A place beyond man's vision, but not beyond his reach...
In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema,we look at Walt Disney's 1979 answer to Star Wars, 33 years before they just went ahead and acquired Lucasfilm. Yes, it's The Black Hole, a movie that certainly falls short of Star Wars in terms of its overall success, but still has a lot of fun elements.
You can see the Imagineers' fingerprints all over this one. The ghost ship Cygnus is breathtaking and at times colorful -- like the dark side of Epcot exposed on the edges of civilized space. And the robots... oh lord, I've always had a special place in my heart for this guys. As we discuss in the episode, they seem to primarily be the design work of Disney Imagineer George McGinnis and you can see some of his original sketches for V.I.N.CENT and Maximilian here and here.
And as long as I'm throwing out links, here's that NYT article Joe referenced, ‘The Black Hole’ Casts The Computer as Movie‐Maker, though it's archived behind a paywall.
Up next on Weirdhouse Cinema? We'll be watching our first Indian movie with the 1984 Bollywood horror film Purana Mandir. In the meantime, be sure to check out the merch store and follow us on Letterboxd! All the movies we've covered are listed there in our list and you can click "read notes" to get links to the individual episodes posted here.
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