This Walt Disney produced Sci-fi was created to challenge Star Wars for space supremacy...however, you'd be hard pressed to find one in twenty folk that'd ever heard of it. That's not to say that it's a bad film, far from it, it was simply that the studio had clearly never seen Star wars, if they had, they would never have imagined that The Black Hole could or would compete against the original space western.
Plot: The film charts the story of a team of space travelers who come across a mad scientist and get caught up in his diabolical scheme, kind of a mixture of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Island of Dr Moreau and possibly a bit of James Bond baddiness too.
I remember seeing this as a young boy and thinking that I didn't get it. It didn't do what it set out to do. There were no star fights, no aliens, there were some lasers and a few robots, but I'd say that's the only thing that made me persevere to the end.
It had real potential too...
...Alan Dean Foster wrote the screenplay (collaborator on Star Wars), music by John Barry (Jaws!!!!!), starred Ernest Borgnine (The Dirty Dozen) and Anthony Perkins (Psycho) yet this film fell so far from it's intended audience, it may well have vanished into it's own black hole.
At an estimated $20,000,000 budget (the most spent on a single film by Disney at that time-1979), you can see why they may have assumed success. The film made it's money back, but given the laundry list of positives this film should have had going for it, more was surely expected.
Cult yes, good...hmmm, it's just so very different. It's like a space horror...the first though. Not really for kids.
Plot: The film charts the story of a team of space travelers who come across a mad scientist and get caught up in his diabolical scheme, kind of a mixture of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Island of Dr Moreau and possibly a bit of James Bond baddiness too.
I remember seeing this as a young boy and thinking that I didn't get it. It didn't do what it set out to do. There were no star fights, no aliens, there were some lasers and a few robots, but I'd say that's the only thing that made me persevere to the end.
It had real potential too...
...Alan Dean Foster wrote the screenplay (collaborator on Star Wars), music by John Barry (Jaws!!!!!), starred Ernest Borgnine (The Dirty Dozen) and Anthony Perkins (Psycho) yet this film fell so far from it's intended audience, it may well have vanished into it's own black hole.
At an estimated $20,000,000 budget (the most spent on a single film by Disney at that time-1979), you can see why they may have assumed success. The film made it's money back, but given the laundry list of positives this film should have had going for it, more was surely expected.
Cult yes, good...hmmm, it's just so very different. It's like a space horror...the first though. Not really for kids.
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