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I was looking for something to do on my staycation today and saw that Hulu just added THE BLACK HOLE to their movie list.
I loved this movie as a kid back in 1979 when my world was consumed by all things Sci-Fi after STAR WARS.
I often thought over the years that THE BLACK HOLE was a good movie that just suffered in the shadow of STAR WARS... not that I have seen it again I can finally come to terms with the fact that the movie is just a MST3K-worthy stinker.
What a waste of beautiful art design! If you watched the movie muted you could be food for at least 40 minutes or so that it was a good good movie, but even that falls apart eventually. THE BLACK HOLE tried to be the off spring of 2001: A SPACE ODESSY and STAR WARS... it ended up being TEMU SPACE BALLS.
The writing in this movie is just weird. It fools you into thinking it's just basic pedestrian Sci-Fi prose, and then a character will say something so stupid that I had to rewind to make sure I heard it right. Two examples:
- "You'll be known as the world's Greatest Space Scientist." ... If only there was a word for that....
- "Like us he was sent out to search for inhabitable life." ... I'm sorry, looking for what now?
The Acting was all over the place. Maximillian Shell is over the top, the male leads are average, the female lead is absolutely awful. Every part of her job she screwed up.
At one point towards the end of the movie the main characters are trapped in a shuttle trying to escape the black hole and the two men are doing their part, pressing themselves into their seats and grimacing as if they are being crushed by G-forces while the woman sits behind them like she is waiting for her hair appointment.
The music was also all over the place. The Main Theme of the movie, for me, is iconic. It's great. It's creepy, it's ominous, it sets the tone for the them of the movie. the "Overture"? Not so much. The Overture sounds like a mockery of a heroic theme that would be playing in a David Lynch dream sequence. It's EXTREMELY basic, derivative heroic themes with several flat and off notes thrown in that just grate my nerves.
Iconic Main Theme:
Awful Overture:
Also, the movie just makes odd choices with basic physics in the movie. During the climax of the movie the main characters time spent outside the ship in deep space without a space suit is troublingly less than zero. While fleeing the evil murderous robots the main characters rush in and out of areas exposed to the vacuum of space without any real trouble. It's the kind of ignorance that you could excuse if it was made in the 1920s, but 2001: A SPACE ODESSY did it right 11 years earlier.
And finally, on the subject of 2001: A SPACE ODESSY, THE BLACK HOLE concludes the movie with trying the same kind of think piece that would have the audience talking about what the movie really meant when all of the characters were eventually pulled into the black hole.
Unfortunately for the writer and director, their ham fisted psychedelics didn't really leave anything to the imagination. It turns out that if you are a good boy/girl/robot you go to Heaven, while bad mad scientists end up trapped in the body of their enforcer robot in Hell forever.
The End.
Roll Credits.
I loved this movie as a kid back in 1979 when my world was consumed by all things Sci-Fi after STAR WARS.
I often thought over the years that THE BLACK HOLE was a good movie that just suffered in the shadow of STAR WARS... not that I have seen it again I can finally come to terms with the fact that the movie is just a MST3K-worthy stinker.
What a waste of beautiful art design! If you watched the movie muted you could be food for at least 40 minutes or so that it was a good good movie, but even that falls apart eventually. THE BLACK HOLE tried to be the off spring of 2001: A SPACE ODESSY and STAR WARS... it ended up being TEMU SPACE BALLS.
The writing in this movie is just weird. It fools you into thinking it's just basic pedestrian Sci-Fi prose, and then a character will say something so stupid that I had to rewind to make sure I heard it right. Two examples:
- "You'll be known as the world's Greatest Space Scientist." ... If only there was a word for that....
- "Like us he was sent out to search for inhabitable life." ... I'm sorry, looking for what now?
The Acting was all over the place. Maximillian Shell is over the top, the male leads are average, the female lead is absolutely awful. Every part of her job she screwed up.
At one point towards the end of the movie the main characters are trapped in a shuttle trying to escape the black hole and the two men are doing their part, pressing themselves into their seats and grimacing as if they are being crushed by G-forces while the woman sits behind them like she is waiting for her hair appointment.
The music was also all over the place. The Main Theme of the movie, for me, is iconic. It's great. It's creepy, it's ominous, it sets the tone for the them of the movie. the "Overture"? Not so much. The Overture sounds like a mockery of a heroic theme that would be playing in a David Lynch dream sequence. It's EXTREMELY basic, derivative heroic themes with several flat and off notes thrown in that just grate my nerves.
Iconic Main Theme:
Awful Overture:
Also, the movie just makes odd choices with basic physics in the movie. During the climax of the movie the main characters time spent outside the ship in deep space without a space suit is troublingly less than zero. While fleeing the evil murderous robots the main characters rush in and out of areas exposed to the vacuum of space without any real trouble. It's the kind of ignorance that you could excuse if it was made in the 1920s, but 2001: A SPACE ODESSY did it right 11 years earlier.
And finally, on the subject of 2001: A SPACE ODESSY, THE BLACK HOLE concludes the movie with trying the same kind of think piece that would have the audience talking about what the movie really meant when all of the characters were eventually pulled into the black hole.
Unfortunately for the writer and director, their ham fisted psychedelics didn't really leave anything to the imagination. It turns out that if you are a good boy/girl/robot you go to Heaven, while bad mad scientists end up trapped in the body of their enforcer robot in Hell forever.
The End.
Roll Credits.