Posted on 08/26/2011 6:45:18 PM PDT by Perdogg
The soundtrack to the 1979 Disney space epic has been remastered, expanded, and now available from Disney and Intrada records.
The music was composed by the late English movie music master John Barry, who is widely known for his work on the James Bond films between 1963 and 1987.
Here is a suite of the OST on youtube
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.
Ditto on your praise of Barry. His magnificent score was the only salvageable thing from “Raise the Titanic.” I used music from “Somewhere in Time” as seating music for my wedding, and for my Dad’s funeral last week, utilized most of “My Life,” along with selections from “The Beyondness of Things” and “Eternal Echoes” for the same purpose.
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...??”
....
As a Rachmaninoff freak, and a romantic, I loved “Somewhere in Time.”
Dunno, the last scene was a bit allegorical for my taste.
Liked Tony Perkins though.
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.
He was rather good in it and I am not the biggest AP fan out there.
Yeah, it never made any sense why Dr. Reinhardt even made Maximillian and his evil battlebots. What the hell did he need them for?
The cutesy-poo “good robots” with Slim Pickens(?) doing the voice of one was pure kiddy-movie Disney and did not belong in an otherwise serious flick.
And since the whole fricking mission was to go through the black hole in the first place, why did Reinhardt need to lobotomize his crew in the first place?
And the LSD-tinged religious imagery also clashed with everything. Hey, if you’re going to cram that in at the end you should have brought up religious themes a few times in the script.
It was an atrocious movie. They hired him for the soundtrack to make it less so, or at least to make you forget how scientifically stupid the plot and writing was. It was Disney’s pathetic attempt to cash in on the Star Wars craze of the time (e.g., it had the obligatory “cute robots”).
It was an atrocious movie. They hired him for the soundtrack to make it less so, or at least to make you forget how scientifically stupid the plot and writing was. It was Disney’s pathetic attempt to cash in on the Star Wars craze of the time (e.g., it had the obligatory “cute robots”).
Very disturbing scene for me at the time.
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