Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb, and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: Today's film is I guess, kind of a convergence of things. Joe,
Speaker 2: you were wanting to cover another film that comes in
Speaker 2: the wake of Star Wars nineteen seventy seven. Star Wars,
Speaker 2: so many films angle in for a slice of that success.
Speaker 3: Well, yet there are so many films you could call
Speaker 3: Star Wars ripoffs. I think it's kind of interesting to
Speaker 3: study the many different ways that one can rip off
Speaker 3: Star Wars. Sort of a genre of study within its
Speaker 3: own Star Wars ripoff studies. But I'd say, of most
Speaker 3: of the movies we've watched that have come out in
Speaker 3: the wake of Star Wars to ride on its coattails
Speaker 3: for marketing purposes, this one is one of the least
Speaker 3: like Star Wars in terms of narrative content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is This was Disney's answer to Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Now Disney's answer to Star Wars thirty three years later
Speaker 2: would be just to buy lucasfilm pretty much. But at
Speaker 2: the time you can kind of get a sense of
Speaker 2: the swagger here. It's like, oh, Star Wars has done
Speaker 2: very well, but you know, we're we're We're the Walt
Speaker 2: Disney Company. We've got imagineers, gosh darn it, and you
Speaker 2: should see the kinds of things that they can design.
Speaker 2: We've got this long history with with TV and film.
Speaker 2: Let us take a crack at this general area, at
Speaker 2: this this kind of science fiction, and you know, I
Speaker 2: bet we can create something that will connect just as well,
Speaker 2: if not better, with the audience.
Speaker 3: Now, that didn't quite come about, but I do think
Speaker 3: what they produced is interesting, if not quite on the
Speaker 3: level of Star Wars.
Speaker 2: I agree. I agree. This is a film that I
Speaker 2: remember quite fondly from my own childhood. I drew a
Speaker 2: lot of like crayon at of the robots from this
Speaker 2: film back in the day, especially Maximilian, who will describe
Speaker 2: here in a bit. But I do have to stress
Speaker 2: as well that while I saw this film, and I
Speaker 2: guess maybe it was like you know, VHS rentals or something,
Speaker 2: or maybe they would occasionally show it on TV or something,
Speaker 2: but my main connection with the film was not from
Speaker 2: the movie itself, but from the twenty four page read
Speaker 2: along book and record that was put out with this
Speaker 2: that I have, and I think my mom probably still
Speaker 2: has a copy of this, but just a little flip
Speaker 2: book and it comes with a little record that you
Speaker 2: play and it reads along and has all these sound
Speaker 2: effects from the movie.
Speaker 3: Well wait, so if it's a record, does it play
Speaker 3: that scary string theme?
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah. Like when I was rewatching the
Speaker 2: movie for this episode, and it's the first time I've
Speaker 2: seen the black Hole in Gosh, I mean at least
Speaker 2: ten years, probably much longer, the music instantly resonated with me.
Speaker 2: So yes, it definitely had some of the score on there.
Speaker 3: I've actually never seen it before. This was my first time,
Speaker 3: though you've talked, You've made reference to it a number
Speaker 3: of times, and listeners have written in recommending we cover it,
Speaker 3: so this is partially a listener suggested episode from multiple listeners.
Speaker 3: But I was kind of surprised to find that in
Speaker 3: a way, despite this being a movie from nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: it is a very traditional, almost old fashioned space adventure
Speaker 3: movie where a crew of astronauts with defined roles encounter
Speaker 3: something frightening deep in the heart of space. Except it
Speaker 3: was made in the late seventies with at the time,
Speaker 3: cutting edge special effects, especially computer effects, and the thing
Speaker 3: the astronauts encounter is not a spaceship full of green aliens,
Speaker 3: but a black hole, which of course is a real
Speaker 3: type of object in the universe. Still mysterious and awe
Speaker 3: inspiring today, but at the time it would have been
Speaker 3: a much more recent entry into the public consciousness, a
Speaker 3: more baffling and unfamiliar concept to the general audiences. And
Speaker 3: in fact, the original trailer for the movie spends almost
Speaker 3: the entire trailer basically just explaining the concept of a
Speaker 3: black hole to the audience, like, isn't this scary?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if not for the fact that there's
Speaker 2: a big budget picture, it's almost like black hole black
Speaker 2: hole exploitation cinema, right, just getting in there first to
Speaker 2: capitalize on it, but then also, yeah, having to do
Speaker 2: the legwork of explaining why this is important now.
Speaker 3: I sort of couldn't help but compare this film to
Speaker 3: some other ones. One that kept coming to mind to
Speaker 3: contrast with The black Hole is Tron, which came out
Speaker 3: three years later in nineteen eighty two, maybe because both
Speaker 3: films made use of what were at the time cutting
Speaker 3: edge and what were considered very impressive computer effects, though
Speaker 3: I think Tron's computer effects are able to establish a
Speaker 3: more unique visual style than the computer effects in this movie,
Speaker 3: which I do really like some of the visual effects
Speaker 3: in the black Holes more than others, And the computer
Speaker 3: effects in The black Hole, really I think are just
Speaker 3: they're not very exciting to modern audiences.
Speaker 2: No, but certainly there are a lot of shots in
Speaker 2: the film that are really beautiful and colorful to look at.
Speaker 2: I don't think i'd seen black Hole in this quality
Speaker 2: before you streamed it off Disney Plus one of the
Speaker 2: main places to watch it these days. So a lot
Speaker 2: of the time I was just watching the screen, just
Speaker 2: really taking in these beautiful like I kept thinking about Epcot.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like you can see the imagineer's fingerprints
Speaker 2: on this picture. You know, there's a lot of gorgeous,
Speaker 2: like seventies style to it. I think the comparison to
Speaker 2: Tron is apt, except I would say infinitely more watchable
Speaker 2: than Tron, like that, Tron really really goes after the
Speaker 2: cutting edge special effects in a way that this film
Speaker 2: thankfully doesn't. Like. One of the taglines for black Hole
Speaker 2: is a place beyond man's vision, but not beyond his
Speaker 2: reach and I feel like Tron is a movie beyond
Speaker 2: man's reach, but not beyond his vision, you know, for
Speaker 2: that period of filmmaking. I don't know, folks can disagree,
Speaker 2: but I have not been able to really get into
Speaker 2: a rewatch of the original Tron.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. I wonder I have, But I wonder
Speaker 3: if it's mainly powered by nostalgia. It could be that's coloring.
Speaker 3: Another thing I would say that's a difference, though, is
Speaker 3: that I think Trons is a little bit more quotable
Speaker 3: and maybe has more compelling characters, or at least for
Speaker 3: the first half of the movie or so with regards
Speaker 3: to the black Hole, because after I picked this, I mean,
Speaker 3: I was enjoying watching it, but I'd say maybe not
Speaker 3: the first half. The first third or so, I was
Speaker 3: feeling a little disappointed because it seemed something about it
Speaker 3: felt kind of sterile like, even though it had some
Speaker 3: good visual effects, I thought the movie kind of was
Speaker 3: kind of lacking in humanity and personality. And it got
Speaker 3: a little bit better in that regard about a third
Speaker 3: of the way in. And this kind of matched up
Speaker 3: with something I'd been reading about how there were early
Speaker 3: scenes in the movie that were cut that were basically
Speaker 3: all character development scenes with our main characters, Like when
Speaker 3: we start meeting them, essentially all they're doing is like
Speaker 3: giving technobabble lines. They're on the ship saying like, you know,
Speaker 3: shift to manual, coming up three point four degrees. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's a black hole.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's very little humanity in the beginning of the film,
Speaker 3: or at least it seemed to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's remarkably slow at the beginning, and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm glad I wasn't watching it with my son
Speaker 2: because I think I would have had to have done
Speaker 2: a lot of handholding through the dryer portions leading up
Speaker 2: to anything really cool going on.
Speaker 3: But I thought that once they actually get on board
Speaker 3: the Reinhart's ship and they start kind of like noticing
Speaker 3: all of the strange goings on there, it became a
Speaker 3: lot more interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because ultimately, like this film, it's interesting. This is
Speaker 2: kind of the comparison to Star Wars is I think
Speaker 2: essential in terms of the time period, But while Star
Speaker 2: Wars is his sweeping adventure epic, this is more of
Speaker 2: a haunted house movie in the same way that another
Speaker 2: certainly more famous and successful science fiction movie, from the
Speaker 2: same year was and that, of course is Ridley Scott's
Speaker 2: Alien That was very much I've heard Scott and others
Speaker 2: speak of it as a haunted house film, like that
Speaker 2: was how they sort of put it together originally. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: people wind up somewhere out in the Boonies, in this case,
Speaker 2: near the edge of a black hole, and here's this
Speaker 2: old Kookie house and there's an old Kookie man in it,
Speaker 2: and Shenanigan's Unfold.
Speaker 3: Another movie I couldn't help but compare The black Hole
Speaker 3: too is the much later film from the late nineties,
Speaker 3: Event Horizon, which in some ways seems to be a
Speaker 3: low brow, R rated adaptation of Disney's The black Hole.
Speaker 2: Would you agree, Yeah, in some respects, certainly The black Hole,
Speaker 2: but with maybe worse workplace dynamics. I'm not sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's some pretty bad workplace dynamics in this. We'll get
Speaker 2: into when we get into spoilers.
Speaker 3: But like the heaven hell things like the religious connotations
Speaker 3: with the black Hole and somebody who wants to go
Speaker 3: in to we have such sights to show you, well,
Speaker 3: I guess that's hell Raiser, but we won't need eyes
Speaker 3: to see where you're going. There's a lot of similar
Speaker 3: stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah, Event Horizon is a solid comparison. Now,
Speaker 2: this is definitely one of those films. We talk about
Speaker 2: a lot of B films on Weird House Cinema, but
Speaker 2: we also talk about occasional blockbusters and higher budget films.
Speaker 2: For sure. This one definitely is a selection that had
Speaker 2: a heftier price tag.
Speaker 3: And a haltier price tag attached to things that, as
Speaker 3: I already said, but we'll stress again, don't look super
Speaker 3: impressive when you see them today, not like they look bad.
Speaker 3: They're just like very simple, because that's what computer graphics
Speaker 3: were capable of at the time. And so I was
Speaker 3: reading about this in an article for The New York
Speaker 3: Times from December sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine by John Colhane
Speaker 3: called The black Hole casts the computer as movie maker.
Speaker 3: So it begins by describing the opening credits of The
Speaker 3: black Hole, in which we see a grid of green
Speaker 3: lines intersecting so it looks like graph paper, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just a flat square grid floating in space, and
Speaker 3: then we zoom over it and then we realize there's
Speaker 3: like a funnel in the middle of it. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a hole and you plunge down into it. Colhane
Speaker 3: writes computer graphics are expensive. Those seventy five seconds of
Speaker 3: animated grid movement in The Black Hole costs Disney fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. Nevertheless, the fabulous success of Star Wars, a
Speaker 3: movie costing eleven million dollars in nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 3: with worldwide grosses now exceeding four hundred and twenty million,
Speaker 3: has inspired producers to loosen the purse springs for special
Speaker 3: effects of all kinds. The black Hole, Disney's costliest movie ever,
Speaker 3: which will run about twenty million dollars, and Paramounts Star
Speaker 3: Trek the Movie, which cost forty million, are the two
Speaker 3: most expensive productions to open in New York this Christmas.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, you know that center. I never really thought
Speaker 2: as much about Star Trek the movie being also something
Speaker 2: that comes about in the wake of Star Wars and
Speaker 2: because of Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean whether or not the movie itself
Speaker 3: was a direct ripoff of Star Wars or was heavily
Speaker 3: comparable to Star Wars in some way. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people secured funding for their movies by saying, like,
Speaker 3: it'll be like Star Wars, it'll be that big of
Speaker 3: a money maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just like the basic proof, it's like, look,
Speaker 2: look what kind of money. Well, let me speak your language.
Speaker 2: Look how much money a science fiction movie with the
Speaker 2: with great effects can make. And you know that gets
Speaker 2: through to the industry.
Speaker 3: So this article is of interesting if you want to
Speaker 3: look it up, because it provides a snapshot of what
Speaker 3: people were thinking was possible with computer effects in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine and talks about the idea far down the road.
Speaker 3: They say it'll be a ways off, but the first
Speaker 3: movie completely animated by computers, and it's obviously a very
Speaker 3: exciting prospect to them. So but this is another example.
Speaker 3: I think this has even come up on the show
Speaker 3: before about like early CGI being super compelling to people
Speaker 3: at the time, but something that just has not aged
Speaker 3: very well at all, Like it doesn't look that cool now.
Speaker 3: I mean some of it does, but most of the
Speaker 3: time it doesn't. But at the time people were just
Speaker 3: in awe of it. And an example would be this
Speaker 3: like grid of green squares that just looks like graph
Speaker 3: paper and then eventually it turns into a funnel. That's
Speaker 3: the black hole, you know, that's the bend in space
Speaker 3: time caused by the singularity the and you get to
Speaker 3: go down the hole. That's sounds pretty simple now, but
Speaker 3: they originally had that made for a trailer for the
Speaker 3: black Hole, which is essentially just explaining what a black
Speaker 3: hole is, and then they were so impressed by it
Speaker 3: they ended up using it in the movie itself, so
Speaker 3: now it's the opening credits of the film as well.
Speaker 2: I think one of the most interesting examples to sort
Speaker 2: of put all this in the frame of reference for
Speaker 2: where we are now is John Carpenter's Escape from New York,
Speaker 2: which has that computer. It seems to be a computer
Speaker 2: animated like you know, readout of New York of Manhattan
Speaker 2: in the opening of the film. It's made to look
Speaker 2: like computer graphics, but it's not. It's an actual physical
Speaker 2: model that they use like tape and contrast of dark
Speaker 2: and light to create this effect. Because at the time
Speaker 2: like this was the far more affordable way to go
Speaker 2: about it is actually build the thing. Nowadays it's definitely
Speaker 2: pushed on beyond that to the opposite. It's it's almost
Speaker 2: always cheaper to create the digital version of it no
Speaker 2: quality now standing, but still like to create the physical
Speaker 2: version of a thing is generally far more expensive.
Speaker 3: In the original Star Wars, there are a number of
Speaker 3: animations that look like they're supposed to be computer screens
Speaker 3: or computer animations, but they were actually done by hand,
Speaker 3: like the targeting computer and the X Wing is an
Speaker 3: effect done by hand, but it's made to look like
Speaker 3: a computer effect.
Speaker 2: All right, well, do you do you have an elevator
Speaker 2: pitch for this one? Oh?
Speaker 3: I didn't think of one. What do Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You go to space to find life, but sometimes you
Speaker 3: just find a black hole.
Speaker 2: I guess. I guess you could make some argument for
Speaker 2: it's it's Captain Nemo or it's you know, Captain Ahab,
Speaker 2: one of the two in space. Strong elements of that.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely the Captain Nemo thing. Do you think that
Speaker 3: Disney World was working on a ride tie in and
Speaker 3: they just never did it?
Speaker 2: If my memory is correct on this, I watched a
Speaker 2: documentary about it. I believe Star Tours at Disney that ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, is a Star Wars themed ride. I believe
Speaker 2: it was originally going to be a black hole ride
Speaker 2: but oh and ended up not working out. And I
Speaker 2: don't remember all the reasons there, but I mean, the
Speaker 2: obvious reason would be, why have it themed around the
Speaker 2: black hole when you could do Star Wars actual Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Okay, should we hear some trailer audio, let's do it.
Speaker 4: There is an inexorable force in the cosmos where time
Speaker 4: and space converge, a place beyond Demand's mission watch not
Speaker 4: to his reach, which is the most mysterious and awesome
Speaker 4: point in the.
Speaker 5: Universe where they're here and now maybe forever. It is
Speaker 5: unavoidable moving through space, swallowing everything in its power, radio waves, light,
Speaker 5: even planets and stars.
Speaker 6: Are you programmed to speak? Gravity is a maximum? Damn Like?
Speaker 6: All right, I think it's got us.
Speaker 3: We gotta way here too.
Speaker 6: Now, man, it's about to enter the black Horn.
Speaker 5: Journey that begins where everything end.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's let's go into that black hole. Now.
Speaker 2: If you want to watch the movie for yourself before
Speaker 2: proceeding through the rest of the episode, well, it's widely
Speaker 2: available Disney Plus subscribers. Subscribers will naturally find the film
Speaker 2: there and after stay. Quality looks really great. I really
Speaker 2: was drawn in by it. I wasn't expecting to be
Speaker 2: as drawn in by the visuals of it. It has
Speaker 2: also been released on DVD and Blu Ray as well,
Speaker 2: if you prefer physical media or want to you know,
Speaker 2: rent it at an actual rental store, if you have
Speaker 2: one of those in your area. All Right, the people
Speaker 2: who brought this film together, the main ones anyway, that
Speaker 2: we tend to reference on the show. Let's start at
Speaker 2: the top with the director. It's Gary Nelson, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty two. Mostly known for
Speaker 2: his TV work, but he worked on some pretty big
Speaker 2: TV shows of the nineteen six followed by such films
Speaker 2: as seventy three's San Tea, eighty one's Nighthawks, eighty two's
Speaker 2: Jimmy the Kid, and eighty six's Alan Quatermain and The
Speaker 2: Lost City of Gold, and also a number of TV
Speaker 2: movies in mini series as well. He was Judy Meredith's husband.
Speaker 2: We of course recently talked about her she was in
Speaker 2: Queen of Blood. So that's the director. And then when
Speaker 2: it comes to screenplay and story credits, they're three individuals referenced.
Speaker 2: There's Jeb Rosebrook who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: has a screenplay story credit. Mostly a TV writer, mostly Westerns,
Speaker 2: wrote not one but two Kenny Rogers Gambler movies.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that was the thing. They made Gambler
Speaker 3: movies after the song.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there was a whole I forget how many,
Speaker 2: but there's like a whole franchise of Kenny Rogers the
Speaker 2: Gambler movies. I don't think I've ever seen them, but
Speaker 2: like I remember seeing the TV ads for them, because
Speaker 2: they're going to play the Gambler in the ads, of course,
Speaker 2: and you can't help but pipe up and start watching
Speaker 2: the trailer, and then you know. I never watched them, though.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've done my bit on the
Speaker 3: Gambler on the show before, but I've always found that
Speaker 3: song to beat the Poker advice is not specific enough.
Speaker 3: You gotta know when to hold him and know when
Speaker 3: to fold them. Yeah duh. Like what are the rules
Speaker 3: for when to hold him and when to fold.
Speaker 2: Him, or when when to walk away, when to run?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess he's saying, like, I can't
Speaker 2: teach you to do this. It's all gut instant.
Speaker 3: But that's not advice.
Speaker 2: He's just a gambler. He's not a teacher. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Another story credit is just a story credit goes to
Speaker 2: Bob Barbash who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: Once again, mostly TV, mostly Westerns, but in this case
Speaker 2: no Gambler movies, Bummer. So you might be wondering, what
Speaker 2: does anybody in this have any like sci fi genre history.
Speaker 2: Yes there is one, and that is Richard H. Landau
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety as a screenplay
Speaker 2: story credit, a writer with credits going back to the
Speaker 2: early forties, and certainly there are a bunch of Westerns
Speaker 2: in there because that was the time period, but also
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty three sci fi movie Space Ways directed
Speaker 2: by Terrence Fisher, fifty five's The Quartermass Experiment, fifty seven's
Speaker 2: Pharaoh's Curse, fifty eight's Frankenstein nineteen seventy and he also
Speaker 2: wrote one episode of the original Outer Limits series. After that,
Speaker 2: it's mostly TV credits, but it includes episodes of The
Speaker 2: Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, and nineteen eighties Beyond.
Speaker 3: Westworld, Pacific Ocean World.
Speaker 2: All right, getting into the cast at the right at
Speaker 2: the top playing doctor hanns ryin Hart, our deranged Black
Speaker 2: Hole Scientists, basically our Captain Nemo character for the flick
Speaker 2: is Maximilian Shell, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: Austrian born Swiss actor whose family fled the Nazis during
Speaker 2: World War Two. His German and European credits go all
Speaker 2: the way back to the mid nineteen fifties. I believe
Speaker 2: his earliest film credits, Sons, Mothers and a General, actually
Speaker 2: featured both Shell and Kloskinski in small roles as soldiers.
Speaker 2: They're like way down in the cast, but they both
Speaker 2: pop up there. He ascended in German language TV and cinema,
Speaker 2: and then made the move to Hollywood and almost immediately
Speaker 2: won an Academy Award for Best Actor in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: one's Judgment at Nuremberg. Subsequent credits include seventy fours, The
Speaker 2: Odessa Phile, seventy seven's Cross of Iron, eighty one's The Chosen.
Speaker 2: There's an nineteen eighty six Peter the Great mini series
Speaker 2: and ninety two Stalin mini series, John Carpenter's Vampires and
Speaker 2: Deep Impact, both of those from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: He's in John Carpenter's Vampires.
Speaker 2: Who is he? In that he's like a Catholic church
Speaker 2: representative who hires the Vampire Slayer James Woods. It's a
Speaker 2: film I've only seen once. It's probably gonna remain at once.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my god, I love John Carpenter. I could not
Speaker 3: finish that movie. Just awful.
Speaker 2: The book. The book was pretty good, as I recall,
Speaker 2: it's based on a novel that's uh, that's pretty terrifying
Speaker 2: in places. But the movie, yeah, I'm not not top
Speaker 2: tier Carpenter.
Speaker 3: But Maximilian shell is a is a great pick for
Speaker 3: for this kind of villain. He's, uh, you know, he's
Speaker 3: he's kind of complex. Uh, he is a little bit refined.
Speaker 3: He's egotistical and of course you know, has has the
Speaker 3: right touch of madness. He also he has he has
Speaker 3: a good hair and beard for this role. He seems
Speaker 3: like the sort of person who could have played resputant
Speaker 3: if he needed to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great wild to hear and beard in this and
Speaker 2: just I think it. I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 2: oversell it because it is what it is. In this film,
Speaker 2: he's like the deranged villain on a spaceship who has
Speaker 2: robots working for him. But it is still a very
Speaker 2: captivating performance. Like anytime doctor Hans Einhardt is speaking, you're
Speaker 2: taken in by it, his eyes are just really they
Speaker 2: really suck your riding on, like black holes.
Speaker 3: I did notice that in a lot of scenes I
Speaker 3: would be very interested whenever he was talking, but then
Speaker 3: when the scene was over, I would forget what it
Speaker 3: was he had said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean basically just egotistical this, I'm the best
Speaker 2: that you guys should stick around. I'm going into the
Speaker 2: black hole that sort of thing, right, all right? We
Speaker 2: also have Anthony Perkins in this, playing doctor Alex Durant.
Speaker 2: Perkins lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen ninety two American
Speaker 2: actor who's of course best known for his role as
Speaker 2: Norman Bates in nineteen sixty Psycho, a film that really
Speaker 2: flipped the switch on his prior casting as mostly just
Speaker 2: a handsome leading man and not a deranged killer. He
Speaker 2: would go on to do two sequels to Psycho, but
Speaker 2: is also known for nineteen seventy four's Murder on the
Speaker 2: Orient Express, sixty two Is The Trial, eighty four's Crimes
Speaker 2: of Passion, and nineteen seventies Catch twenty to also of
Speaker 2: note for a deeper B movie cuts, nineteen eighty nine's
Speaker 2: Age of Sanity and nineteen eighty eight's Destroyer.
Speaker 3: In this, he plays a kind of groveling super fan
Speaker 3: of doctor Ryan Hart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's totally team Ryan Hart. Just almost immediately upon
Speaker 2: meeting the man, He's like, yes, this whatever his scientific
Speaker 2: vision here is, I want to be a part of it. This,
Speaker 2: this is the the road to success.
Speaker 3: He also gets really offended when other people criticize Ryin Hart. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but in a very toxic fan dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's very he's very dry about it. I
Speaker 2: like his I like Perkins' energy in this. You know,
Speaker 2: he's he's he's quick to defend Ryan Hart, but he's
Speaker 2: you know, he keeps an even keel. He's a you know,
Speaker 2: he's he keeps it together. Man seems to be making
Speaker 2: rational if not you know, one sided argument. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: all right. But so so he's like, what the science
Speaker 2: officer on the vessel that comes to the signal at
Speaker 2: the edge of the black hole. But with that that
Speaker 2: ship also is the Palmino, I believe the Palomino. Palomino
Speaker 2: and the Captain we have Captain Dan Hollins played by
Speaker 2: Robert Forster. Love Robert Forster. Yeah, Yeah, I mean he's great.
Speaker 2: Live forty one through twenty nineteen American actor whose credits
Speaker 2: go all the way back to the late sixties. He
Speaker 2: played the lead in sixty nine's Medium Cool, directed by
Speaker 2: Haskell Wexler. Later films include Reflections in a GoldenEye from
Speaker 2: sixty seven, An Alligator from nineteen eighty. But he really
Speaker 2: enjoyed a late career resurgence, So they're in a lot
Speaker 2: of you out there, they're probably you probably know him
Speaker 2: best from like nineteen ninety seven's Jackie Brown, his role
Speaker 2: in the Breaking Bad series as ed the What's He's
Speaker 2: not a fixer, he's the guy who can make you
Speaker 2: disappear and get a new life, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The main thing I remember is he shows up to
Speaker 3: give Brian Kranston a copy of mister mcgoram's Wonder Emporium
Speaker 3: in this cabin in the in the Mountains.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Forrester also shows up in twenty eleven to
Speaker 2: the Descendants, the series twin Peaks, the Return, So yeah,
Speaker 2: very much a guy whose late career was really excelled.
Speaker 2: And Captain Dan is a lot of fun. He's very smooth, cucumber.
Speaker 2: He doesn't I don't think his pulse rate rises too
Speaker 2: high no matter what's happening in the film you know,
Speaker 2: everything's by the books, no messing around, and it makes
Speaker 2: for some nice moments of kind of like dry humor.
Speaker 3: Too agreed. He is the steady hand.
Speaker 2: I think I said he's a smooth cucumber. I guess
Speaker 2: technically is a cool cucumber. I'm not sure which.
Speaker 3: He's a smooth cucumber and a cool operator.
Speaker 2: There you go, all right. We also have another guy
Speaker 2: that's on the ship, and this is Lieutenant Charles Piser.
Speaker 2: Not a lot to say about this guy. He's just,
Speaker 2: you know, the younger dude on the vessel. Played by
Speaker 2: Joseph Bottoms born nineteen fifty four American actor, best known
Speaker 2: for seventy four as the Dove, the nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: mini series Holocous as well as this film. He was
Speaker 2: also in nineteen eighty one's The Intruder within, a made
Speaker 2: for TV alien knockoff of sorts that's been on my
Speaker 2: to watch list. He's the brother of Timothy Bottoms, best
Speaker 2: known for nineteen seventy one's The Last Picture Show in
Speaker 2: seventy three's The Paper Chase.
Speaker 3: I thought Timothy Bottoms was best known for looking like
Speaker 3: George W. Bush when that which is why they cast
Speaker 3: him in multiple things to play George W.
Speaker 2: Bush. Yes, he was in such a comedy just prior
Speaker 2: to nine to eleven? Is that recall? And then it
Speaker 2: was canceled.
Speaker 3: But then I think they also cast him in like
Speaker 3: serious nine to eleven movies instead they Wow, that's what
Speaker 3: I thought.
Speaker 2: That may be the case. Yeah, I mean he does
Speaker 2: he especially at that time period. Yeah, it was solid
Speaker 2: casting and really solid actor. So whatever you wanted out
Speaker 2: of him, if you wanted comedy or if you wanted drama,
Speaker 2: you know, Timothy Bottoms could deliver. And if Timothy Bottoms
Speaker 2: couldn't deliver, I guess you could ask Joseph Bottoms. But
Speaker 2: to my knowledge, he never played a president.
Speaker 3: Wait, but I actually do remember him from one other
Speaker 3: thing that made an intense impression on me when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I think it was a movie my
Speaker 3: dad watched on TV and I caught part of it
Speaker 3: was a movie called roller Coaster from nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: where Timothy Bottoms plays. I could be remembering this wrong,
Speaker 3: but I think he plays a bomber who bombs roller coasters.
Speaker 2: Horrifying ideas cuts like come on, some of us are
Speaker 2: already frightened enough getting on a roller coaster, and you
Speaker 2: got to put this kind of film out there.
Speaker 3: I'm right in that camp. I already did not really
Speaker 3: like roller coasters. And then I watched this movie. Oh great.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm not familiar with it, but Helen Hunts in it.
Speaker 3: I don't remember her.
Speaker 2: I was. She must have been like, you know, thirteen
Speaker 2: or something at the time. All Right. Another member of
Speaker 2: the crew, and really one of the more conceptually interesting
Speaker 2: members of the crew anyway, is doctor Kate McCrae, played
Speaker 2: by Yavette Mimu, who lived nineteen forty two through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, American actor who played the character Weena in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties The Time Machine. So she wasn't a morlock.
Speaker 2: She was what were they, the alloy the.
Speaker 3: La Yeah, yeah, the kind of like gentle dumb people
Speaker 3: who live on the surface and are yeah, by morelocks exactly.
Speaker 2: So she was the main one of those in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty Time Machine movie. Later credits include seventy three's
Speaker 2: The Neptune Factor. That's an underwater film that also starred
Speaker 2: Ernest Borgnine, nineteen seventies Journey into Fear, nineteen seventy eight's
Speaker 2: The Devil Dog, the Dog from Hell Satan's actual dog.
Speaker 2: I just added the last part and various TV appearances.
Speaker 3: The Dog from Hell is one of the most superfluous
Speaker 3: subtitles I've ever seen. I generally am not a big
Speaker 3: fan of colon subtitles in movie titles, but that one
Speaker 3: is just chef kiss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so unnecessary. Anyway, We'll discuss your character in a
Speaker 2: bit more detail later on, but it's one of these
Speaker 2: where the concept behind her character is far more interesting
Speaker 2: than anything they really do with it in the movie,
Speaker 2: and you can't help but wonder what could have been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but quick note, our producer JJ just chimed in
Speaker 3: to let us know it is in fact Devil Dog
Speaker 3: the Hound of Hell, not the Dog from Hell. But
Speaker 3: I mean, is that a huge difference. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. My apologies to Richard Krinna, though.
Speaker 3: Clearly that makes it a lot more useful of a subtitle.
Speaker 2: All Right, we just mentioned Ernest borgnine. Well, he's in
Speaker 2: this too. He plays he's like a journalist aboard the
Speaker 2: space vessel. That's his name is Harry Booth.
Speaker 3: We just talked about Ernest borgnine in our episode on
Speaker 3: The Devil's Rain he melted for twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: That's right, as we discussed in that and certainly go
Speaker 2: back to The Devil's Rain for an in depth discussion
Speaker 2: on Borg nine. But basically, like there's Borg nine, like
Speaker 2: older Borg nine movies are all about like the you know,
Speaker 2: him being kind of a heavy and a villain for
Speaker 2: the most part, where they're far more of those, Devil's
Speaker 2: Rain kind of stands out because it's like maybe one
Speaker 2: of the last real villain roles he did. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure on that. There may be some others, but certainly
Speaker 2: stands out for his later career. But you know, he
Speaker 2: also probably has a bigger name for many of the
Speaker 2: you know, the good natured sort of grandpa type characters
Speaker 2: he played later in his career, and that's that's kind
Speaker 2: of the energy here. Like Harry Booth is a likable guy,
Speaker 2: a journalist who you know, just wants to bring the
Speaker 2: truth back home. He wants to stick up for his friends,
Speaker 2: and it's not a lot more to it.
Speaker 3: Well, but there is a weird twist with the end
Speaker 3: of this character's arc because he tries to steal the
Speaker 3: ship and escape and leave them behind.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yes, I forgot about that we'll get to
Speaker 2: that later. Okay, all right, moving, There aren't many more
Speaker 2: people in this film, but and this one's kind of
Speaker 2: a head scratcher. So because at this point we're basically
Speaker 2: out of humans. It takes place on a spaceship out
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere as far as the galaxy goes,
Speaker 2: so you know, we're out of humans. But we have
Speaker 2: this other character named Captain Starr Star. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what this stands for, but we learned that he's like
Speaker 2: the top gunslinging robot on the Sickness.
Speaker 3: Wait, I have a note about what Star stands for.
Speaker 3: It is Special Troops Arms Regiment.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, that works, that works out.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: They're obviously all backronyms in this because they're like full names.
Speaker 3: It's like Vincent and then they make Vincent stand for
Speaker 3: something implausible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is not a major character. There's a
Speaker 2: fun sequence with it. I like, this is the scene
Speaker 2: that involves Captain Star. But yeah, Captain Star is like
Speaker 2: the best of the non Maximilian bad robots. And he's
Speaker 2: played by Tom McLoughlin Bor nineteen fifty, son of a
Speaker 2: magician and former mime, and he apparently also studied mime
Speaker 2: as well, which I guess prepared him for this role
Speaker 2: of slinging around blasters as a robot. He would go
Speaker 2: on to primarily write and direct, with credits that include
Speaker 2: One Dark Night from eighty two, which I've seen all
Speaker 2: are part of about sorority sisters spending the night in
Speaker 2: a mausoleum and there's like a haunted old man with
Speaker 2: lightning coming out of him or something. He also wrote
Speaker 2: and directed nineteen eighty six is Friday the thirteenth, Part
Speaker 2: six Jason Lives Joe. Is that one of the good
Speaker 2: ones define good.
Speaker 3: That's the first one where Jason is undead, So that's
Speaker 3: where that's the first one to introduce explicit magical powers
Speaker 3: to the series.
Speaker 2: This is not the one with the psychic girl in.
Speaker 3: It, No, that's part seven, Part six. Jason gets dug
Speaker 3: up from the ground and then lightning strikes his grave
Speaker 3: and that wakes him up and then he just you know,
Speaker 3: runs around doing Jason stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, well still, and I guess an important shift in
Speaker 2: the franchise.
Speaker 3: Yes, Part six, I think is it has a more
Speaker 3: overt sense of humor than most of the others. It
Speaker 3: has a lot of jokes and gags in.
Speaker 2: It okay Well. McLaughlin also did an episode of Freddy's Nightmares.
Speaker 2: He did four episodes of Friday the Thirteenth series nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one Sometimes They Come Back, which is a Stephen
Speaker 2: King adaptation, and mostly TV products up until twenty ten.
Speaker 2: He also has a small acting role in Critters Too Okay,
Speaker 2: But we have a couple of robots to hit voice
Speaker 2: acting wise, the Critters of Hell, we have Vincent. Vincent
Speaker 2: is our good robot, our lead good robot, and he's
Speaker 2: voiced by legendary actor Roddy McDowell, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: eighth or nineteen ninety eight, best known for the probably
Speaker 2: for the original Planet of the Eighth series, nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: five's Fright Night, as well as such non genre films
Speaker 2: as sixty three Is Cleopatra, forty one's How Green Was
Speaker 2: My Valley? But he's in plenty of B movies as well,
Speaker 2: such as Class of eighty four from eighty two, seventy eight,
Speaker 2: Laser Blast, nineteen ninety six Predator knockoff called Star Hunter,
Speaker 2: and of course there's nineteen nineties Shakma Shakma shack Ma
Speaker 2: No Ononder's seventeen will be admitted. Yes, it's a killer
Speaker 2: Babboon movie. I don't think I'll ever watch it, but
Speaker 2: the trailer is amazing, and then we arived Sma. But
Speaker 2: then we eventually meet another robot. This is Old Bob,
Speaker 2: voiced by Slim Pickens, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three cowboy turned cowboy actor, best known for roles
Speaker 2: in sixty four's Doctor Strange, Love, seventy two is The Getaway,
Speaker 2: seventy fours Blazing Saddles, and nineteen eighty one's The Howling.
Speaker 3: They specified that Bob was built in Houston.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why he has the Texan accent. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right, all right. The music on this one is
Speaker 2: the work of John Berry, who lived nineteen thirty three
Speaker 2: through twenty eleven, legendary English film composer who won Oscars
Speaker 2: for his work, and sixty seven Is Born Free, sixty
Speaker 2: nine Is The Lion, and Winter ninety one Dances with Wolves.
Speaker 2: He also scored sixty two's Doctor No and as such
Speaker 2: created the iconic James Bond theme song and went on
Speaker 2: to do I think twelve Bond films in total, some
Speaker 2: of the best and some of the weirdest and this
Speaker 2: also results in him having some composing credits on some
Speaker 2: of the Bond songs, such as Duran Durand's View to
Speaker 2: a Kill from nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: Ah, I would argue maybe one of the best Bond songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. I got to see Duran Drannon concert just
Speaker 2: last week and they played the song. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: They also did Wild Boys nice. So too many scores
Speaker 2: here to mention from John Barry, but for our purposes
Speaker 2: we should acknowledge that he did Goldfinger, he did, you know,
Speaker 2: all those other Bond films. He did Midnight Cowboys, seventy
Speaker 2: one's Walk About the nineteen seventy six King Kong, seventy
Speaker 2: eight Star Crash, another Star Wars inspired film, and of
Speaker 2: course seventy nine's Moonraker, which was both a Bond film
Speaker 2: and also, I guess arguably a response to Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Arguably. Yes, obviously we've got to come back and do
Speaker 3: Moonraker one day. I think that's the one James Bond
Speaker 3: film just kooky enough to fit in our wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: I think it is absolutely As for the black Hole
Speaker 2: score here, yeah, it's sweeping, absolutely solid by most metrics.
Speaker 2: I think it is rather steeped in adventure and glory
Speaker 2: and that kind of like kind of slightly old fashioned sound.
Speaker 2: I guess it as opposed to like, you know, deep
Speaker 2: dark mysteries of the outer void maybe, but I don't
Speaker 2: know that it does have some great kind of I
Speaker 2: was thinking like drunken ghost ship music as well, that
Speaker 2: I thought was quite good. So I think it's a
Speaker 2: great score in many respects. It's hard for me to
Speaker 2: objectively view to rate it though, because it because I
Speaker 2: have that record still in my head, you know, from
Speaker 2: reading that book as a kid and hearing the music.
Speaker 2: So I think it's pretty great.
Speaker 3: I mean, the main ominous string theme I think is
Speaker 3: really good, even though it's kind of repetitive, but it
Speaker 3: sets the mood quite well. There are some other moments
Speaker 3: I hear what you're talking about, where they're like there
Speaker 3: are fight scenes that just have a kind of bump
Speaker 3: bumber dump bum kind of you know, triumphant horns that
Speaker 3: I don't know, I could take her leave. But on
Speaker 3: the whole, I think the music is pretty good.
Speaker 2: One last person I want to credit here, and that
Speaker 2: is George McGinnis, who is credited as robot designer. He
Speaker 2: lived I'm not sure about his birthday, is I think
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty or thereabouts, and he died in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: So Robert McCall, the art director, also did preliminary design
Speaker 2: work on the robots we see in the movie, But
Speaker 2: the final designs that we see for Bob and Vincent,
Speaker 2: and most importantly Maximilian, they seem more firmly aligned with
Speaker 2: the work of McGinnis. I included a couple of images
Speaker 2: here for you, Joe, that I got off of one
Speaker 2: of the Disney wikis. But McGinnis was the last imagineer
Speaker 2: hired by Walt Disney, apparently back in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: He worked on such projects as Space Mountain, Epcot's Horizons Pavilion,
Speaker 2: and the Indiana Jones Adventure Ride.
Speaker 3: The different robots in this film almost feel like they're
Speaker 3: from different movies, you know, Like Maximilian really has it
Speaker 3: doesn't just seem like he has a different personality than Vincent.
Speaker 3: It's like they come from different realities.
Speaker 2: They both both the Vincent, the Vincent, the Bob and Maximilian.
Speaker 2: They they do have. What they have in common is
Speaker 2: that they are floating robots. Yes, that I do like
Speaker 2: because it's kind of like, you know, the idea of
Speaker 2: like you have some sort of astromac type robot. They're
Speaker 2: gonna work primarily in a weightless environment, and therefore, you know,
Speaker 2: their limbs, whatever kind of limbs they have, they're gonna
Speaker 2: revolve around moving around within three dimensions, multiple limbs for
Speaker 2: grabbing onto things. But then there is a lot of
Speaker 2: stylistic difference because Bob and Vincent are you know, arguably
Speaker 2: kind of cute and they have big eyes, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of they have kind of a pleasing epcot feel
Speaker 2: to them, whereas Maximilian is of course red and satanic
Speaker 2: and intimidating and just a fabulous design, but also one
Speaker 2: where you can't quite figure out at first glance what
Speaker 2: everything is with his limbs. Yeah, just fabulous design on
Speaker 2: Maximilian as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 3: Do you want to get into the plot.
Speaker 2: Oh, let's do it. We're being pulled there by the
Speaker 2: gravitational forces.
Speaker 3: Very interesting thing about the beginning of this movie. There
Speaker 3: is an overture, meaning there is a long opening fanfare
Speaker 3: with like the orchestra playing over a totally black screen,
Speaker 3: and for a while I was wondering, is there's something
Speaker 3: wrong with my streaming service, like I'm not getting video content.
Speaker 3: But no, the visuals really do begin about a minute
Speaker 3: and a half in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get what they were going for here, you know,
Speaker 2: And I guess it's also kind of steeped in an
Speaker 2: older style. But I feel like most people watching it
Speaker 2: today are just going to wonder if, you know, there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with their television set.
Speaker 3: So we talked earlier about the green grid. When we
Speaker 3: get to the credits, here it is we are flying
Speaker 3: through space. There's a vast field of stars in the background,
Speaker 3: and we are zooming above and then below the plane
Speaker 3: of a green animated square matrix or grid like green
Speaker 3: graph paper lines floating in space, and we finally zoom
Speaker 3: out to see that in the distance, this flat geometric
Speaker 3: plane sharply curves off down into a pit or a funnel,
Speaker 3: just the way an extremely massive object sharply bend space
Speaker 3: time around it, and so of course we get sucked in.
Speaker 3: We sp we spiral around the pit, and then we
Speaker 3: eventually go down into it. The actual action begins in
Speaker 3: space with stars twinkling in the dark, and there's some
Speaker 3: technical sci fi narration by Roddy McDowell saying things like
Speaker 3: unscheduled course correction do at twenty two hundred rotation access
Speaker 3: plus three degrees, And this kind of thing goes on
Speaker 3: for a while. There's this sort of technical chatter between
Speaker 3: the different characters for a bit, and it made me
Speaker 3: wonder about something. It made me think about, like what
Speaker 3: kinds of choices you make as an actor when you
Speaker 3: are playing a role that, for at least, you know,
Speaker 3: within certain scenes it he doesn't have much of any
Speaker 3: human thing to do where you're just speaking technical dialogue
Speaker 3: like accelerate to full power, switching to manual, you know,
Speaker 3: like what is an actor supposed to do with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting when you think about where they
Speaker 2: end up going with Vincent, because Vincent ends up being
Speaker 2: a robot that is rather different than C three PO. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: they're both robots that are, you know, personable voice with
Speaker 2: a with a British accent. But while C three PO
Speaker 2: is of course famously cowardly and anxious, Vincent here, you know,
Speaker 2: he's very sure of himself, and he's he's all about
Speaker 2: standing up to bullies and supporting his his human crew
Speaker 2: members and so forth. So he has a different energy
Speaker 2: to him once you get get into his character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I had a whole note
Speaker 3: about similarities and differences with C. Three PO, but I
Speaker 3: think that's the core of it. He seems to be
Speaker 3: modeled on C. Three PO, but he is brave and scrappy,
Speaker 3: whereas C. Three PO is fussy and cowardly. And another
Speaker 3: difference is that while C three PO often seems to
Speaker 3: though this comes in more in the Empire Strikes Back,
Speaker 3: C THREEO seems to quote quantitative things a lot, like
Speaker 3: statistics or probability of success things. Instead, they have vincent
Speaker 3: like quoting proverbs, quoting sayings and proverbs, which is an
Speaker 3: interesting personality trait for a robot. The movie doesn't really
Speaker 3: do anything with it, but it struck me that in
Speaker 3: the context of a story that was more like thoughtful
Speaker 3: about the meaning of technology, that might be an interesting choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the idea too, that he's here to encourage
Speaker 2: you in your long distance space mission.
Speaker 3: So how do we describe what Vince looks like? You
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier that he's a hovering robot. He floats, but
Speaker 3: he's sort of a metal ball with a whack a
Speaker 3: mole head that pops up out of the top to
Speaker 3: reveal his eyes, which are very cute, but they're just
Speaker 3: static white squares with black dots in the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the wack a mole feature is key.
Speaker 2: There are aspects about him that it seemed like he
Speaker 2: was designed toy first in that regard, but in a
Speaker 2: way that that works well. I don't know. There are
Speaker 2: some shots where I feel like he's too large. He's
Speaker 2: really quite big and maybe bigger than he should be.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that makes sense. But otherwise, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is this is the project of Imagineer, so it's
Speaker 2: it's very well put together. But yeah, that's very much
Speaker 2: like a whack a mole head design for floating. Has
Speaker 2: blasters that come out, little grabbers that come out, little
Speaker 2: kind of like I don't know, anti grab boy boys
Speaker 2: that come out where his legs would be. So there's
Speaker 2: there's plenty about him that kind of tracks to an
Speaker 2: understanding of a bike. Heatal creature, but he doesn't function
Speaker 2: like a bipedal creature at all, so he's very functional
Speaker 2: for a space environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also he does violence, unlike C three PO.
Speaker 3: I can't remember if we already said that but this
Speaker 3: is a robot that like fights and in fact kills
Speaker 3: other robots.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean sometimes he's really kind of a
Speaker 2: bastard with it. When he's in the fighting, he's doing
Speaker 2: like a they're not even shooting at each other. He's
Speaker 2: doing like target practice with Star, and he ends up
Speaker 2: like managing to accidentally shoot Star in the chest, which
Speaker 2: is a great sequence.
Speaker 3: So we learned that this ship is the USS Palomino
Speaker 3: and Vincent is its robot. He's the first one talking,
Speaker 3: but eventually other voices come in and they're all chattering
Speaker 3: back and forth. We learned that they are on a
Speaker 3: mission to explore deep space. I think they're looking for
Speaker 3: signs of life. And the ship has finished its primary objectives.
Speaker 3: It's on the way back to Earth. So we meet
Speaker 3: the ship and its crew. Robert Forster again is Captain Dan.
Speaker 3: Captain Dan Holland. He's strong, brave, terse sensible, dependable. Joseph
Speaker 3: Bottoms is Lieutenant Peiser. He's kind of the young hot head.
Speaker 3: He's ready for adventure and he wants to blast a.
Speaker 2: Laser, but he's politely hot headed. He's conservatively hot headed.
Speaker 3: Right, so we mentioned earlier you vet mim you as
Speaker 3: doctor Kate McCrae has a strange thing that they decided
Speaker 3: to do with her character, which is that she can
Speaker 3: telepathically communicate with robots.
Speaker 2: Huh. Yeah, this is crazy because I didn't remember this
Speaker 2: from any past viewings of the film. I don't think
Speaker 2: this made it into the flip book I had as
Speaker 2: a child, the idea that she has either and it's
Speaker 2: not really They don't explain if this is Does she
Speaker 2: have any level of general ESP? Is it robot specific ESP.
Speaker 2: If so, why is it there is there an implant involved,
Speaker 2: or is it like we would get later in scanners
Speaker 2: Cronenberg scanners, where if you have any kind of psychic ability,
Speaker 2: then you just if you try hard enough, you can
Speaker 2: psychically communicate with a computer.
Speaker 3: You can call a computer from a payphone and read
Speaker 3: its mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think so, because as far as I could tell,
Speaker 3: she only telepathically communicates with Vincent. She never she never
Speaker 3: reads the mind of any other human that I recall,
Speaker 3: or any robot other than Vincent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that would have been an interesting thing to
Speaker 2: explore because basically, like the whole thing is like we're
Speaker 2: in a creepy spaceship and there are whole bunch of
Speaker 2: creepy robots around. That would have been a great opportunity
Speaker 2: for her character to have some sort of like there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with these robots scene. You know, she's like
Speaker 2: they're not reading properly. But they didn't go in that direction.
Speaker 3: Odd choice, but okay, it's good. It's mainly used though
Speaker 3: for the plot the same way it would be like
Speaker 3: if they had a radio communication, she can just talk
Speaker 3: to Vincent from a distance. That's about all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if they ever do remake this film, and I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that's something I want to see, but if
Speaker 2: they were, like, this is something they should pick up on,
Speaker 2: like this is something from the original film that doesn't
Speaker 2: need to be thrown out or completely recreated the just
Speaker 2: like figure it, like, explore this further. What does it mean?
Speaker 2: Like what if that's just how robots work in the
Speaker 2: black hole vision of the future, where robots are just
Speaker 2: inherently like psychically linked to individuals or multiple people, Like
Speaker 2: there's a lot you could do with that.
Speaker 3: Agree. Okay, you mentioned Anthony Perkins. He plays doctor Alex Durant.
Speaker 3: He's like a whereas y'vet Mimieux is a more empathetic scientist.
Speaker 3: This is a more he's like a cold intellectual scientist.
Speaker 3: He yearns for knowledge and historical significance. Uh, maybe diving
Speaker 3: into a black hole will finally get me a tenure.
Speaker 3: And then we have Ernest borgnine as Harry Booth. This
Speaker 3: is a journalist who's on board the ship for some reason. Harry,
Speaker 3: I would say, is the most down to earth member
Speaker 3: of the crew. He's the one who is neither a
Speaker 3: soldier nor a scientist, and he kind of talks in
Speaker 3: a plane like which with the he offers like the
Speaker 3: hot dog vendors perspective on all the technobabble.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, one thing that was interesting to me once we
Speaker 3: start meeting the crew, and very much sets this movie apart,
Speaker 3: is that when we first meet them, they're floating around.
Speaker 3: They're weightless. Most space travel movies just handwave this away.
Speaker 3: They get rid of the physical reality with some kind
Speaker 3: of magical, unspecified artificial gravity device. More hard sci fi
Speaker 3: movies usually get around it by setting the occupied parts
Speaker 3: of the spaceship within a rotating ring or some other
Speaker 3: mechanism where gravity could be simulated via acceleration like it
Speaker 3: would be in reality. Relatively few movies actually try to
Speaker 3: simulate weightlessness, I guess, mainly because it's a difficult special
Speaker 3: effect to make look right. Like. You can do wires
Speaker 3: and stuff, and if you're really committed, you can film
Speaker 3: and reduced gravity aircraft like the Vomit comet like they
Speaker 3: did in Apollo thirteen, but obviously that is expensive and
Speaker 3: difficult and taxing on everybody involved. So I was going
Speaker 3: to say, I wonder what kinds of effects they used
Speaker 3: to film the weightless scenes in this movie, But right
Speaker 3: when I was typing that, then I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's uvets wire rig Okay, so yeah, they're just hanging
Speaker 3: on wires.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are multiple scenes in the films, at least
Speaker 2: watching it now in the quality that we have it
Speaker 2: in where you can make out these wires. Yeah. It's
Speaker 2: one of those things where if the film was perhaps
Speaker 2: like a bigger deal, like culturally, and you know, it
Speaker 2: was a bigger success, you could imagine they might have
Speaker 2: gone back and cleaned up some of those wires, but
Speaker 2: they're still there. It didn't really it didn't take me
Speaker 2: too much out of the film viewing experience, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of interesting from an effects standpoint.
Speaker 3: So if you're okay with taking a quick diversion here
Speaker 3: regarding the special effects for weightlessness, apparently these effects played
Speaker 3: a convoluted role in establishing the final cast of the film.
Speaker 3: So I was reading about this in an article for
Speaker 3: The Hollywood Reporter by David Ween published in December twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen called we Never Had An Ending. How Disney's Black
Speaker 3: Hole tried to match Star Wars. This article is interesting
Speaker 3: as worth to read about the movie. It includes a
Speaker 3: number of things, such as the fact that for the
Speaker 3: role of doctor Kate McCrae, they were originally wanting to
Speaker 3: cast a pre alien Sigourney Weaver, but they said that
Speaker 3: the head of the casting department was like, Sigourney, uh, oh,
Speaker 3: we're not going to do somebody with that name.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad because if this was pre alien, I mean,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't want our ripley trajectory to be off.
Speaker 3: But even that didn't get them directly to you'vet MIMEU.
Speaker 3: They first went to the summer of forty two star
Speaker 3: Jennifer O'Neill, who apparently had signature long hair. And so
Speaker 3: here I'm going to read from this article in the
Speaker 3: Hollywood Reporter quote we shot one day. I think it
Speaker 3: was a test. It was a test or something. She
Speaker 3: was in zero gravity. Remember Nelson, that'd be Gary Nelson,
Speaker 3: the director. She had this long hair down the center
Speaker 3: of her back. She was always very proud of it.
Speaker 3: It actually made her career with hair products and everything.
Speaker 3: And I looked and I said, this is not working.
Speaker 3: You have to cut your hair. And she said, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't do that. And I said, you're going to
Speaker 3: have to because that's what I want and it's right
Speaker 3: for the movie too, and so she finally agreed. She
Speaker 3: brought her professional hairstylist, Vidalsa Soon to the studio, whoa
Speaker 3: Nelson continued. They went up to her dressing room and
Speaker 3: started cutting her hair one inch at a time and
Speaker 3: having a glass of wine, then cutting another inch and
Speaker 3: having another glass of wine. And by the time they
Speaker 3: were finished, it was pretty short and she was looped.
Speaker 3: I was sitting there when it happened, said Bottoms with
Speaker 3: a laugh. When she agreed to get her hair cut,
Speaker 3: that's when I remember the order went out, like could
Speaker 3: someone get me a glass of wine? They would cut
Speaker 3: more and more, and they kept bringing it up and up,
Speaker 3: and then they decided to put a little bit of
Speaker 3: color to lighten some streaks, and you can see Vidal,
Speaker 3: and everyone was concerned. Nelson reported that after the disaster
Speaker 3: haircut session quote, she got in her car to drive home.
Speaker 3: She got into an accident on Sunset Boulevard and ended
Speaker 3: up in the hospital. So we had to recast, and
Speaker 3: we cast you vet Mi Meeu the next day. So
Speaker 3: all that trauma and everything getting her haircut was for naught.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a shame.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, But you know she went on to be
Speaker 2: in Scanners, so I guess you know, for us it
Speaker 2: worked out.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, she was in Scanners.
Speaker 2: Jennifer O'Neil. Yeah, she plays Kim Obrist. I think she
Speaker 2: has top billy.
Speaker 3: Wow, I missed that. Oh you're exactly right. Uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Don't drink and drive, folks, even if you're getting a
Speaker 3: bad haircut.
Speaker 2: But she was destined, one way or another to be
Speaker 2: in a movie in which someone uses their mind to
Speaker 2: talk to a machine.
Speaker 3: That's right, But it was also it could make these
Speaker 3: wire rig weightlessness effects look right, because you know, if
Speaker 3: your hair's not floating around, it won't look right. So
Speaker 3: everybody does have short Okay, So the first thing that
Speaker 3: really happens in the movie is that Vincent reveals to
Speaker 3: the crew he has detected the presence of something nearby
Speaker 3: the ship, not just a comet or an asteroid, but
Speaker 3: something amazing. Quote, the largest black hole I have ever encountered.
Speaker 3: How many is he encountered? I don't know, he doesn't say,
Speaker 3: And they pull up an image of the black hole
Speaker 3: on the hologram machine. In the movie, it is represented
Speaker 3: as a giant, spiraling whirlpool of blue around a black
Speaker 3: void with an orange dot in the middle. And I
Speaker 3: realized this, The black hole in this movie looks almost
Speaker 3: exactly like a hurricane. It's got like the spiral of
Speaker 3: rain bands and an eye in the center.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, of course, based on what we
Speaker 2: know now about black holes. The thing is, this is
Speaker 2: absolutely correct. No notes, This is exactly what they look like.
Speaker 3: I don't think it would be, but it's I like it.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a good effect. I read that they
Speaker 3: created the black hole by like swirling paint around a
Speaker 3: drain in a bathtub or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it does. It looks great in
Speaker 2: the film, even if it is probably leaning a lot
Speaker 2: more towards you know, ocean whirlpool than anything else.
Speaker 3: So the characters in the movie talk about black holes
Speaker 3: like a villain character. They're trying to build up as
Speaker 3: the big bad. When they first see it, Ernest Borgnein says,
Speaker 3: my god, it's right out of Dante's Inferno, and Anthony
Speaker 3: Perkins says, yes, the most destructive force in the universe, Harry,
Speaker 3: Nothing can escape it, not even light. And then Juvet
Speaker 3: Mian Mew says, I had a professor who predicted that
Speaker 3: black holes would eventually devour the entire universe. And then
Speaker 3: Piser says, every time I see one of those things,
Speaker 3: I expect to spot some guy in red with horns
Speaker 3: and a pitchfork. Then Captain Dan, the last of the humans,
Speaker 3: chimes in least expressive of everybody. He just says, it's
Speaker 3: a monster, all right. But there's a twist. Not only
Speaker 3: are they in the presence of a gigantic black hole,
Speaker 3: there appears to be a huge spaceship bobbing in space
Speaker 3: right next to it. How is that possible? Well, scans
Speaker 3: revealed this ship is the USS Signus, a ship that
Speaker 3: was sent out on a mission years ago to discover
Speaker 3: habitable life in outer space. That's what they say habitable
Speaker 3: life in outer space. I think that line needs an edit.
Speaker 3: Maybe the habitable planets or life, I don't know. But
Speaker 3: it turns out doctor Kate McCrae's father was a crew
Speaker 3: member on the Signas before it went missing. So could
Speaker 3: it be that he is still alive on the ship
Speaker 3: they just stumbled across. Perhaps we learn a bit more
Speaker 3: about the background of this ship. I think Ernest Borgnin
Speaker 3: and Anthony Perkins say things about it. So the mission
Speaker 3: was led by doctor Heinz, doctor Hans Reinhardt, a brilliant
Speaker 3: but egotistic scientist, and Harry describes how Reinehart talked the
Speaker 3: authorities into funding his mission of space exploration, only to
Speaker 3: ignore orders to return to Earth when the mission was recalled.
Speaker 3: But doctor Durant, that's Anthony Perkins is obviously a Rehinehart superfan,
Speaker 3: and he says, well, maybe the order to return never
Speaker 3: got through to the ship. He wouldn't disobey an order
Speaker 3: from mission control. He's a genius and a great man.
Speaker 2: He'll continue to move the goalpost on this judgment throughout
Speaker 2: the picture.
Speaker 3: So they decided to go in for a closer look.
Speaker 3: Gravitational forces rattle the Palomino as they get as they approach,
Speaker 3: and when they get close to the sickness, suddenly there
Speaker 3: is quote zero gravity, smooth as glass, but there's no
Speaker 3: sign of life or activity on board, and the gravity
Speaker 3: returns once they pass by on the other side. And
Speaker 3: this leads to what I honestly thought was kind of
Speaker 3: a tedious action scene where the Palomino is just getting
Speaker 3: damaged after it gets gravity blasted, and then Vincent has
Speaker 3: to go outside the ship on a tether to do repairs.
Speaker 3: It did not really thrill my soul. I will say
Speaker 3: I like the look of the Signas a lot. I
Speaker 3: think the Signess looks nice and spooky. It has this
Speaker 3: kind of like kind of scaffolding look to it, with
Speaker 3: like this inner glow.
Speaker 2: Little later, when we first encounter it's not glowing at all,
Speaker 2: but eventually it gets a glow to it and it
Speaker 2: has a pretty creepy look throughout.
Speaker 3: I actually did like that. Yeah, So the look of
Speaker 3: the Palomino and this whole action scene with the repairs
Speaker 3: is I could take it, take it, or leave. But
Speaker 3: when they get back to the Signas and the ship
Speaker 3: lights up, I thought this was one of the better
Speaker 3: pieces of imagery in the movie, Like you say, it
Speaker 3: has this skeletal outer framework of struts and bars, almost
Speaker 3: like a cage, surrounding an inner surface membrane that glows
Speaker 3: with yellow light, kind of like a paper lantern, I thought,
Speaker 3: and I liked that a lot. So anyway, they kind
Speaker 3: of they fly around the Signas and they zoom and
Speaker 3: enhance a view screen photo a window from the ship,
Speaker 3: and they see a shadowy figure. So Kate concludes that
Speaker 3: there are people on board, and Captain Dan is apprehensive,
Speaker 3: but their ship is damaged, so they don't really have
Speaker 3: a choice. They go and dock with the Signas so
Speaker 3: they can do repairs. And once they dock, they discover
Speaker 3: they quote have gravity, which means that for the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie. Yeah, they'll just be walking around, no
Speaker 3: more wire rigs needed.
Speaker 2: It's nice to go ahead and take the pressure off
Speaker 2: of everybody. Yeah, you don't have to have Borg nine
Speaker 2: wired for the entire movie.
Speaker 3: Seems like a budget conscious rewrite. Yeah, So they head
Speaker 3: on board the Signas on foot, and then after some
Speaker 3: ominous investigation of deserted hangars and corridors and riding around
Speaker 3: on a zippy little go cart, they eventually take an
Speaker 3: elevator up to the control room, and I thought the
Speaker 3: control room looked very cool. It is populated by hundreds
Speaker 3: of blinking lights and screens, and these stations operated by
Speaker 3: unspeaking hooded figures that we see only in silhouette, and
Speaker 3: then upon a layer of scaffolding above them. In the room,
Speaker 3: there are more hooded figures who appear to be constructing
Speaker 3: glowing planets. In the middle of the room. There's one
Speaker 3: blue and one the color of flames. I liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this whole sequence is beautiful to look at. It
Speaker 2: has that yeah that seventies imagineer vibe to it, lots
Speaker 2: of color and uh yeah, totally solid.
Speaker 3: Here we meet a couple of figures. First, a floating
Speaker 3: humming robot made of red plate metal with a horizontal
Speaker 3: glowing red visor where his eyes should be. He looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a Cylon Actually, and Battlestar Galactica was
Speaker 3: out by this point, I guess similar with like the
Speaker 3: bars for.
Speaker 2: The eyes, similar but far superior. The original Cylons look
Speaker 2: kind of I mean, they have that kind of like
Speaker 2: clunky like suit of armor look to them.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 2: Maximilian. Here, as we'll learn he's called it's God, I
Speaker 2: don't know, he's like a he's as much symbol as
Speaker 2: as artifice, you know, Like there's something about just like
Speaker 2: the profile he cuts. It's just so clean but also
Speaker 2: hard to distinguish, Like like he has appears to have
Speaker 2: what like three arms per arm, Like each of his
Speaker 2: arms splits out at the elbow into three different multipurpose
Speaker 2: tools I think only two of which we really get
Speaker 2: to see in action. So and it's just it's streamlined.
Speaker 2: Like I was thinking, like if they if they did
Speaker 2: a remake of certainly if they had done a remake
Speaker 2: of Black Hole in the last ten years, they would
Speaker 2: have made this design overly complex. You know, this robot
Speaker 2: would have looked like a transformer or something, or like
Speaker 2: the the the Lost in Space robot is. It's been reconceptualized,
Speaker 2: and if you added more to Maximilian you would take
Speaker 2: something away from him. There's just something about the way
Speaker 2: he's so streamlined. He's just perfect.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's also sort of a devil, isn't he. I
Speaker 3: Mean that's a little bit obvious with the red, but
Speaker 3: he does cut the figure kind of a demon or
Speaker 3: an ARCon. Yeah, but his smoothness is kind of key.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like that. He's not a highly textured creature. Anyway,
Speaker 3: he approaches them, or this robot approaches them, and then
Speaker 3: Vincent is like, I identify yourself, but instead he just
Speaker 3: turns his hands into propellers and begins to menace. He
Speaker 3: goes into menace mode with spinning blades.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's basically what the Lisa Simpson approached. Right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start doing this and riving towards you,
Speaker 2: and it's up to you what happens next.
Speaker 3: Except my hands are like blender blades.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then there is a man in the shadows, reclining
Speaker 3: in a command chair who calls out to the crew
Speaker 3: in a German accent, and he knows their names, he
Speaker 3: knows their mission. He has been monitoring their every move.
Speaker 3: This is doctor Hans Reindhart, the brilliant scientist idolized by
Speaker 3: Anthony Perkins. He explains that mister propeller hands here is
Speaker 3: indeed Maximilian and that he will obey Rinhart's every command.
Speaker 3: So when we meet Reinhart, he has wild, old hair,
Speaker 3: thick beard, wears an unbuttoned lab coat. I guess with
Speaker 3: his hair they would have made him cut it if
Speaker 3: he was on board the Palomino, but fortunately he wasn't.
Speaker 3: He's got the German accent fairly overt shades of mad scientists,
Speaker 3: which is kind of odd because I think they're trying
Speaker 3: to do the captain nemo ambiguity. Where is this our
Speaker 3: dangerous captor or our admirable host? Which is he?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like they should have had him tone
Speaker 2: it down a little bit, especially since the dialogue from
Speaker 2: the crew members. They keep being like, oh, we can't
Speaker 2: trust this guy. I don't know about this guy seems
Speaker 2: a bit squirrely. But it's like, well, yeah, that the
Speaker 2: performance is squirrely, maybe you should have had the performance
Speaker 2: less squarely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And well they immediately have him. Not immediately, but
Speaker 3: early on. He's saying things like I'm about to prove
Speaker 3: to you that the end justifies the means.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He has some great lines and this there's one
Speaker 2: that he says later on. He says, it's about time
Speaker 2: that people learn about their failures and my successes. Yes,
Speaker 2: he has a million of him. He's been thinking him
Speaker 2: up by himself on the ship for what twenty years.
Speaker 3: He's had a lot of time. We're hanging out only
Speaker 3: with robots.
Speaker 2: At least twenty years, because this film doesn't really get
Speaker 2: into it. But if he's really hanging out next to
Speaker 2: a massive black hole, I mean, the time's gonna go
Speaker 2: a little weird on this ship. Right.
Speaker 3: Wait, does that mean it would be longer for him
Speaker 3: or shorter for him? I forget which way would go.
Speaker 3: You're near a large, massive object, So I think that
Speaker 3: means his experience of time would be faster compared to
Speaker 3: the outside frame of reference.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, so he would have less time to think
Speaker 2: ups to say to his guest slash captives.
Speaker 3: But they do not address time dilation at all in
Speaker 3: this film. But anyway, so he recognizes always like, hey,
Speaker 3: it's doctor Kate McCrae. I knew your dad. He worked
Speaker 3: on this ship. He's dead now. I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 3: He was my most trusted friend, but he perished long ago.
Speaker 3: And then he gets up in doctor mccray's face and
Speaker 3: he starts telling her that she has the same eyes,
Speaker 3: the same eyes.
Speaker 2: Should we trust this guy? Sure cher, He seems finey,
Speaker 2: he's a brilliant silence.
Speaker 3: Well, so they're like, hey, where's the rest of your crew?
Speaker 3: He says, oh, they didn't make it. Back. He claims
Speaker 3: they were commanded to return to Earth and the ship
Speaker 3: was damaged by meteorites, so he stayed behind, but sent
Speaker 3: the surviving crew back to Earth in the escape pod.
Speaker 3: And since then he's just been here alone, aided by
Speaker 3: the robots that he constructed, which include these strange hooded
Speaker 3: monk figures operating the control room all around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have these cool like reflective mirror faces like
Speaker 2: they should be like, I don't know, back up for
Speaker 2: daft punk. It's a cool look.
Speaker 3: So there are those robots with the hoods and the
Speaker 3: mirror masks, and then there are the Sentry robots who
Speaker 3: are like burgundy colored robots armed with laser guns. There
Speaker 3: they're gonna be your Imperial Stormtroopers of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and they definitely like robots, like they're doing
Speaker 2: the robot dance the whole time, to the point where
Speaker 2: it's a little silly.
Speaker 3: Also, the scene establishes a rivalry between Vincent and Maximilian.
Speaker 3: They at once they do not like each other, and
Speaker 3: they keep locking horns and you can tell there's going
Speaker 3: to be a payoff of this relationship. But it's kind
Speaker 3: of strange because at first they're just like repeatedly sort
Speaker 3: of getting like puffing their chests up at each other
Speaker 3: over nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do love the scene where they do it
Speaker 2: in the elevator and like they're just having the face
Speaker 2: off and Vincent's probably mouthing off, and then Maximilian just
Speaker 2: turns upside down because he's a free floating robot, and
Speaker 2: then Vincent starts doing the same thing and doing circles.
Speaker 2: It's I don't know, it just struck me as like
Speaker 2: it's nice and weird that the robots have their own
Speaker 2: like physical zero gravity language for talking smack to each other.
Speaker 3: I agree, Yeah, it was hard to determine exactly what
Speaker 3: that meant, but you got the gist.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Ryan Hart does the captain sort of thing,
Speaker 3: like he's like, oh, consider yourself, my guests. You know
Speaker 3: you're here my guests on the signas there'll be dinner later,
Speaker 3: and Captain Dan says that they're gonna they're not going
Speaker 3: to impose on his hospitality. They just need to repair
Speaker 3: their ship and then they'll be on their way. Of course,
Speaker 3: they'll offer doctor Reinhardt a lift back to Earth. But
Speaker 3: he scoffs at this. He's like, why would I want
Speaker 3: to return to Earth. I'm on the brink of amazing
Speaker 3: scientific discoveries here, because he says if his ship moves
Speaker 3: just a bit closer to the black hole, yes it
Speaker 3: will be destroyed, but he has developed anti gravity technology
Speaker 3: that keeps him a stable distance away from it, and
Speaker 3: he implies that he is about to make some kind
Speaker 3: of discovery with regards to the black hole that will
Speaker 3: change everything. So Dan, Peiser and Vincent head off with
Speaker 3: Maximilian to repair the ship. Doctors Durant and McCrae and
Speaker 3: Ernest borgnine hang out to learn about Reinhardt's scientific discoveries,
Speaker 3: which they will convey back to Earth for him, and
Speaker 3: this sort of the end of act one, and it
Speaker 3: kicks off a middle section of the movie with the
Speaker 3: characters in various capacities traveling around the ship, learning and
Speaker 3: observing strange things. So as first you got Maximilian. He
Speaker 3: leads Dan, Peiser and Vincent around the ship to requisition
Speaker 3: parts for their repairs, and on the way they observe
Speaker 3: century robots and hooded monk droids silently marching from place
Speaker 3: to place. Piser points out, hey, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: activity going on here. Are they getting ready for something,
Speaker 3: and then they meet a new robot, a busted up
Speaker 3: ramshackle robot like Vincent, but this one is named Bob
Speaker 3: voiced by Slim Pickens. Meanwhile, Reinhart is giving Anthony Perkins,
Speaker 3: You've met Mimu and Ernest borgnine a tour of the
Speaker 3: amazing technology he's built on board. He has, like a
Speaker 3: giant reactor, and Anthony Perkins says, you'll be remembered as
Speaker 3: one of the greatest space scientists of all time, and
Speaker 3: rein Hart says, I have never doubted that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is the part where he says that time
Speaker 3: people learned about their failures and my successes.
Speaker 2: That's so good. I don't know why I love that
Speaker 2: line so much.
Speaker 3: It is really great. But while he's leading them around, meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Ernest borgnine just sneaks away to explore things for himself.
Speaker 3: So he finds one room that's I think the control
Speaker 3: room for the garden where the food is grown for
Speaker 3: the ship, and he finds a hooded robot operating a
Speaker 3: machine of some sort and he tries to talk to
Speaker 3: the robot but it does not respond, and we get
Speaker 3: a close up on the robot's face under the hood.
Speaker 3: It has this reflective metal mask, like a mirror surface,
Speaker 3: and after he tries to talk to it, it leaves
Speaker 3: the room, limping like it has a broken leg.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting because again the century robots all
Speaker 2: walk like they're doing the robot dance, and this is
Speaker 2: something distinctly different.
Speaker 3: At the same time, Captain Dan he's riding the trolley
Speaker 3: around and he sees a group of hooded robots carrying
Speaker 3: a large container between them, almost like a coffin in
Speaker 3: a funeral procession, and he follows them. He walks through
Speaker 3: a large hall of personal quarters with human beds and
Speaker 3: offices and closets full of clothes, but it's all empty
Speaker 3: of human life. Finally, he catches up to the robots
Speaker 3: and they gather in a solemn formation in a room
Speaker 3: with external windows, and they launch the container into space,
Speaker 3: in fact, into the black hole. It goes into the
Speaker 3: black hole. It really looks like a funeral And then
Speaker 3: suddenly Captain Dan is caught by Maximilian. He sneaks up
Speaker 3: behind him and opens a door, but Captain Dan stays
Speaker 3: very cool. He just says like, must have made a
Speaker 3: wrong turn.
Speaker 2: Max Ah, He's so smooth. I love it, like, you know,
Speaker 2: Maximilian would have just guided him with one of those
Speaker 2: those the fan blade hands, but he was just so
Speaker 2: cool about it. He's like, oh, I guess he really
Speaker 2: did make wrong turn. He's back on track now.
Speaker 3: But things are really starting to add up that something
Speaker 3: isn't right. While doing repairs on the Palomino, Captain Dan
Speaker 3: tells Piser what he saw, and Piser scoffs. He says,
Speaker 3: nobody has a funeral for a robot, and Dan says,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was a robot now here,
Speaker 3: I think it's It would be good to do a
Speaker 3: little sidebar on this movie's take on the personhood of robots.
Speaker 3: Sometimes robots in the Black Hole are treated exactly the
Speaker 3: same as people. Robert Forster at one point says directly
Speaker 3: that Vincent is quote one of us. It's like when
Speaker 3: he's outside working on the ship and they're like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: he's going to get lost. We've got to go out
Speaker 3: and save him. And Pizer says, what if it was
Speaker 3: one of us out there? And Captain Dan says he
Speaker 3: is one of us. And at the same time, Maximilian
Speaker 3: is depicted as having the quality of moral evil and malice,
Speaker 3: not just like bad programming and the Vincent style robots.
Speaker 3: Vincent and Bob both have clear personalities and hopes and desires.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, several major plot points and
Speaker 3: conversations seem to hinge on the idea that robots do
Speaker 3: not have thoughts or feelings or desires or humaneanity, like
Speaker 3: the why have a funeral for a robot point? From
Speaker 3: what I could tell, the movie's view on this issue
Speaker 3: was just incoherent, Like it didn't seem to me to
Speaker 3: reflect a conscious choice to portray the issue as complex.
Speaker 3: It just kind of felt like an oversight. But it
Speaker 3: seems like this is another thing that with some tweaking
Speaker 3: of the story, this could have been really interesting to explore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when you factor in the esp angle as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another thing that it just kind of seems
Speaker 3: like it's tossed out there, but it could have been
Speaker 3: very interesting. Like Vincent, the robot at one point claims
Speaker 3: to hate the company of robots, like he can't stand
Speaker 3: his own kind of being they're like cats. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: Dan is wary. He thinks they should get the repairs done,
Speaker 3: get away from Reinhart as fast as they can Meanwhile, Reinhart, Durant,
Speaker 3: and McCrae are up in the control room and they're
Speaker 3: just trading epithets about black holes like it's the deadliest
Speaker 3: force in the universe, the long dark hunnle to nowhere,
Speaker 3: and then Reinhart goes or somewhere, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm starting to get the feeling that despite inventing the
Speaker 3: anti gravity that allows him to stay above it, Reinhart
Speaker 3: wants to fall into the black hole.
Speaker 2: It's like having a cannon on the stage, right you
Speaker 2: introduce a black hole or a wormhole or what have you.
Speaker 2: Somebody's going in there, like having an acid vat or
Speaker 2: a pool of piranhas if you will.
Speaker 3: Right right, Okay, So a few scenes to briefly mention.
Speaker 3: There's the laser blasting scene with Vincent, Bob and the
Speaker 3: Century robots where they're just sort of like doing the
Speaker 3: doing sort of carnival game sharp shooting. We get to
Speaker 3: know a bit about Bob here, the robot played by
Speaker 3: Slim Pickens.
Speaker 4: Rob.
Speaker 3: You mentioned you liked the scene. I found it not
Speaker 3: very exciting, or at least parts where it's kind of
Speaker 3: a special effects showcase again for effects that look kind
Speaker 3: of uninteresting today. But I did like slim Pickens.
Speaker 2: Slim Pickens brings a lot of personality to this role ofvious.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The actual laser blasting is very mediocre by pretty much
Speaker 2: I think any even contemporary standards. But what I liked
Speaker 2: was like the sudden twist of like, oh man Vincent
Speaker 2: is it is kind of a meanie. He's oh, he
Speaker 2: really doesn't like other robots.
Speaker 3: I did like that where he yeah, so this is
Speaker 3: the scene where in the end Vincent kills Star the robot,
Speaker 3: but it's like a funny funny kills him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We also find out the background that Bob had once
Speaker 3: beat Star in a shooting contest, and slempick and says
Speaker 3: he had his revenge though he did things to me.
Speaker 3: I sure don't like to think about what does that mean?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: There's another kind of Captain Nemo E scene where everybody
Speaker 3: has dinner with Ryan Hart. For this scene, right Heart
Speaker 3: changes into a red uniform with metal and they're served
Speaker 3: by hooded robots. They get a fresh mushroom soup and
Speaker 3: rein Hart. He shows his contempt for Earth. He's like
Speaker 3: back on Earth, the news is always the same, only
Speaker 3: the names change.
Speaker 2: Is this the scene there where they ask borg Nine, like,
Speaker 2: what's happening on Earth and he's like ana much like, really,
Speaker 2: there's no news from Earth. Nothing, It's all good.
Speaker 3: And Reinhart announces his plan to go into the black hole.
Speaker 3: He says in through and beyond, and then Ernest Borgnine
Speaker 3: says that's impossible, and ryin Hart says, the word impossible,
Speaker 3: mister booth is found only in the Dictionary of Fools.
Speaker 2: Napoleon says that word is not French.
Speaker 3: But Reinhart he trusts in his own technology. He says,
Speaker 3: this anti gravity I've invented. It will protect my ship
Speaker 3: from being crushed as it travels through the black hole,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to reach other worlds this way. So
Speaker 3: Rehinehart leaves the room and the Palomino crew discuss all
Speaker 3: the things they've discovered, you know, they bring up like
Speaker 3: all the weird stuff, the robot funeral and everything, and
Speaker 3: Anthony Perkins just keeps making excuses for Ryan Hart. He's
Speaker 3: basically like, it's not weird. Stop trying to make him
Speaker 3: seem weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really keeps moving the goalpost on on whether
Speaker 2: they should trust this guy or now He's like, well,
Speaker 2: what if he did disregard orders to return home. I
Speaker 2: mean he had he had a higher priority here. I
Speaker 2: mean he's doing great science.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But later, after only Durant and McCrae are left
Speaker 3: in the room, they talk about what's going on. Durant says,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to stay behind now, I want
Speaker 3: to become one with Ryan Hart. Now we're gonna we're
Speaker 3: gonna stay here. We're going to go into the black hole.
Speaker 3: We will journey into the mind of God. And there's
Speaker 3: this scene. I thought it would be interesting to note
Speaker 3: the religious themes that are emerging, which don't I don't
Speaker 3: know if they feel all that intentional in what they
Speaker 3: add up to. But I do kind of like the
Speaker 3: strange merging of science and religion that's going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it definitely continues and intensifies certainly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the film would be less interesting if it did
Speaker 2: not have this layer. But on the other hand, yet,
Speaker 2: does it ultimately, like make any kind of intelligible statement
Speaker 2: or argument. I don't think it does.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it does, but I but it's
Speaker 3: fun texture nonetheless, especially the ending. We'll get there in
Speaker 3: a bit. But anyway, So there are more revelations that come.
Speaker 3: Bob reveals to Vincent that the hooded robots with mirror
Speaker 3: faces are not robots. They are humanoids. They are what
Speaker 3: is left of the crew after they have been transformed
Speaker 3: by some horrible evil process that Reinhart did to them. Basically,
Speaker 3: he murdered them all and turned them into robot servants.
Speaker 3: When they find out all about this, the esp comes back.
Speaker 3: Vincent uses their psychic connection to fill Kate in. Kate
Speaker 3: explains what's going on to Anthony Perkins. They're both hanging
Speaker 3: out with Reinhardt, and Anthony Perkins pulls a mask off
Speaker 3: of one of the hooded robots to see, revealing a
Speaker 3: human zombie face.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a great moment and also director's cameo
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 3: Oh really yeah, oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: This causes Maximilian to do a brutal attack on Anthony Perkins,
Speaker 3: and we get the we get a human death here.
Speaker 3: Maximilian like guts Anthony Perkins with propeller hand to the stomach. Nasty, shocking.
Speaker 3: It feels, I don't know, more brutal than I expected
Speaker 3: given the movie up to this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember being shocked by this as a kid,
Speaker 2: even though like rewatching it, knowing it was coming and
Speaker 2: anticipating it, like it's there's no blood and afterwards there's
Speaker 2: no blood on the claw or it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: self cleaning or something. I don't know, but there's something
Speaker 2: about the way they plotted it where doctor Durant has
Speaker 2: this this this book, this thick book of of of
Speaker 2: Reinhart's notes to take back to Earth, and he holds
Speaker 2: that in front of his chest and the buzzsaw hand
Speaker 2: cuts through that, and we hear it and see it
Speaker 2: cutting through that, and then it cuts unseen, you know,
Speaker 2: into his torso and I don't know. It's like having
Speaker 2: the book violence ahead of the implied physical violence like
Speaker 2: really helps to sell it.
Speaker 3: And you see Anthony Perkins's face while this is happened happening.
Speaker 3: He starts like jiggling around and going like ooh, it's yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gross. So anyway, after this, Reinhart sort of chastises Maximilian.
Speaker 3: He's like, you shouldn't have done that murder of a
Speaker 3: human being. But then another kind of interesting moment, but
Speaker 3: I don't know if it connects to anything else. He
Speaker 3: suddenly whispers to Kate, protect me from Maximilian. Oh whoa,
Speaker 3: that's a great moment. But I didn't know what does
Speaker 3: this mean? Are we going to learn more about him
Speaker 3: actually fearing Maximilian? But I don't think we do. Did
Speaker 3: that connect to anything for you?
Speaker 2: Nothing in the actual film. It made me wonder about
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff, especially the whole ESP angle. And
Speaker 2: you know the idea that you know, clear Maximilian is
Speaker 2: sort of thematically presented as kind of like this, this
Speaker 2: devil and this, and perhaps you could interpret him as
Speaker 2: being like the the embodiment of the darker corners of
Speaker 2: Ryan Hart psyche or something or soul. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's not really explored beyond you know, just sort of
Speaker 2: the visual appeal of it. But yeah, if there, if
Speaker 2: we are in fact in a world where esp between
Speaker 2: robots and humans is common, you know, you could use that,
Speaker 2: you could build that up somehow. I'm just remembering. There's
Speaker 2: also some mention about robot human esp as a means
Speaker 2: of having long distance communication in space. It's just thrown
Speaker 2: out there really quickly as well. But that also brings
Speaker 2: to mind all sorts of like what a strange you know, universe.
Speaker 2: This could be if it was just developed and they
Speaker 2: leaned into that weirdness a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, why does Reinhart fear the robot
Speaker 3: he created all of a sudden, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 3: he sort of goes back on it, though, because then
Speaker 3: she's like, if there's any justice, that black hole will
Speaker 3: be your grave. So he commands his robots to take
Speaker 3: her to the hospital, which seems to be where humans
Speaker 3: are zombified and transformed into robots. So from here we
Speaker 3: get the third act and it turns into an action
Speaker 3: movie for the rest of the time. So Kate alerts
Speaker 3: Vincent using esp Dan, and the good robots go off
Speaker 3: to the rescue to save her. They battle their way
Speaker 3: through a bunch of Century Droids. They rescue Kate and
Speaker 3: fight Sentry Droids to make it back to the Palomino,
Speaker 3: a lot of blaster battles along the way that were
Speaker 3: not especially thrilling to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just blasters a go go.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But meanwhile, Reinhart begins launching the ship into the
Speaker 3: black Hole, and this is some good stuff. There is
Speaker 3: a twist here. While all the action on the Sickness
Speaker 3: is happening, Ernest borgnine. At one point he like fakes
Speaker 3: a leg injury. Then he tries when they're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll come back for you, he runs off on his own,
Speaker 3: gets in the Palomino, launches it by himself, and tries
Speaker 3: to escape without everybody else.
Speaker 2: Just a sudden, unearned heel turn right here for Borgdine's.
Speaker 3: Character, Yeah, he's like, yep, I'm going home without you.
Speaker 3: But Reinhart shoots down the Palomino, killing Ernest borgnine. His
Speaker 3: final act was one of treachery and cowardice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird choice, Like maybe it's one
Speaker 2: that at some point earlier on was more supported in
Speaker 2: the script, you know, mm hmm.
Speaker 3: But okay, Now only Captain Dan Pizer and Kate McCrae
Speaker 3: and the two good Robots are left. With the Palomino destroyed.
Speaker 3: Their only hope of escape is to steal Reinhart's Probe ship.
Speaker 3: So there's munch of action scenes, you know, blaster battles
Speaker 3: with Century Droids. Also, the ship at this point is
Speaker 3: being pelted with meteoroids, and there are some nice special
Speaker 3: effects shots here, including one I liked where the heroes
Speaker 3: are running across a bridge in silhouette in the foreground
Speaker 3: while a giant glowing orange ball rolls toward them from
Speaker 3: the background. I thought that looked cool.
Speaker 2: M yeah, I strongly remember that one from previous viewings
Speaker 2: of the film, very captivating.
Speaker 3: At one point, Reinhart is so that the ship's all
Speaker 3: busted up, and Reinhart gets pinned by a falling piece
Speaker 3: of metal and his robots do not help him. And
Speaker 3: then there is a battle between Vincent and Maximilian that
Speaker 3: was so okay, good cute, little floating R two D
Speaker 3: two robot versus Maximilian, and it ends with no joke,
Speaker 3: Vincent drilling Maximilian in the guts and Maximilian unleashes a
Speaker 3: goat scream.
Speaker 2: It's a this is a robot battle I always liked
Speaker 2: as a kid. I mean, watching it now, I can
Speaker 2: see the limitations of what they were working with, but
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's like Vincent has ranged weaponry, Maximilian
Speaker 2: does not. Maximilian, though is heavily armored, Vincent is less.
Speaker 2: So they end up, you know, grappling, and Vincent has
Speaker 2: like electroid paddles that he's using to like to grat
Speaker 2: to hold on to Vincent. But yeah, he's not suspecting
Speaker 2: that secret drill attack from Vincent, and that's what gets him.
Speaker 3: So our heroes escape onto the Probe ship, but the
Speaker 3: Probe ship is sucked into the black hole, so everybody
Speaker 3: goes into the black hole. But there's like this long,
Speaker 3: weird ending scene where they're all just going like boo.
Speaker 3: It's playing all these like lines from the movie or
Speaker 3: echoing in people's heads.
Speaker 2: And not even necessarily lines that have like a lot
Speaker 2: of emotional thang to them. I don't know, like it's
Speaker 2: just there. It just lines from the movie. There's not
Speaker 2: necessarily any any sense of it.
Speaker 3: But then the ending, which on one hand it's almost
Speaker 3: a non sequitur, but on the other hand, I think
Speaker 3: it really makes the film. The ending is like they
Speaker 3: all sort of go to heaven and Hell. Like there's
Speaker 3: a scene where you see an older version of Reinhart
Speaker 3: floating in space, like his hair is grown out and
Speaker 3: his beard has grown out and it seems to have
Speaker 3: turned gray. And then he's like merging with Maximilian, like
Speaker 3: you see his eyes inside Maximilian. And then there is
Speaker 3: a scene with the Maximilian Rhinehart being standing on a
Speaker 3: mountain in Hell with flames leaping into the sky and
Speaker 3: like doomed figures in hoods crossing the bridge of Kose
Speaker 3: of Doom. And then there is another sequence with a
Speaker 3: figure flying through the air in robes through a hall
Speaker 3: of mirrors into a blue clouded sky, and then our
Speaker 3: heroes emerge from the other side of the black hole
Speaker 3: and they see like a planet in the distance. It
Speaker 3: is a bizarre ending, but I do love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and it's mostly left open to interpretation.
Speaker 2: I mean, granted, they're really leaning into the heaven and
Speaker 2: hell angles here, but as far as what that like
Speaker 2: literally means or if we're supposed to literally interpret it
Speaker 2: at all, it's just wide open. Uh. Like I was
Speaker 2: like just concerning the hell landscape, which is the most
Speaker 2: impressive and just just like impressive to look at this
Speaker 2: flaming landscape and the hooded figures. I couldn't tell the
Speaker 2: hooded figures are meant to be the the cyborgs from
Speaker 2: the sickness, like maybe with their their faces their their
Speaker 2: face coverings lost, or if they're indeed like the souls
Speaker 2: of the damned, and this is like a Dante's Inferno
Speaker 2: type of situation. I don't know. It's just left to
Speaker 2: the viewer to interpret it.
Speaker 3: Seems like in his in the bad afterlife that Reinhart
Speaker 3: has earned, he will be tortured by the robots he created.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But then for the for the blessed crew members,
Speaker 2: what awaits them a new heavenly planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, new home, kind of a planet in eclipse, like
Speaker 3: eclipsing a star.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, habitable life, perhaps.
Speaker 3: Haitable life you can live in. Okay, Well that's all
Speaker 3: I got to say about The black Hole.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it. I was really drawn into the visuals,
Speaker 2: the sweeping score, some of the performances, and of just
Speaker 2: of course the robots, especially Maximilian. Maximilian still still got it,
Speaker 2: still beautiful, still enthralling, Still one of my favorite robots period.
Speaker 2: I just wish I knew what his other arms did.
Speaker 3: He kept making me think of that Beastie Boys song Intergalactic.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. I think that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that's appealing about him, is there aspects of it that
Speaker 2: look like he could be a costume, But especially in
Speaker 2: full profile, there's no way it could be a costume
Speaker 2: because against this free floating form. So anyway, I could
Speaker 2: go on and on beautiful robot.
Speaker 3: May Maximilian drill all of our guts.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll go ahead and close it out there,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if
Speaker 2: you have opinions on the black Hole, from watching it
Speaker 2: back in the day, or watching it as a kid,
Speaker 2: rediscovering it now, viewing it in the light of Star
Speaker 2: Wars and so forth. It's all fair game. Did you
Speaker 2: have any of the toys? I've looked up images of
Speaker 2: the toys. I didn't have any of these, but they
Speaker 2: look pretty cool, you know. I guess you could. You
Speaker 2: could bust these guys out and maybe you're you know,
Speaker 2: your your David Lynch Noone Action figures, maybe some Dick
Speaker 2: Tracy dolls, and have a fun time with toys that
Speaker 2: maybe not that many kids bought. But yeah, right in,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder that
Speaker 2: we're primarily a science podcast here and the stuff to
Speaker 2: blow your mind podcast feed, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns and just talk about weird movies
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a
Speaker 2: full list of what we've covered thus far, you can
Speaker 2: go out over to letterboxed dot dot com. That's L
Speaker 2: E T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 2: We have a profile there called weird House, and if
Speaker 2: you go there you'll see a list of all the
Speaker 2: movies and you can put different filters on them if
Speaker 2: you want see like, you know, look at them by
Speaker 2: decade and so forth.
Speaker 3: It's it's really cool, huge thanks to our excellent audio
Speaker 3: producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
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