"Black Hole" was on TCM today...

Damn. I didn't see the whole thing, but...damn. I mean, I remembered it being disappointing when I saw it in the theaters as a munchkin but geez. It was even crappier than "Star Trek:TMP". I mean, MST3K bad.

Surprised MST3K didn't give that one the treatment.

Still, the big ship looked rather cool.

Yeah, the art design for the film was decent. "Overambitious" might be the word, even. Because the execution was painful.

The FX of the time just weren't up to the sort of stuff they wanted to do. Then on top of that the production values were crap too. Case in point is where the big ship is being destroyed by meteors/gravitational flux. At one point the heroes are running down this corridor in the ship. In the design, it is clearly meant to be the greenhouse-style structure of the ship's hull. But as the actors run past it, it flexes and billows. Apparently they made it out of PVC sheets--shower curtains, if you will.

It was so bad that I almost thought I was mistaken and that that was the effect they were going for. But in a later scene, where two of the robots are fighting, the Evil robot smashes through the glass with much clattering--glass that a minute ago looked and acted suspiciously like a vinyl shower curtain.

It gave us Maximilian.

That makes it one of the best movies ever for that alone.

Yeah, it actually had a telepathic robot in the form of Vincent.

I liked that robot and thought it was a pretty cool design.

Easy to goof on old sci-fi but we're talking about a Disney flick from the late seventies. Kids loved it, there were probably The Black Hole lunch boxes and everything.

I've never seen the movie, but I do remember helping one of my younger cousins build a plastic model kit of the ship from that movie.

I saw The Black Hole four times in the theater when it was brand new.

I was five.

I had The Black Hole lunchboc that you pictures, as well as a all of the comics that they made, and a couple of the toys.

I had Black Hole action figures...

And yes, the Cygnus was a very cool ship design, and the model kit of the ship is now very valuable.

I think the Black Hole would be a great film for them to remake / reimagine. With today's CGI FX, the possibilities are endless....

But the fanboys would bitch and moan about any rewrite or reimagining of it to no end.

Saw this when it first came out.
I was 20 at the time.
In those days, we took our Sci Fi where we could find it.
And it had Maximillian Schell and Anthony Perkins.

Haven't seen it in yonks, but what's not to love?

I was 10 or so when 'The Black Hole' came out and three things about it greatly impressed me:

1. The opening computer graphics trip through the representation of the black hole, accompanied by that relentless, oppressive theme song.

2. The amount of detail in the Cygnus, which made it seem much more true-to-life to me than anything in Star Wars.

3. Yes, Maximillian. Damned cool robot.

It's not a great picture, but I continue to enjoy those elements whenever I see it. If it were recreated as a straight horror flick, it might be a really killer movie...

There are no Black Hole fanboys.

Never seen it...please tell me it's not an adult movie.

Disney.

But it is one of Disney's rare attempts at serious Science fiction, Besides Tron.

And, I think, their first PG rated movie.

If it was remade today would it be called the African-American Hole, or maybe the Hole of Color?

Yeah, Maximillian rocked... the whole 'black hole as a portal to heaven and hell' thing was an odd bit of cosmological mismatchery, but overall a very cool flick for it's time.

The zombie crewmembers were pretty creepy too...