reporter with the crew, and Anthony Perkins as the Palomino science expert who wants to hump Dr. Reinhardt’s leg the moment he sees him. And that’s not meant to be a bash against Perkins; he played a man who was blinded by his hero-worshipping to perfection. All of the Palomino actors were superb. And Maximilian Schell was perfectly cast as the megalomaniac Reinhardt.
But the biggest star to emerge from The Black Hole was probably Maximilian the robot. A hulking crimson monster armed with bladed weapons, Maximilian was the enforcer of Reinhardt’s orders and a nightmarish vision with his single glowing slit of an eye. He’s clearly the Darth Vader of this film (and was perhaps inspired by Vader). Another plus of The Black Hole were its outstanding special effects, which were all done in-house at Disney.
However, the movie just gets very goofy, and not in a good way. A meteor shower strikes the Cygnus in the third act, with one giant meteor rolling down the central corridor of the ship while our heroes just barely run out of its way. It makes for an impressive FX shot, but all of the humans aboard the Cygnus would have been killed with the massive decompression of the atmosphere, regardless of where they were on the ship. There’s even a scene of Vincent going out into space to rescue Pizer by bringing him back aboard the Cygnus--and Pizer can somehow still breathe while being out IN SPACE. I had a hard time accepting this even when I first saw it at the age of fifteen.
I won’t even bother getting into the mish-mashed ending, which was created by the special effects guys at the last minute because the movie had no real ending. Watching The Black Hole now, I can’t help but feel a little frustrated at how it was almost great. It had brilliant special effects and a marvelous production design and a solid group of actors--not to mention the majestic score by John Barry. But The Black Hole was ultimately undone by a lame script that completely ignored science--along with the basic laws of physics--at every turn. Then, as now, The Black Hole offers some great eye candy, but very little nourishment for the mind. --SF
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