This ’70s Disney Sci-Fi Movie Stars a Horror Icon (And Has a Bizarre Ending)

The live-action films from Disney’s so-called “Dark Ages” are endlessly fascinating. After the death of its namesake in 1966, the struggling studio spent the next 20 years (and change) trying to reinvent itself in preparation for the Disney Renaissance. For this reason, he began tackling live-action projects that were significantly more mature and ambitious than his productions of previous decades. It also answers the conundrum of how the same company that brought us wacky fare like “The Shaggy Dog” and virtually every Disney film directed by Kurt Russell in the 1950s and ’60s ended up producing something as peculiar and even horrific as 1979’s “The Black Hole.”

Directed by Gary Nelson (who also directed Disney’s version of “Freaky Friday” in 1976), “The Black Hole” began as an attempt by the Mouse House to capture the wave of lucrative disaster films of the ’70s, including the Irvin Allen-produced “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno.” However, this version of the sci-fi picture failed to gain traction and was ultimately scrapped early in development. It was only after “Jaws” and especially “Star Wars: IV – A New Hope” ushered in the era of the modern blockbuster that Disney decided to give “The Black Hole” another chance.

Far from “The Poseidon Adventure in Space,” the reworked version of “The Black Hole” that made it to the screen is more like a cross between Disney’s 1954 adaptation “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and its version of Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris.” The film itself is as strange as it sounds, with the late, great Robert Forster and “Psycho” icon Anthony Perkins leading the cast and an ending that’s as bizarre and memorable as possible. Additionally, famous Western actor and rodeo performer Slim Pickens voices a robot. As I said before, this one is a real headache.

Famed “James Bond” composer John Barry sets the majestic yet ominous and ominous tone of “The Black Hole” with its opening, which plays on a black screen at the beginning of the film before the opening credits. From there, we follow the USS Palomino – a futuristic spaceship whose crew includes the stoic Captain Dan Holland (Forster) and the mercurial Dr. Alex Durant (Perkins) – as it comes across the USS Cygnus, a long-defunct spaceship that can somehow defy the gravitational pull of a nearby black hole. (And that’s not even by far the most scientifically inaccurate thing that happens in this movie!)

Upon boarding, Holland and his team discover that the mysterious ship is now led by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), a renowned scientist on Earth, and his robotic and drone servants, most of whom don’t speak and are more than a little sinister. Suffice it to say, things aren’t what they seem (which is saying something since they’re pretty underwhelming from the start), and the story only gets scarier from there.

Although it’s a Disney film, “The Black Hole” embraces the cynicism of ’70s cinema. It depicts those in positions of authority as untrustworthy, power-hungry and susceptible to corruption (notably the Captain Nemo-esque Reinhardt), culminating in a climax full of bad guys getting their just desserts in a way that’s surprisingly macabre without also being graphic. At the same time, it wants to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster in the vein of “Star Wars,” mixing cute robots and laser gun shootouts into an otherwise unhurried mystery narrative. In other words, until the end, where (without obtaining Also specific), he attempts to create a “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but with a confusing twist.

Is “The Black Hole” a great film? Not exactly. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge of elements that seem to have been left over from previous iterations of its storyline or added to make it play more like “Star Wars,” and its characters are too flat to leave a lasting impression (despite the efforts of its top-notch cast, which also includes Ernest Borgnine and “Planet of the Apes” legend Roddy McDowall as the voice of one of the robots). “The Black Hole” is an interesting film, however, particularly in the way it attempts to present a cerebral science fiction story (with a theological subtext that gradually becomes more and more literal) as a mainstay.

Combine that with the film’s special effects – a triumph of pre-CGI tricks that used then-cutting-edge computer-controlled technology to make the film’s miniatures more realistic and seamlessly blend the casting with the matte paint backgrounds – and you can see why people are still talking about it decades after it failed to impress either critically or financially. You can also count Joseph Kosinski among his biggest fans, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. (Thematically daring, effects-heavy sci-fi films are sort of the director’s bag for “Tron: Legacy” and “Oblivion.”) He even worked on a remake of “Black Hole” in the 2010s, at least until “Interstellar” came along and stepped on his toes. This will probably never come to fruition, but who knows? As the original film shows us, strange things can happen around black holes. (Except, you know, not really, lest I give any astrophysicists reading this a mind-blowing headache.)

“The Black Hole” is currently streaming on Disney+.