Good movie. Maximillian was a scary looking machine.
ping
I always loved the look and atmosphere of this movie, and Barry’s soundtrack really contributed to it.
That was 32 years ago?
Never saw the film, but Barry is one of the greats. This is beautiful. Thanks for posting.
LOL - I never knew “Black Hole” soundtrack was ever thought to be special.
I saw that movie in the theater and I think I saw a small part of it a few years ago. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again, but I don’t remember being impressed by the music in particular.
According to the the Reverend Jackson and his trusty sidekick Al “Notso” Sharpton this soundtrack is the most racist piece of music in the universe!
An excellent score from Bond mastercomposer Barry the same year he composed the scores for space epics “Moonraker” and “Starcrash”. Mr. Barry had a busy sci-fi 1979.
“Oh wow Man! Is that Diana Ross...??”
....
There has been a lot of analysis about where The Black Hole went wrong as a movie. There were mistakes in just about everything in the production that took away from the whole, that indicates the production was just too top heavy—too many studio suits, each of whom wanted changes just so that their hand prints would be on it.
To start with, there was the good idea of giving the movie the drama of some of Disney’s previous movies. Dr. Hans Reinhardt was clearly a Captain Nemo type, played by the superb actor Maximilian Schell. And yet, while Captain Nemo was a tortured soul with a noble cause and loyal crew, Reinhardt is just a deranged, obsessive and murderous villain.
So a lot of plot and acting was lost right there. And while having a lobotomized crew to pilot the ship was an interesting plot twist, it meant that it was just Reinhardt and a bunch of robots. And the robots were pretty useless, except for Maximillian, who was large and intimidating, but didn’t do anything useful.
They probably felt that making cutesy robots would appeal to kids, but that never works. And certainly not with “folksy” accents, which was as annoying as it had been in Starcrash, one of the all time bad movies, the year before.
The rest of the casting was also weak.
From there, they couldn’t seem to make up their mind what the movie was about. More than anything else, it was meandering.
John Barry’s soundtrack was 20,000 Leagues again, with a “the power of the sea” or “Maelstrom” feeling to it. But the black hole just seems to be a backdrop for most of the movie.
And then the very worst part was when they descended into the black hole. Hell and Heaven symbolism, especially using angels, just destroys the fantasy.
Very disturbing scene for me at the time.
Those painted-on eyes were beyond lame.
yes, I mean on the robots, silly.
Just saw “Rise of the Apes”.
Not bad...the CGI of Caesar the Ape is outstanding.
>>> LOL - I never knew “Black Hole” soundtrack was ever thought to be special.
Looks as though some people liked it. It went quickly.
“John Barry
The first pressing of this title is sold out! Back in stock in 2 weeks. Price: $19.99”
Browsing through the catalog I notice they also have the soundtrack from Rock Hudson’s Air Force movie “A GATHERING OF EAGLES”. But it doesn’t include the sole number out of the soundtrack I want and have searched for years trying to find. The “SAC Song”, written by Tom Lehrer and sung by Rod Taylor.