The Black Hole

Gary Nelson | USA | 1979 | 97 mins

The Black Hole is a Disney film, but it was their first ever PG, has proper John Barry music - no silly singing, and is of course live action There are some amusing visual references to Fantasia, apparently (tell me if you spot them) but apart from that it could have been any Star Wars band-wagon jumper of the period.

There are far, far worse though. It's Event Horizon for kids, kind of. Less defined ending, similar foolish scientist seeks to forward mankind by taking undefinable risk plot, and it's as pretty as Event Horizon too, I dare say, with the black hole itself and interesting 'neo-gothic, neo-victorian' design. It also has realistic portrayal of laser beams: instant, not blurry blobs moving so slowly that you could see and dodge them, which pleased real scientists at the time.

There is of course a heap of 'Search for a "higher meaning"', 'absolute power corrupts', 'traitors and cowards die' moralistic stuff, but that's still around, especially on Channel Five.

"The word impossible is only found in a dictionary of fools," proclaims Dr. Hans Reinhardt, played by Maximilian Schell having the best time as a mad genius, planning to plunge his spacecraft the Cygnus into a black hole and emerge on the other side in possession of the ultimate secrets of the universe. Another spaceship The Palomino arrives, randomly, and it's crew of scientists and reporters learn and quake at the dastardly means Schell has been using so far to further his experiment, so they have to escape and tell Earth. But he doesn't want them too...

Yvette Mimieux was Weena the Eloy in George Pall's production of HG Wells' The Time Machine 20 years Earlier, and she has a bit more to do here than she did there, with her useful ESP, and more clothes on. Though Black Hole doesn't follow a novel like The Time Machine, it seems to, being as reminiscent of Disney's 20, 000 Leagues under The Sea as Verne's novel itself, though the dialogue should all come in slanty block-capitol printed bubbles: "My God", says Ernest Borgnine after a peek at the eponymous hole, "it's like Dante's Inferno."

It's pretty then, and fun, and don't let the cute robots put you off, to come and try to spot the first ever computer-controlled camera work bar the original Star Wars, which was robot, not computer anyway. Hmm. I'm not sure if I might be lying there. Nevermind: this isn't one for scienific vigour.

Review by Indianna Jed
Taken from EUFS programme spring 2000