Weirdhouse Cinema: The Black Hole

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb, and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Today's film is I guess, kind of a convergence of things. Joe,
you were wanting to cover another film that comes in
the wake of Star Wars nineteen seventy seven. Star Wars,
so many films angle in for a slice of that success.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, yet there are so many films you could call
Star Wars ripoffs. I think it's kind of interesting to
study the many different ways that one can rip off
Star Wars. Sort of a genre of study within its
own Star Wars ripoff studies. But I'd say, of most
of the movies we've watched that have come out in

(00:51):
the wake of Star Wars to ride on its coattails
for marketing purposes, this one is one of the least
like Star Wars in terms of narrative content.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, yeah, this is This was Disney's answer to Star Wars.
Now Disney's answer to Star Wars thirty three years later
would be just to buy lucasfilm pretty much. But at
the time you can kind of get a sense of
the swagger here. It's like, oh, Star Wars has done
very well, but you know, we're we're We're the Walt

(01:21):
Disney Company. We've got imagineers, gosh darn it, and you
should see the kinds of things that they can design.
We've got this long history with with TV and film.
Let us take a crack at this general area, at
this this kind of science fiction, and you know, I
bet we can create something that will connect just as well,
if not better, with the audience.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Now, that didn't quite come about, but I do think
what they produced is interesting, if not quite on the
level of Star Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I agree. I agree. This is a film that I
remember quite fondly from my own childhood. I drew a
lot of like crayon at of the robots from this
film back in the day, especially Maximilian, who will describe
here in a bit. But I do have to stress
as well that while I saw this film, and I
guess maybe it was like you know, VHS rentals or something,

(02:13):
or maybe they would occasionally show it on TV or something,
but my main connection with the film was not from
the movie itself, but from the twenty four page read
along book and record that was put out with this
that I have, and I think my mom probably still
has a copy of this, but just a little flip
book and it comes with a little record that you
play and it reads along and has all these sound

(02:35):
effects from the movie.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well wait, so if it's a record, does it play
that scary string theme?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I think so. Yeah. Like when I was rewatching the
movie for this episode, and it's the first time I've
seen the black Hole in Gosh, I mean at least
ten years, probably much longer, the music instantly resonated with me.
So yes, it definitely had some of the score on there.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
I've actually never seen it before. This was my first time,
though you've talked, You've made reference to it a number
of times, and listeners have written in recommending we cover it,
so this is partially a listener suggested episode from multiple listeners.
But I was kind of surprised to find that in
a way, despite this being a movie from nineteen seventy nine,
it is a very traditional, almost old fashioned space adventure

(03:21):
movie where a crew of astronauts with defined roles encounter
something frightening deep in the heart of space. Except it
was made in the late seventies with at the time,
cutting edge special effects, especially computer effects, and the thing
the astronauts encounter is not a spaceship full of green aliens,
but a black hole, which of course is a real

(03:44):
type of object in the universe. Still mysterious and awe
inspiring today, but at the time it would have been
a much more recent entry into the public consciousness, a
more baffling and unfamiliar concept to the general audiences. And
in fact, the original trailer for the movie spends almost

(04:04):
the entire trailer basically just explaining the concept of a
black hole to the audience, like, isn't this scary?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I mean, if not for the fact that there's
a big budget picture, it's almost like black hole black
hole exploitation cinema, right, just getting in there first to
capitalize on it, but then also, yeah, having to do
the legwork of explaining why this is important now.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
I sort of couldn't help but compare this film to
some other ones. One that kept coming to mind to
contrast with The black Hole is Tron, which came out
three years later in nineteen eighty two, maybe because both
films made use of what were at the time cutting
edge and what were considered very impressive computer effects, though

(04:45):
I think Tron's computer effects are able to establish a
more unique visual style than the computer effects in this movie,
which I do really like some of the visual effects
in the black Holes more than others, And the computer
effects in The black Hole, really I think are just

(05:05):
they're not very exciting to modern audiences.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
No, but certainly there are a lot of shots in
the film that are really beautiful and colorful to look at.
I don't think i'd seen black Hole in this quality
before you streamed it off Disney Plus one of the
main places to watch it these days. So a lot
of the time I was just watching the screen, just
really taking in these beautiful like I kept thinking about Epcot.

(05:29):
You know, it's like you can see the imagineer's fingerprints
on this picture. You know, there's a lot of gorgeous,
like seventies style to it. I think the comparison to
Tron is apt, except I would say infinitely more watchable
than Tron, like that, Tron really really goes after the

(05:49):
cutting edge special effects in a way that this film
thankfully doesn't. Like. One of the taglines for black Hole
is a place beyond man's vision, but not beyond his
reach and I feel like Tron is a movie beyond
man's reach, but not beyond his vision, you know, for
that period of filmmaking. I don't know, folks can disagree,

(06:12):
but I have not been able to really get into
a rewatch of the original Tron.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, that's interesting. I wonder I have, But I wonder
if it's mainly powered by nostalgia. It could be that's coloring.
Another thing I would say that's a difference, though, is
that I think Trons is a little bit more quotable
and maybe has more compelling characters, or at least for
the first half of the movie or so with regards

(06:37):
to the black Hole, because after I picked this, I mean,
I was enjoying watching it, but I'd say maybe not
the first half. The first third or so, I was
feeling a little disappointed because it seemed something about it
felt kind of sterile like, even though it had some
good visual effects, I thought the movie kind of was
kind of lacking in humanity and personality. And it got

(06:59):
a little bit better in that regard about a third
of the way in. And this kind of matched up
with something I'd been reading about how there were early
scenes in the movie that were cut that were basically
all character development scenes with our main characters, Like when
we start meeting them, essentially all they're doing is like
giving technobabble lines. They're on the ship saying like, you know,

(07:20):
shift to manual, coming up three point four degrees. Oh,
it's a black hole.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
There's very little humanity in the beginning of the film,
or at least it seemed to me.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, it is. It's remarkably slow at the beginning, and
I'm I'm glad I wasn't watching it with my son
because I think I would have had to have done
a lot of handholding through the dryer portions leading up
to anything really cool going on.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
But I thought that once they actually get on board
the Reinhart's ship and they start kind of like noticing
all of the strange goings on there, it became a
lot more interesting to me.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, because ultimately, like this film, it's interesting. This is
kind of the comparison to Star Wars is I think
essential in terms of the time period, But while Star
Wars is his sweeping adventure epic, this is more of
a haunted house movie in the same way that another
certainly more famous and successful science fiction movie, from the

(08:18):
same year was and that, of course is Ridley Scott's
Alien That was very much I've heard Scott and others
speak of it as a haunted house film, like that
was how they sort of put it together originally. So, yeah,
people wind up somewhere out in the Boonies, in this case,
near the edge of a black hole, and here's this
old Kookie house and there's an old Kookie man in it,

(08:38):
and Shenanigan's Unfold.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Another movie I couldn't help but compare The black Hole
too is the much later film from the late nineties,
Event Horizon, which in some ways seems to be a
low brow, R rated adaptation of Disney's The black Hole.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Would you agree, Yeah, in some respects, certainly The black Hole,
but with maybe worse workplace dynamics. I'm not sure. Yeah,
there's some pretty bad workplace dynamics in this. We'll get
into when we get into spoilers.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
But like the heaven hell things like the religious connotations
with the black Hole and somebody who wants to go
in to we have such sights to show you, well,
I guess that's hell Raiser, but we won't need eyes
to see where you're going. There's a lot of similar
stuff going on.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah, Event Horizon is a solid comparison. Now,
this is definitely one of those films. We talk about
a lot of B films on Weird House Cinema, but
we also talk about occasional blockbusters and higher budget films.
For sure. This one definitely is a selection that had
a heftier price tag.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
And a haltier price tag attached to things that, as
I already said, but we'll stress again, don't look super
impressive when you see them today, not like they look bad.
They're just like very simple, because that's what computer graphics
were capable of at the time. And so I was
reading about this in an article for The New York

(10:07):
Times from December sixteenth, nineteen seventy nine by John Colhane
called The black Hole casts the computer as movie maker.
So it begins by describing the opening credits of The
black Hole, in which we see a grid of green
lines intersecting so it looks like graph paper, you know,

(10:28):
it's just a flat square grid floating in space, and
then we zoom over it and then we realize there's
like a funnel in the middle of it. It's a
it's a hole and you plunge down into it. Colhane
writes computer graphics are expensive. Those seventy five seconds of
animated grid movement in The Black Hole costs Disney fifty

(10:48):
thousand dollars. Nevertheless, the fabulous success of Star Wars, a
movie costing eleven million dollars in nineteen seventy seven and
with worldwide grosses now exceeding four hundred and twenty million,
has inspired producers to loosen the purse springs for special
effects of all kinds. The black Hole, Disney's costliest movie ever,

(11:08):
which will run about twenty million dollars, and Paramounts Star
Trek the Movie, which cost forty million, are the two
most expensive productions to open in New York this Christmas.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Oh wow, you know that center. I never really thought
as much about Star Trek the movie being also something
that comes about in the wake of Star Wars and
because of Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Oh yeah, I mean whether or not the movie itself
was a direct ripoff of Star Wars or was heavily
comparable to Star Wars in some way. I think a
lot of people secured funding for their movies by saying, like,
it'll be like Star Wars, it'll be that big of
a money maker.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, or just like the basic proof, it's like, look,
look what kind of money. Well, let me speak your language.
Look how much money a science fiction movie with the
with great effects can make. And you know that gets
through to the industry.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
So this article is of interesting if you want to
look it up, because it provides a snapshot of what
people were thinking was possible with computer effects in nineteen
seventy nine and talks about the idea far down the road.
They say it'll be a ways off, but the first
movie completely animated by computers, and it's obviously a very
exciting prospect to them. So but this is another example.

(12:22):
I think this has even come up on the show
before about like early CGI being super compelling to people
at the time, but something that just has not aged
very well at all, Like it doesn't look that cool now.
I mean some of it does, but most of the
time it doesn't. But at the time people were just
in awe of it. And an example would be this

(12:46):
like grid of green squares that just looks like graph
paper and then eventually it turns into a funnel. That's
the black hole, you know, that's the bend in space
time caused by the singularity the and you get to
go down the hole. That's sounds pretty simple now, but
they originally had that made for a trailer for the
black Hole, which is essentially just explaining what a black

(13:09):
hole is, and then they were so impressed by it
they ended up using it in the movie itself, so
now it's the opening credits of the film as well.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
I think one of the most interesting examples to sort
of put all this in the frame of reference for
where we are now is John Carpenter's Escape from New York,
which has that computer. It seems to be a computer
animated like you know, readout of New York of Manhattan
in the opening of the film. It's made to look

(13:41):
like computer graphics, but it's not. It's an actual physical
model that they use like tape and contrast of dark
and light to create this effect. Because at the time
like this was the far more affordable way to go
about it is actually build the thing. Nowadays it's definitely
pushed on beyond that to the opposite. It's it's almost

(14:01):
always cheaper to create the digital version of it no
quality now standing, but still like to create the physical
version of a thing is generally far more expensive.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
In the original Star Wars, there are a number of
animations that look like they're supposed to be computer screens
or computer animations, but they were actually done by hand,
like the targeting computer and the X Wing is an
effect done by hand, but it's made to look like
a computer effect.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
All right, well, do you do you have an elevator
pitch for this one? Oh?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
I didn't think of one. What do Yeah, I don't know.
You go to space to find life, but sometimes you
just find a black hole.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
I guess. I guess you could make some argument for
it's it's Captain Nemo or it's you know, Captain Ahab,
one of the two in space. Strong elements of that.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yes, definitely the Captain Nemo thing. Do you think that
Disney World was working on a ride tie in and
they just never did it?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
If my memory is correct on this, I watched a
documentary about it. I believe Star Tours at Disney that ultimately,
you know, is a Star Wars themed ride. I believe
it was originally going to be a black hole ride
but oh and ended up not working out. And I
don't remember all the reasons there, but I mean, the
obvious reason would be, why have it themed around the

(15:19):
black hole when you could do Star Wars actual Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Okay, should we hear some trailer audio, let's do it.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
There is an inexorable force in the cosmos where time
and space converge, a place beyond Demand's mission watch not
to his reach, which is the most mysterious and awesome
point in the.

Speaker 5 (15:51):
Universe where they're here and now maybe forever. It is
unavoidable moving through space, swallowing everything in its power, radio waves, light,

(16:12):
even planets and stars.

Speaker 6 (16:16):
Are you programmed to speak? Gravity is a maximum? Damn Like?
All right, I think it's got us.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
We gotta way here too.

Speaker 6 (16:34):
Now, man, it's about to enter the black Horn.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
Journey that begins where everything end.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
All right, well, let's let's go into that black hole. Now.
If you want to watch the movie for yourself before
proceeding through the rest of the episode, well, it's widely
available Disney Plus subscribers. Subscribers will naturally find the film
there and after stay. Quality looks really great. I really
was drawn in by it. I wasn't expecting to be
as drawn in by the visuals of it. It has

(17:25):
also been released on DVD and Blu Ray as well,
if you prefer physical media or want to you know,
rent it at an actual rental store, if you have
one of those in your area. All Right, the people
who brought this film together, the main ones anyway, that

(17:48):
we tend to reference on the show. Let's start at
the top with the director. It's Gary Nelson, who lived
nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty two. Mostly known for
his TV work, but he worked on some pretty big
TV shows of the nineteen six followed by such films
as seventy three's San Tea, eighty one's Nighthawks, eighty two's
Jimmy the Kid, and eighty six's Alan Quatermain and The

(18:09):
Lost City of Gold, and also a number of TV
movies in mini series as well. He was Judy Meredith's husband.
We of course recently talked about her she was in
Queen of Blood. So that's the director. And then when
it comes to screenplay and story credits, they're three individuals referenced.
There's Jeb Rosebrook who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eighteen,

(18:31):
has a screenplay story credit. Mostly a TV writer, mostly Westerns,
wrote not one but two Kenny Rogers Gambler movies.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
I didn't know that was the thing. They made Gambler
movies after the song.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh yeah, there was a whole I forget how many,
but there's like a whole franchise of Kenny Rogers the
Gambler movies. I don't think I've ever seen them, but
like I remember seeing the TV ads for them, because
they're going to play the Gambler in the ads, of course,
and you can't help but pipe up and start watching
the trailer, and then you know. I never watched them, though.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
I don't know if I've done my bit on the
Gambler on the show before, but I've always found that
song to beat the Poker advice is not specific enough.
You gotta know when to hold him and know when
to fold them. Yeah duh. Like what are the rules
for when to hold him and when to fold.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Him, or when when to walk away, when to run?
I don't know. I guess he's saying, like, I can't
teach you to do this. It's all gut instant.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
But that's not advice.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
He's just a gambler. He's not a teacher. Yeah, all right.
Another story credit is just a story credit goes to
Bob Barbash who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety five.
Once again, mostly TV, mostly Westerns, but in this case
no Gambler movies, Bummer. So you might be wondering, what
does anybody in this have any like sci fi genre history.

(19:53):
Yes there is one, and that is Richard H. Landau
who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety as a screenplay
story credit, a writer with credits going back to the
early forties, and certainly there are a bunch of Westerns
in there because that was the time period, but also
the nineteen fifty three sci fi movie Space Ways directed
by Terrence Fisher, fifty five's The Quartermass Experiment, fifty seven's

(20:17):
Pharaoh's Curse, fifty eight's Frankenstein nineteen seventy and he also
wrote one episode of the original Outer Limits series. After that,
it's mostly TV credits, but it includes episodes of The
Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, and nineteen eighties Beyond.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Westworld, Pacific Ocean World.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
All right, getting into the cast at the right at
the top playing doctor hanns ryin Hart, our deranged Black
Hole Scientists, basically our Captain Nemo character for the flick
is Maximilian Shell, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen,
Austrian born Swiss actor whose family fled the Nazis during

(21:00):
World War Two. His German and European credits go all
the way back to the mid nineteen fifties. I believe
his earliest film credits, Sons, Mothers and a General, actually
featured both Shell and Kloskinski in small roles as soldiers.
They're like way down in the cast, but they both
pop up there. He ascended in German language TV and cinema,
and then made the move to Hollywood and almost immediately

(21:22):
won an Academy Award for Best Actor in nineteen sixty
one's Judgment at Nuremberg. Subsequent credits include seventy fours, The
Odessa Phile, seventy seven's Cross of Iron, eighty one's The Chosen.
There's an nineteen eighty six Peter the Great mini series
and ninety two Stalin mini series, John Carpenter's Vampires and
Deep Impact, both of those from nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
He's in John Carpenter's Vampires.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Who is he? In that he's like a Catholic church
representative who hires the Vampire Slayer James Woods. It's a
film I've only seen once. It's probably gonna remain at once.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, my god, I love John Carpenter. I could not
finish that movie. Just awful.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
The book. The book was pretty good, as I recall,
it's based on a novel that's uh, that's pretty terrifying
in places. But the movie, yeah, I'm not not top
tier Carpenter.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
But Maximilian shell is a is a great pick for
for this kind of villain. He's, uh, you know, he's
he's kind of complex. Uh, he is a little bit refined.
He's egotistical and of course you know, has has the
right touch of madness. He also he has he has
a good hair and beard for this role. He seems

(22:41):
like the sort of person who could have played resputant
if he needed to.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, great wild to hear and beard in this and
just I think it. I mean, I don't want to
oversell it because it is what it is. In this film,
he's like the deranged villain on a spaceship who has
robots working for him. But it is still a very
captivating performance. Like anytime doctor Hans Einhardt is speaking, you're
taken in by it, his eyes are just really they

(23:05):
really suck your riding on, like black holes.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
I did notice that in a lot of scenes I
would be very interested whenever he was talking, but then
when the scene was over, I would forget what it
was he had said.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, I mean basically just egotistical this, I'm the best
that you guys should stick around. I'm going into the
black hole that sort of thing, right, all right? We
also have Anthony Perkins in this, playing doctor Alex Durant.
Perkins lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen ninety two American
actor who's of course best known for his role as
Norman Bates in nineteen sixty Psycho, a film that really

(23:41):
flipped the switch on his prior casting as mostly just
a handsome leading man and not a deranged killer. He
would go on to do two sequels to Psycho, but
is also known for nineteen seventy four's Murder on the
Orient Express, sixty two Is The Trial, eighty four's Crimes
of Passion, and nineteen seventies Catch twenty to also of
note for a deeper B movie cuts, nineteen eighty nine's

(24:04):
Age of Sanity and nineteen eighty eight's Destroyer.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
In this, he plays a kind of groveling super fan
of doctor Ryan Hart.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, he's totally team Ryan Hart. Just almost immediately upon
meeting the man, He's like, yes, this whatever his scientific
vision here is, I want to be a part of it. This,
this is the the road to success.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
He also gets really offended when other people criticize Ryin Hart. Yeah,
but in a very toxic fan dynamic.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, but he's very he's very dry about it. I
like his I like Perkins' energy in this. You know,
he's he's he's quick to defend Ryan Hart, but he's
you know, he keeps an even keel. He's a you know,
he's he keeps it together. Man seems to be making
rational if not you know, one sided argument. Yeah, okay,
all right. But so so he's like, what the science

(24:56):
officer on the vessel that comes to the signal at
the edge of the black hole. But with that that
ship also is the Palmino, I believe the Palomino. Palomino
and the Captain we have Captain Dan Hollins played by
Robert Forster. Love Robert Forster. Yeah, Yeah, I mean he's great.
Live forty one through twenty nineteen American actor whose credits

(25:17):
go all the way back to the late sixties. He
played the lead in sixty nine's Medium Cool, directed by
Haskell Wexler. Later films include Reflections in a GoldenEye from
sixty seven, An Alligator from nineteen eighty. But he really
enjoyed a late career resurgence, So they're in a lot
of you out there, they're probably you probably know him
best from like nineteen ninety seven's Jackie Brown, his role

(25:39):
in the Breaking Bad series as ed the What's He's
not a fixer, he's the guy who can make you
disappear and get a new life, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
The main thing I remember is he shows up to
give Brian Kranston a copy of mister mcgoram's Wonder Emporium
in this cabin in the in the Mountains.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Oh yeah. Forrester also shows up in twenty eleven to
the Descendants, the series twin Peaks, the Return, So yeah,
very much a guy whose late career was really excelled.
And Captain Dan is a lot of fun. He's very smooth, cucumber.
He doesn't I don't think his pulse rate rises too

(26:19):
high no matter what's happening in the film you know,
everything's by the books, no messing around, and it makes
for some nice moments of kind of like dry humor.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Too agreed. He is the steady hand.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think I said he's a smooth cucumber. I guess
technically is a cool cucumber. I'm not sure which.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
He's a smooth cucumber and a cool operator.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
There you go, all right. We also have another guy
that's on the ship, and this is Lieutenant Charles Piser.
Not a lot to say about this guy. He's just,
you know, the younger dude on the vessel. Played by
Joseph Bottoms born nineteen fifty four American actor, best known
for seventy four as the Dove, the nineteen seventy eight

(26:59):
mini series Holocous as well as this film. He was
also in nineteen eighty one's The Intruder within, a made
for TV alien knockoff of sorts that's been on my
to watch list. He's the brother of Timothy Bottoms, best
known for nineteen seventy one's The Last Picture Show in
seventy three's The Paper Chase.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
I thought Timothy Bottoms was best known for looking like
George W. Bush when that which is why they cast
him in multiple things to play George W.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Bush. Yes, he was in such a comedy just prior
to nine to eleven? Is that recall? And then it
was canceled.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
But then I think they also cast him in like
serious nine to eleven movies instead they Wow, that's what
I thought.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
That may be the case. Yeah, I mean he does
he especially at that time period. Yeah, it was solid
casting and really solid actor. So whatever you wanted out
of him, if you wanted comedy or if you wanted drama,
you know, Timothy Bottoms could deliver. And if Timothy Bottoms
couldn't deliver, I guess you could ask Joseph Bottoms. But
to my knowledge, he never played a president.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Wait, but I actually do remember him from one other
thing that made an intense impression on me when I
was a kid. I think it was a movie my
dad watched on TV and I caught part of it
was a movie called roller Coaster from nineteen seventy seven,
where Timothy Bottoms plays. I could be remembering this wrong,
but I think he plays a bomber who bombs roller coasters.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Horrifying ideas cuts like come on, some of us are
already frightened enough getting on a roller coaster, and you
got to put this kind of film out there.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
I'm right in that camp. I already did not really
like roller coasters. And then I watched this movie. Oh great.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Oh I'm not familiar with it, but Helen Hunts in it.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
I don't remember her.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
I was. She must have been like, you know, thirteen
or something at the time. All Right. Another member of
the crew, and really one of the more conceptually interesting
members of the crew anyway, is doctor Kate McCrae, played
by Yavette Mimu, who lived nineteen forty two through twenty
twenty two, American actor who played the character Weena in

(28:58):
nineteen sixties The Time Machine. So she wasn't a morlock.
She was what were they, the alloy the.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
La Yeah, yeah, the kind of like gentle dumb people
who live on the surface and are yeah, by morelocks exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
So she was the main one of those in the
nineteen sixty Time Machine movie. Later credits include seventy three's
The Neptune Factor. That's an underwater film that also starred
Ernest Borgnine, nineteen seventies Journey into Fear, nineteen seventy eight's
The Devil Dog, the Dog from Hell Satan's actual dog.
I just added the last part and various TV appearances.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
The Dog from Hell is one of the most superfluous
subtitles I've ever seen. I generally am not a big
fan of colon subtitles in movie titles, but that one
is just chef kiss.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, so unnecessary. Anyway, We'll discuss your character in a
bit more detail later on, but it's one of these
where the concept behind her character is far more interesting
than anything they really do with it in the movie,
and you can't help but wonder what could have been.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, but quick note, our producer JJ just chimed in
to let us know it is in fact Devil Dog
the Hound of Hell, not the Dog from Hell. But
I mean, is that a huge difference. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
I don't know. My apologies to Richard Krinna, though.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Clearly that makes it a lot more useful of a subtitle.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
All Right, we just mentioned Ernest borgnine. Well, he's in
this too. He plays he's like a journalist aboard the
space vessel. That's his name is Harry Booth.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
We just talked about Ernest borgnine in our episode on
The Devil's Rain he melted for twenty minutes.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
That's right, as we discussed in that and certainly go
back to The Devil's Rain for an in depth discussion
on Borg nine. But basically, like there's Borg nine, like
older Borg nine movies are all about like the you know,
him being kind of a heavy and a villain for
the most part, where they're far more of those, Devil's
Rain kind of stands out because it's like maybe one
of the last real villain roles he did. I'm not

(31:00):
sure on that. There may be some others, but certainly
stands out for his later career. But you know, he
also probably has a bigger name for many of the
you know, the good natured sort of grandpa type characters
he played later in his career, and that's that's kind
of the energy here. Like Harry Booth is a likable guy,

(31:20):
a journalist who you know, just wants to bring the
truth back home. He wants to stick up for his friends,
and it's not a lot more to it.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, but there is a weird twist with the end
of this character's arc because he tries to steal the
ship and escape and leave them behind.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Oh god, yes, I forgot about that we'll get to
that later. Okay, all right, moving, There aren't many more
people in this film, but and this one's kind of
a head scratcher. So because at this point we're basically
out of humans. It takes place on a spaceship out
in the middle of nowhere as far as the galaxy goes,
so you know, we're out of humans. But we have

(31:58):
this other character named Captain Starr Star. I'm not sure
what this stands for, but we learned that he's like
the top gunslinging robot on the Sickness.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Wait, I have a note about what Star stands for.
It is Special Troops Arms Regiment.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Okay, okay, that works, that works out.

Speaker 5 (32:19):
Well.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
They're obviously all backronyms in this because they're like full names.
It's like Vincent and then they make Vincent stand for
something implausible.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, so this is not a major character. There's a
fun sequence with it. I like, this is the scene
that involves Captain Star. But yeah, Captain Star is like
the best of the non Maximilian bad robots. And he's
played by Tom McLoughlin Bor nineteen fifty, son of a

(32:49):
magician and former mime, and he apparently also studied mime
as well, which I guess prepared him for this role
of slinging around blasters as a robot. He would go
on to primarily write and direct, with credits that include
One Dark Night from eighty two, which I've seen all
are part of about sorority sisters spending the night in
a mausoleum and there's like a haunted old man with

(33:10):
lightning coming out of him or something. He also wrote
and directed nineteen eighty six is Friday the thirteenth, Part
six Jason Lives Joe. Is that one of the good
ones define good.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
That's the first one where Jason is undead, So that's
where that's the first one to introduce explicit magical powers
to the series.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
This is not the one with the psychic girl in.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
It, No, that's part seven, Part six. Jason gets dug
up from the ground and then lightning strikes his grave
and that wakes him up and then he just you know,
runs around doing Jason stuff.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Okay, well still, and I guess an important shift in
the franchise.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yes, Part six, I think is it has a more
overt sense of humor than most of the others. It
has a lot of jokes and gags in.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
It okay Well. McLaughlin also did an episode of Freddy's Nightmares.
He did four episodes of Friday the Thirteenth series nineteen
ninety one Sometimes They Come Back, which is a Stephen
King adaptation, and mostly TV products up until twenty ten.
He also has a small acting role in Critters Too Okay,
But we have a couple of robots to hit voice
acting wise, the Critters of Hell, we have Vincent. Vincent

(34:26):
is our good robot, our lead good robot, and he's
voiced by legendary actor Roddy McDowell, who lived nineteen twenty
eighth or nineteen ninety eight, best known for the probably
for the original Planet of the Eighth series, nineteen eighty
five's Fright Night, as well as such non genre films
as sixty three Is Cleopatra, forty one's How Green Was
My Valley? But he's in plenty of B movies as well,

(34:47):
such as Class of eighty four from eighty two, seventy eight,
Laser Blast, nineteen ninety six Predator knockoff called Star Hunter,
and of course there's nineteen nineties Shakma Shakma shack Ma
No Ononder's seventeen will be admitted. Yes, it's a killer
Babboon movie. I don't think I'll ever watch it, but

(35:08):
the trailer is amazing, and then we arived Sma. But
then we eventually meet another robot. This is Old Bob,
voiced by Slim Pickens, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen
eighty three cowboy turned cowboy actor, best known for roles
in sixty four's Doctor Strange, Love, seventy two is The Getaway,
seventy fours Blazing Saddles, and nineteen eighty one's The Howling.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
They specified that Bob was built in Houston.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, that's why he has the Texan accent. I guess, yeah,
that's right, all right. The music on this one is
the work of John Berry, who lived nineteen thirty three
through twenty eleven, legendary English film composer who won Oscars
for his work, and sixty seven Is Born Free, sixty
nine Is The Lion, and Winter ninety one Dances with Wolves.
He also scored sixty two's Doctor No and as such

(35:57):
created the iconic James Bond theme song and went on
to do I think twelve Bond films in total, some
of the best and some of the weirdest and this
also results in him having some composing credits on some
of the Bond songs, such as Duran Durand's View to
a Kill from nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Ah, I would argue maybe one of the best Bond songs.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah. Absolutely. I got to see Duran Drannon concert just
last week and they played the song. It was amazing.
They also did Wild Boys nice. So too many scores
here to mention from John Barry, but for our purposes
we should acknowledge that he did Goldfinger, he did, you know,
all those other Bond films. He did Midnight Cowboys, seventy
one's Walk About the nineteen seventy six King Kong, seventy

(36:43):
eight Star Crash, another Star Wars inspired film, and of
course seventy nine's Moonraker, which was both a Bond film
and also, I guess arguably a response to Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Arguably. Yes, obviously we've got to come back and do
Moonraker one day. I think that's the one James Bond
film just kooky enough to fit in our wheelhouse.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I think it is absolutely As for the black Hole
score here, yeah, it's sweeping, absolutely solid by most metrics.
I think it is rather steeped in adventure and glory
and that kind of like kind of slightly old fashioned sound.
I guess it as opposed to like, you know, deep
dark mysteries of the outer void maybe, but I don't

(37:26):
know that it does have some great kind of I
was thinking like drunken ghost ship music as well, that
I thought was quite good. So I think it's a
great score in many respects. It's hard for me to
objectively view to rate it though, because it because I
have that record still in my head, you know, from
reading that book as a kid and hearing the music.

(37:47):
So I think it's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
I mean, the main ominous string theme I think is
really good, even though it's kind of repetitive, but it
sets the mood quite well. There are some other moments
I hear what you're talking about, where they're like there
are fight scenes that just have a kind of bump
bumber dump bum kind of you know, triumphant horns that
I don't know, I could take her leave. But on

(38:10):
the whole, I think the music is pretty good.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
One last person I want to credit here, and that
is George McGinnis, who is credited as robot designer. He
lived I'm not sure about his birthday, is I think
nineteen thirty or thereabouts, and he died in twenty seventeen.
So Robert McCall, the art director, also did preliminary design
work on the robots we see in the movie, But
the final designs that we see for Bob and Vincent,

(38:33):
and most importantly Maximilian, they seem more firmly aligned with
the work of McGinnis. I included a couple of images
here for you, Joe, that I got off of one
of the Disney wikis. But McGinnis was the last imagineer
hired by Walt Disney, apparently back in nineteen sixty six.
He worked on such projects as Space Mountain, Epcot's Horizons Pavilion,

(38:55):
and the Indiana Jones Adventure Ride.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
The different robots in this film almost feel like they're
from different movies, you know, Like Maximilian really has it
doesn't just seem like he has a different personality than Vincent.
It's like they come from different realities.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
They both both the Vincent, the Vincent, the Bob and Maximilian.
They they do have. What they have in common is
that they are floating robots. Yes, that I do like
because it's kind of like, you know, the idea of
like you have some sort of astromac type robot. They're
gonna work primarily in a weightless environment, and therefore, you know,
their limbs, whatever kind of limbs they have, they're gonna

(39:34):
revolve around moving around within three dimensions, multiple limbs for
grabbing onto things. But then there is a lot of
stylistic difference because Bob and Vincent are you know, arguably
kind of cute and they have big eyes, you know,
kind of they have kind of a pleasing epcot feel
to them, whereas Maximilian is of course red and satanic

(39:58):
and intimidating and just a fabulous design, but also one
where you can't quite figure out at first glance what
everything is with his limbs. Yeah, just fabulous design on
Maximilian as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Do you want to get into the plot.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Oh, let's do it. We're being pulled there by the
gravitational forces.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
Very interesting thing about the beginning of this movie. There
is an overture, meaning there is a long opening fanfare
with like the orchestra playing over a totally black screen,
and for a while I was wondering, is there's something
wrong with my streaming service, like I'm not getting video content.
But no, the visuals really do begin about a minute

(40:49):
and a half in.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, I get what they were going for here, you know,
And I guess it's also kind of steeped in an
older style. But I feel like most people watching it
today are just going to wonder if, you know, there's
something wrong with their television set.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
So we talked earlier about the green grid. When we
get to the credits, here it is we are flying
through space. There's a vast field of stars in the background,
and we are zooming above and then below the plane
of a green animated square matrix or grid like green
graph paper lines floating in space, and we finally zoom
out to see that in the distance, this flat geometric

(41:24):
plane sharply curves off down into a pit or a funnel,
just the way an extremely massive object sharply bend space
time around it, and so of course we get sucked in.
We sp we spiral around the pit, and then we
eventually go down into it. The actual action begins in
space with stars twinkling in the dark, and there's some

(41:46):
technical sci fi narration by Roddy McDowell saying things like
unscheduled course correction do at twenty two hundred rotation access
plus three degrees, And this kind of thing goes on
for a while. There's this sort of technical chatter between
the different characters for a bit, and it made me
wonder about something. It made me think about, like what

(42:07):
kinds of choices you make as an actor when you
are playing a role that, for at least, you know,
within certain scenes it he doesn't have much of any
human thing to do where you're just speaking technical dialogue
like accelerate to full power, switching to manual, you know,
like what is an actor supposed to do with that?

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, and it's interesting when you think about where they
end up going with Vincent, because Vincent ends up being
a robot that is rather different than C three PO. Like, yes,
they're both robots that are, you know, personable voice with
a with a British accent. But while C three PO
is of course famously cowardly and anxious, Vincent here, you know,

(42:48):
he's very sure of himself, and he's he's all about
standing up to bullies and supporting his his human crew
members and so forth. So he has a different energy
to him once you get get into his character.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, I think that's right. I had a whole note
about similarities and differences with C. Three PO, but I
think that's the core of it. He seems to be
modeled on C. Three PO, but he is brave and scrappy,
whereas C. Three PO is fussy and cowardly. And another
difference is that while C three PO often seems to
though this comes in more in the Empire Strikes Back,

(43:23):
C THREEO seems to quote quantitative things a lot, like
statistics or probability of success things. Instead, they have vincent
like quoting proverbs, quoting sayings and proverbs, which is an
interesting personality trait for a robot. The movie doesn't really
do anything with it, but it struck me that in

(43:45):
the context of a story that was more like thoughtful
about the meaning of technology, that might be an interesting choice.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah. And the idea too, that he's here to encourage
you in your long distance space mission.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
So how do we describe what Vince looks like? You
mentioned earlier that he's a hovering robot. He floats, but
he's sort of a metal ball with a whack a
mole head that pops up out of the top to
reveal his eyes, which are very cute, but they're just
static white squares with black dots in the middle.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yeah, I think the wack a mole feature is key.
There are aspects about him that it seemed like he
was designed toy first in that regard, but in a
way that that works well. I don't know. There are
some shots where I feel like he's too large. He's
really quite big and maybe bigger than he should be.
I don't know if that makes sense. But otherwise, I mean,

(44:37):
this is this is the project of Imagineer, so it's
it's very well put together. But yeah, that's very much
like a whack a mole head design for floating. Has
blasters that come out, little grabbers that come out, little
kind of like I don't know, anti grab boy boys
that come out where his legs would be. So there's
there's plenty about him that kind of tracks to an

(44:58):
understanding of a bike. Heatal creature, but he doesn't function
like a bipedal creature at all, so he's very functional
for a space environment.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yeah, and also he does violence, unlike C three PO.
I can't remember if we already said that but this
is a robot that like fights and in fact kills
other robots.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Oh yeah, I mean sometimes he's really kind of a
bastard with it. When he's in the fighting, he's doing
like a they're not even shooting at each other. He's
doing like target practice with Star, and he ends up
like managing to accidentally shoot Star in the chest, which
is a great sequence.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
So we learned that this ship is the USS Palomino
and Vincent is its robot. He's the first one talking,
but eventually other voices come in and they're all chattering
back and forth. We learned that they are on a
mission to explore deep space. I think they're looking for
signs of life. And the ship has finished its primary objectives.
It's on the way back to Earth. So we meet
the ship and its crew. Robert Forster again is Captain Dan.

(45:58):
Captain Dan Holland. He's strong, brave, terse sensible, dependable. Joseph
Bottoms is Lieutenant Peiser. He's kind of the young hot head.
He's ready for adventure and he wants to blast a.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Laser, but he's politely hot headed. He's conservatively hot headed.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Right, so we mentioned earlier you vet mim you as
doctor Kate McCrae has a strange thing that they decided
to do with her character, which is that she can
telepathically communicate with robots.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Huh. Yeah, this is crazy because I didn't remember this
from any past viewings of the film. I don't think
this made it into the flip book I had as
a child, the idea that she has either and it's
not really They don't explain if this is Does she
have any level of general ESP? Is it robot specific ESP.

(46:51):
If so, why is it there is there an implant involved,
or is it like we would get later in scanners
Cronenberg scanners, where if you have any kind of psychic ability,
then you just if you try hard enough, you can
psychically communicate with a computer.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
You can call a computer from a payphone and read
its mind.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
I don't think so, because as far as I could tell,
she only telepathically communicates with Vincent. She never she never
reads the mind of any other human that I recall,
or any robot other than Vincent.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, and that would have been an interesting thing to
explore because basically, like the whole thing is like we're
in a creepy spaceship and there are whole bunch of
creepy robots around. That would have been a great opportunity
for her character to have some sort of like there's
something wrong with these robots scene. You know, she's like
they're not reading properly. But they didn't go in that direction.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Odd choice, but okay, it's good. It's mainly used though
for the plot the same way it would be like
if they had a radio communication, she can just talk
to Vincent from a distance. That's about all.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Yeah, if they ever do remake this film, and I'm
not sure that's something I want to see, but if
they were, like, this is something they should pick up on,
like this is something from the original film that doesn't
need to be thrown out or completely recreated the just
like figure it, like, explore this further. What does it mean?
Like what if that's just how robots work in the
black hole vision of the future, where robots are just

(48:18):
inherently like psychically linked to individuals or multiple people, Like
there's a lot you could do with that.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Agree. Okay, you mentioned Anthony Perkins. He plays doctor Alex Durant.
He's like a whereas y'vet Mimieux is a more empathetic scientist.
This is a more he's like a cold intellectual scientist.
He yearns for knowledge and historical significance. Uh, maybe diving
into a black hole will finally get me a tenure.
And then we have Ernest borgnine as Harry Booth. This

(48:47):
is a journalist who's on board the ship for some reason. Harry,
I would say, is the most down to earth member
of the crew. He's the one who is neither a
soldier nor a scientist, and he kind of talks in
a plane like which with the he offers like the
hot dog vendors perspective on all the technobabble.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
So, one thing that was interesting to me once we
start meeting the crew, and very much sets this movie apart,
is that when we first meet them, they're floating around.
They're weightless. Most space travel movies just handwave this away.
They get rid of the physical reality with some kind
of magical, unspecified artificial gravity device. More hard sci fi

(49:27):
movies usually get around it by setting the occupied parts
of the spaceship within a rotating ring or some other
mechanism where gravity could be simulated via acceleration like it
would be in reality. Relatively few movies actually try to
simulate weightlessness, I guess, mainly because it's a difficult special
effect to make look right. Like. You can do wires

(49:48):
and stuff, and if you're really committed, you can film
and reduced gravity aircraft like the Vomit comet like they
did in Apollo thirteen, but obviously that is expensive and
difficult and taxing on everybody involved. So I was going
to say, I wonder what kinds of effects they used
to film the weightless scenes in this movie, But right
when I was typing that, then I was like, oh,

(50:09):
there's uvets wire rig Okay, so yeah, they're just hanging
on wires.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, there are multiple scenes in the films, at least
watching it now in the quality that we have it
in where you can make out these wires. Yeah. It's
one of those things where if the film was perhaps
like a bigger deal, like culturally, and you know, it
was a bigger success, you could imagine they might have
gone back and cleaned up some of those wires, but
they're still there. It didn't really it didn't take me

(50:35):
too much out of the film viewing experience, but it's
kind of interesting from an effects standpoint.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
So if you're okay with taking a quick diversion here
regarding the special effects for weightlessness, apparently these effects played
a convoluted role in establishing the final cast of the film.
So I was reading about this in an article for
The Hollywood Reporter by David Ween published in December twenty

(51:01):
nineteen called we Never Had An Ending. How Disney's Black
Hole tried to match Star Wars. This article is interesting
as worth to read about the movie. It includes a
number of things, such as the fact that for the
role of doctor Kate McCrae, they were originally wanting to
cast a pre alien Sigourney Weaver, but they said that

(51:22):
the head of the casting department was like, Sigourney, uh, oh,
we're not going to do somebody with that name.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Well, I'm glad because if this was pre alien, I mean,
we wouldn't want our ripley trajectory to be off.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
But even that didn't get them directly to you'vet MIMEU.
They first went to the summer of forty two star
Jennifer O'Neill, who apparently had signature long hair. And so
here I'm going to read from this article in the
Hollywood Reporter quote we shot one day. I think it
was a test. It was a test or something. She

(51:58):
was in zero gravity. Remember Nelson, that'd be Gary Nelson,
the director. She had this long hair down the center
of her back. She was always very proud of it.
It actually made her career with hair products and everything.
And I looked and I said, this is not working.
You have to cut your hair. And she said, oh,
I can't do that. And I said, you're going to
have to because that's what I want and it's right

(52:19):
for the movie too, and so she finally agreed. She
brought her professional hairstylist, Vidalsa Soon to the studio, whoa
Nelson continued. They went up to her dressing room and
started cutting her hair one inch at a time and
having a glass of wine, then cutting another inch and
having another glass of wine. And by the time they

(52:40):
were finished, it was pretty short and she was looped.
I was sitting there when it happened, said Bottoms with
a laugh. When she agreed to get her hair cut,
that's when I remember the order went out, like could
someone get me a glass of wine? They would cut
more and more, and they kept bringing it up and up,
and then they decided to put a little bit of
color to lighten some streaks, and you can see Vidal,

(53:02):
and everyone was concerned. Nelson reported that after the disaster
haircut session quote, she got in her car to drive home.
She got into an accident on Sunset Boulevard and ended
up in the hospital. So we had to recast, and
we cast you vet Mi Meeu the next day. So
all that trauma and everything getting her haircut was for naught.

(53:23):
It's kind of a shame.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Oh wow, But you know she went on to be
in Scanners, so I guess you know, for us it
worked out.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Wait a minute, she was in Scanners.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Jennifer O'Neil. Yeah, she plays Kim Obrist. I think she
has top billy.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Wow, I missed that. Oh you're exactly right. Uh yeah.
Don't drink and drive, folks, even if you're getting a
bad haircut.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
But she was destined, one way or another to be
in a movie in which someone uses their mind to
talk to a machine.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
That's right, But it was also it could make these
wire rig weightlessness effects look right, because you know, if
your hair's not floating around, it won't look right. So
everybody does have short Okay, So the first thing that

(54:10):
really happens in the movie is that Vincent reveals to
the crew he has detected the presence of something nearby
the ship, not just a comet or an asteroid, but
something amazing. Quote, the largest black hole I have ever encountered.
How many is he encountered? I don't know, he doesn't say,
And they pull up an image of the black hole
on the hologram machine. In the movie, it is represented

(54:34):
as a giant, spiraling whirlpool of blue around a black
void with an orange dot in the middle. And I
realized this, The black hole in this movie looks almost
exactly like a hurricane. It's got like the spiral of
rain bands and an eye in the center.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Yeah yeah, I mean, of course, based on what we
know now about black holes. The thing is, this is
absolutely correct. No notes, This is exactly what they look like.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
I don't think it would be, but it's I like it.
You know, it's a good effect. I read that they
created the black hole by like swirling paint around a
drain in a bathtub or something.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it does. It looks great in
the film, even if it is probably leaning a lot
more towards you know, ocean whirlpool than anything else.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
So the characters in the movie talk about black holes
like a villain character. They're trying to build up as
the big bad. When they first see it, Ernest Borgnein says,
my god, it's right out of Dante's Inferno, and Anthony
Perkins says, yes, the most destructive force in the universe, Harry,
Nothing can escape it, not even light. And then Juvet

(55:41):
Mian Mew says, I had a professor who predicted that
black holes would eventually devour the entire universe. And then
Piser says, every time I see one of those things,
I expect to spot some guy in red with horns
and a pitchfork. Then Captain Dan, the last of the humans,
chimes in least expressive of everybody. He just says, it's

(56:02):
a monster, all right. But there's a twist. Not only
are they in the presence of a gigantic black hole,
there appears to be a huge spaceship bobbing in space
right next to it. How is that possible? Well, scans
revealed this ship is the USS Signus, a ship that
was sent out on a mission years ago to discover
habitable life in outer space. That's what they say habitable

(56:25):
life in outer space. I think that line needs an edit.
Maybe the habitable planets or life, I don't know. But
it turns out doctor Kate McCrae's father was a crew
member on the Signas before it went missing. So could
it be that he is still alive on the ship
they just stumbled across. Perhaps we learn a bit more

(56:47):
about the background of this ship. I think Ernest Borgnin
and Anthony Perkins say things about it. So the mission
was led by doctor Heinz, doctor Hans Reinhardt, a brilliant
but egotistic scientist, and Harry describes how Reinehart talked the
authorities into funding his mission of space exploration, only to

(57:08):
ignore orders to return to Earth when the mission was recalled.
But doctor Durant, that's Anthony Perkins is obviously a Rehinehart superfan,
and he says, well, maybe the order to return never
got through to the ship. He wouldn't disobey an order
from mission control. He's a genius and a great man.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
He'll continue to move the goalpost on this judgment throughout
the picture.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
So they decided to go in for a closer look.
Gravitational forces rattle the Palomino as they get as they approach,
and when they get close to the sickness, suddenly there
is quote zero gravity, smooth as glass, but there's no
sign of life or activity on board, and the gravity
returns once they pass by on the other side. And

(57:53):
this leads to what I honestly thought was kind of
a tedious action scene where the Palomino is just getting
damaged after it gets gravity blasted, and then Vincent has
to go outside the ship on a tether to do repairs.
It did not really thrill my soul. I will say
I like the look of the Signas a lot. I
think the Signess looks nice and spooky. It has this
kind of like kind of scaffolding look to it, with

(58:16):
like this inner glow.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Little later, when we first encounter it's not glowing at all,
but eventually it gets a glow to it and it
has a pretty creepy look throughout.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
I actually did like that. Yeah, So the look of
the Palomino and this whole action scene with the repairs
is I could take it, take it, or leave. But
when they get back to the Signas and the ship
lights up, I thought this was one of the better
pieces of imagery in the movie, Like you say, it
has this skeletal outer framework of struts and bars, almost
like a cage, surrounding an inner surface membrane that glows

(58:49):
with yellow light, kind of like a paper lantern, I thought,
and I liked that a lot. So anyway, they kind
of they fly around the Signas and they zoom and
enhance a view screen photo a window from the ship,
and they see a shadowy figure. So Kate concludes that
there are people on board, and Captain Dan is apprehensive,
but their ship is damaged, so they don't really have

(59:10):
a choice. They go and dock with the Signas so
they can do repairs. And once they dock, they discover
they quote have gravity, which means that for the rest
of the movie. Yeah, they'll just be walking around, no
more wire rigs needed.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
It's nice to go ahead and take the pressure off
of everybody. Yeah, you don't have to have Borg nine
wired for the entire movie.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Seems like a budget conscious rewrite. Yeah, So they head
on board the Signas on foot, and then after some
ominous investigation of deserted hangars and corridors and riding around
on a zippy little go cart, they eventually take an
elevator up to the control room, and I thought the
control room looked very cool. It is populated by hundreds

(59:50):
of blinking lights and screens, and these stations operated by
unspeaking hooded figures that we see only in silhouette, and
then upon a layer of scaffolding above them. In the room,
there are more hooded figures who appear to be constructing
glowing planets. In the middle of the room. There's one
blue and one the color of flames. I liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Yeah, this whole sequence is beautiful to look at. It
has that yeah that seventies imagineer vibe to it, lots
of color and uh yeah, totally solid.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Here we meet a couple of figures. First, a floating
humming robot made of red plate metal with a horizontal
glowing red visor where his eyes should be. He looks
kind of like a Cylon Actually, and Battlestar Galactica was
out by this point, I guess similar with like the
bars for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
The eyes, similar but far superior. The original Cylons look
kind of I mean, they have that kind of like
clunky like suit of armor look to them.

Speaker 6 (01:00:52):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Maximilian. Here, as we'll learn he's called it's God, I
don't know, he's like a he's as much symbol as
as artifice, you know, Like there's something about just like
the profile he cuts. It's just so clean but also
hard to distinguish, Like like he has appears to have
what like three arms per arm, Like each of his

(01:01:14):
arms splits out at the elbow into three different multipurpose
tools I think only two of which we really get
to see in action. So and it's just it's streamlined.
Like I was thinking, like if they if they did
a remake of certainly if they had done a remake
of Black Hole in the last ten years, they would
have made this design overly complex. You know, this robot

(01:01:35):
would have looked like a transformer or something, or like
the the the Lost in Space robot is. It's been reconceptualized,
and if you added more to Maximilian you would take
something away from him. There's just something about the way
he's so streamlined. He's just perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Yes, he's also sort of a devil, isn't he. I
Mean that's a little bit obvious with the red, but
he does cut the figure kind of a demon or
an ARCon. Yeah, but his smoothness is kind of key.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
I like that. He's not a highly textured creature. Anyway,
he approaches them, or this robot approaches them, and then
Vincent is like, I identify yourself, but instead he just
turns his hands into propellers and begins to menace. He
goes into menace mode with spinning blades.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
I mean, it's basically what the Lisa Simpson approached. Right.
I'm going to start doing this and riving towards you,
and it's up to you what happens next.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Except my hands are like blender blades.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
And then there is a man in the shadows, reclining
in a command chair who calls out to the crew
in a German accent, and he knows their names, he
knows their mission. He has been monitoring their every move.
This is doctor Hans Reindhart, the brilliant scientist idolized by
Anthony Perkins. He explains that mister propeller hands here is
indeed Maximilian and that he will obey Rinhart's every command.

(01:02:58):
So when we meet Reinhart, he has wild, old hair,
thick beard, wears an unbuttoned lab coat. I guess with
his hair they would have made him cut it if
he was on board the Palomino, but fortunately he wasn't.
He's got the German accent fairly overt shades of mad scientists,
which is kind of odd because I think they're trying
to do the captain nemo ambiguity. Where is this our

(01:03:20):
dangerous captor or our admirable host? Which is he?

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Yeah, it seems like they should have had him tone
it down a little bit, especially since the dialogue from
the crew members. They keep being like, oh, we can't
trust this guy. I don't know about this guy seems
a bit squirrely. But it's like, well, yeah, that the
performance is squirrely, maybe you should have had the performance
less squarely.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
Yeah, And well they immediately have him. Not immediately, but
early on. He's saying things like I'm about to prove
to you that the end justifies the means.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah. He has some great lines and this there's one
that he says later on. He says, it's about time
that people learn about their failures and my successes. Yes,
he has a million of him. He's been thinking him
up by himself on the ship for what twenty years.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
He's had a lot of time. We're hanging out only
with robots.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
At least twenty years, because this film doesn't really get
into it. But if he's really hanging out next to
a massive black hole, I mean, the time's gonna go
a little weird on this ship. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Wait, does that mean it would be longer for him
or shorter for him? I forget which way would go.
You're near a large, massive object, So I think that
means his experience of time would be faster compared to
the outside frame of reference.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Oh yes, so he would have less time to think
ups to say to his guest slash captives.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
But they do not address time dilation at all in
this film. But anyway, so he recognizes always like, hey,
it's doctor Kate McCrae. I knew your dad. He worked
on this ship. He's dead now. I'm sorry about that.
He was my most trusted friend, but he perished long ago.
And then he gets up in doctor mccray's face and
he starts telling her that she has the same eyes,

(01:04:59):
the same eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Should we trust this guy? Sure cher, He seems finey,
he's a brilliant silence.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Well, so they're like, hey, where's the rest of your crew?
He says, oh, they didn't make it. Back. He claims
they were commanded to return to Earth and the ship
was damaged by meteorites, so he stayed behind, but sent
the surviving crew back to Earth in the escape pod.
And since then he's just been here alone, aided by

(01:05:28):
the robots that he constructed, which include these strange hooded
monk figures operating the control room all around them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Yeah, they have these cool like reflective mirror faces like
they should be like, I don't know, back up for
daft punk. It's a cool look.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
So there are those robots with the hoods and the
mirror masks, and then there are the Sentry robots who
are like burgundy colored robots armed with laser guns. There
they're gonna be your Imperial Stormtroopers of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yeah, yeah, and they definitely like robots, like they're doing
the robot dance the whole time, to the point where
it's a little silly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Also, the scene establishes a rivalry between Vincent and Maximilian.
They at once they do not like each other, and
they keep locking horns and you can tell there's going
to be a payoff of this relationship. But it's kind
of strange because at first they're just like repeatedly sort
of getting like puffing their chests up at each other
over nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah. I do love the scene where they do it
in the elevator and like they're just having the face
off and Vincent's probably mouthing off, and then Maximilian just
turns upside down because he's a free floating robot, and
then Vincent starts doing the same thing and doing circles.
It's I don't know, it just struck me as like
it's nice and weird that the robots have their own

(01:06:46):
like physical zero gravity language for talking smack to each other.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
I agree, Yeah, it was hard to determine exactly what
that meant, but you got the gist.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
So anyway, Ryan Hart does the captain sort of thing,
like he's like, oh, consider yourself, my guests. You know
you're here my guests on the signas there'll be dinner later,
and Captain Dan says that they're gonna they're not going
to impose on his hospitality. They just need to repair
their ship and then they'll be on their way. Of course,
they'll offer doctor Reinhardt a lift back to Earth. But

(01:07:20):
he scoffs at this. He's like, why would I want
to return to Earth. I'm on the brink of amazing
scientific discoveries here, because he says if his ship moves
just a bit closer to the black hole, yes it
will be destroyed, but he has developed anti gravity technology
that keeps him a stable distance away from it, and
he implies that he is about to make some kind

(01:07:41):
of discovery with regards to the black hole that will
change everything. So Dan, Peiser and Vincent head off with
Maximilian to repair the ship. Doctors Durant and McCrae and
Ernest borgnine hang out to learn about Reinhardt's scientific discoveries,
which they will convey back to Earth for him, and
this sort of the end of act one, and it

(01:08:01):
kicks off a middle section of the movie with the
characters in various capacities traveling around the ship, learning and
observing strange things. So as first you got Maximilian. He
leads Dan, Peiser and Vincent around the ship to requisition
parts for their repairs, and on the way they observe
century robots and hooded monk droids silently marching from place

(01:08:23):
to place. Piser points out, hey, there's a lot of
activity going on here. Are they getting ready for something,
and then they meet a new robot, a busted up
ramshackle robot like Vincent, but this one is named Bob
voiced by Slim Pickens. Meanwhile, Reinhart is giving Anthony Perkins,
You've met Mimu and Ernest borgnine a tour of the

(01:08:45):
amazing technology he's built on board. He has, like a
giant reactor, and Anthony Perkins says, you'll be remembered as
one of the greatest space scientists of all time, and
rein Hart says, I have never doubted that. Oh yeah,
And this is the part where he says that time
people learned about their failures and my successes.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
That's so good. I don't know why I love that
line so much.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
It is really great. But while he's leading them around, meanwhile,
Ernest borgnine just sneaks away to explore things for himself.
So he finds one room that's I think the control
room for the garden where the food is grown for
the ship, and he finds a hooded robot operating a
machine of some sort and he tries to talk to
the robot but it does not respond, and we get

(01:09:28):
a close up on the robot's face under the hood.
It has this reflective metal mask, like a mirror surface,
and after he tries to talk to it, it leaves
the room, limping like it has a broken leg.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, this is interesting because again the century robots all
walk like they're doing the robot dance, and this is
something distinctly different.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
At the same time, Captain Dan he's riding the trolley
around and he sees a group of hooded robots carrying
a large container between them, almost like a coffin in
a funeral procession, and he follows them. He walks through
a large hall of personal quarters with human beds and
offices and closets full of clothes, but it's all empty
of human life. Finally, he catches up to the robots

(01:10:10):
and they gather in a solemn formation in a room
with external windows, and they launch the container into space,
in fact, into the black hole. It goes into the
black hole. It really looks like a funeral And then
suddenly Captain Dan is caught by Maximilian. He sneaks up
behind him and opens a door, but Captain Dan stays

(01:10:31):
very cool. He just says like, must have made a
wrong turn.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Max Ah, He's so smooth. I love it, like, you know,
Maximilian would have just guided him with one of those
those the fan blade hands, but he was just so
cool about it. He's like, oh, I guess he really
did make wrong turn. He's back on track now.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
But things are really starting to add up that something
isn't right. While doing repairs on the Palomino, Captain Dan
tells Piser what he saw, and Piser scoffs. He says,
nobody has a funeral for a robot, and Dan says,
I don't know if it was a robot now here,
I think it's It would be good to do a
little sidebar on this movie's take on the personhood of robots.

(01:11:11):
Sometimes robots in the Black Hole are treated exactly the
same as people. Robert Forster at one point says directly
that Vincent is quote one of us. It's like when
he's outside working on the ship and they're like, oh, no,
he's going to get lost. We've got to go out
and save him. And Pizer says, what if it was
one of us out there? And Captain Dan says he

(01:11:34):
is one of us. And at the same time, Maximilian
is depicted as having the quality of moral evil and malice,
not just like bad programming and the Vincent style robots.
Vincent and Bob both have clear personalities and hopes and desires.
But on the other hand, several major plot points and
conversations seem to hinge on the idea that robots do

(01:11:56):
not have thoughts or feelings or desires or humaneanity, like
the why have a funeral for a robot point? From
what I could tell, the movie's view on this issue
was just incoherent, Like it didn't seem to me to
reflect a conscious choice to portray the issue as complex.
It just kind of felt like an oversight. But it
seems like this is another thing that with some tweaking

(01:12:19):
of the story, this could have been really interesting to explore.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Yeah, especially when you factor in the esp angle as well.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Yeah, there's another thing that it just kind of seems
like it's tossed out there, but it could have been
very interesting. Like Vincent, the robot at one point claims
to hate the company of robots, like he can't stand
his own kind of being they're like cats. Yeah, anyway,
Dan is wary. He thinks they should get the repairs done,
get away from Reinhart as fast as they can Meanwhile, Reinhart, Durant,

(01:12:51):
and McCrae are up in the control room and they're
just trading epithets about black holes like it's the deadliest
force in the universe, the long dark hunnle to nowhere,
and then Reinhart goes or somewhere, and it's like, Okay,
I'm starting to get the feeling that despite inventing the
anti gravity that allows him to stay above it, Reinhart

(01:13:12):
wants to fall into the black hole.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
It's like having a cannon on the stage, right you
introduce a black hole or a wormhole or what have you.
Somebody's going in there, like having an acid vat or
a pool of piranhas if you will.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Right right, Okay, So a few scenes to briefly mention.
There's the laser blasting scene with Vincent, Bob and the
Century robots where they're just sort of like doing the
doing sort of carnival game sharp shooting. We get to
know a bit about Bob here, the robot played by
Slim Pickens.

Speaker 4 (01:13:45):
Rob.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
You mentioned you liked the scene. I found it not
very exciting, or at least parts where it's kind of
a special effects showcase again for effects that look kind
of uninteresting today. But I did like slim Pickens.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Slim Pickens brings a lot of personality to this role ofvious.

Speaker 6 (01:14:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
The actual laser blasting is very mediocre by pretty much
I think any even contemporary standards. But what I liked
was like the sudden twist of like, oh man Vincent
is it is kind of a meanie. He's oh, he
really doesn't like other robots.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
I did like that where he yeah, so this is
the scene where in the end Vincent kills Star the robot,
but it's like a funny funny kills him.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
We also find out the background that Bob had once
beat Star in a shooting contest, and slempick and says
he had his revenge though he did things to me.
I sure don't like to think about what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
There's another kind of Captain Nemo E scene where everybody
has dinner with Ryan Hart. For this scene, right Heart
changes into a red uniform with metal and they're served
by hooded robots. They get a fresh mushroom soup and
rein Hart. He shows his contempt for Earth. He's like
back on Earth, the news is always the same, only
the names change.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Is this the scene there where they ask borg Nine, like,
what's happening on Earth and he's like ana much like, really,
there's no news from Earth. Nothing, It's all good.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
And Reinhart announces his plan to go into the black hole.
He says in through and beyond, and then Ernest Borgnine
says that's impossible, and ryin Hart says, the word impossible,
mister booth is found only in the Dictionary of Fools.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Napoleon says that word is not French.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
But Reinhart he trusts in his own technology. He says,
this anti gravity I've invented. It will protect my ship
from being crushed as it travels through the black hole,
and I'm going to reach other worlds this way. So
Rehinehart leaves the room and the Palomino crew discuss all
the things they've discovered, you know, they bring up like
all the weird stuff, the robot funeral and everything, and

(01:16:08):
Anthony Perkins just keeps making excuses for Ryan Hart. He's
basically like, it's not weird. Stop trying to make him
seem weird.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Yeah, he really keeps moving the goalpost on on whether
they should trust this guy or now He's like, well,
what if he did disregard orders to return home. I
mean he had he had a higher priority here. I
mean he's doing great science.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Yeah. But later, after only Durant and McCrae are left
in the room, they talk about what's going on. Durant says,
you know, I want to stay behind now, I want
to become one with Ryan Hart. Now we're gonna we're
gonna stay here. We're going to go into the black hole.
We will journey into the mind of God. And there's
this scene. I thought it would be interesting to note
the religious themes that are emerging, which don't I don't

(01:16:51):
know if they feel all that intentional in what they
add up to. But I do kind of like the
strange merging of science and religion that's going on here.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Yeah. Yeah, And it definitely continues and intensifies certainly. Yeah,
And the film would be less interesting if it did
not have this layer. But on the other hand, yet,
does it ultimately, like make any kind of intelligible statement
or argument. I don't think it does.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
I don't know if it does, but I but it's
fun texture nonetheless, especially the ending. We'll get there in
a bit. But anyway, So there are more revelations that come.
Bob reveals to Vincent that the hooded robots with mirror
faces are not robots. They are humanoids. They are what
is left of the crew after they have been transformed

(01:17:39):
by some horrible evil process that Reinhart did to them. Basically,
he murdered them all and turned them into robot servants.
When they find out all about this, the esp comes back.
Vincent uses their psychic connection to fill Kate in. Kate
explains what's going on to Anthony Perkins. They're both hanging
out with Reinhardt, and Anthony Perkins pulls a mask off

(01:18:01):
of one of the hooded robots to see, revealing a
human zombie face.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Oh yeah, it's a great moment and also director's cameo
by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:18:11):
Oh really yeah, oh I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:14):
This causes Maximilian to do a brutal attack on Anthony Perkins,
and we get the we get a human death here.
Maximilian like guts Anthony Perkins with propeller hand to the stomach. Nasty, shocking.
It feels, I don't know, more brutal than I expected
given the movie up to this point.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, I remember being shocked by this as a kid,
even though like rewatching it, knowing it was coming and
anticipating it, like it's there's no blood and afterwards there's
no blood on the claw or it's you know, it's
self cleaning or something. I don't know, but there's something
about the way they plotted it where doctor Durant has
this this this book, this thick book of of of

(01:18:55):
Reinhart's notes to take back to Earth, and he holds
that in front of his chest and the buzzsaw hand
cuts through that, and we hear it and see it
cutting through that, and then it cuts unseen, you know,
into his torso and I don't know. It's like having
the book violence ahead of the implied physical violence like
really helps to sell it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
And you see Anthony Perkins's face while this is happened happening.
He starts like jiggling around and going like ooh, it's yeah,
it's gross. So anyway, after this, Reinhart sort of chastises Maximilian.
He's like, you shouldn't have done that murder of a
human being. But then another kind of interesting moment, but
I don't know if it connects to anything else. He

(01:19:37):
suddenly whispers to Kate, protect me from Maximilian. Oh whoa,
that's a great moment. But I didn't know what does
this mean? Are we going to learn more about him
actually fearing Maximilian? But I don't think we do. Did
that connect to anything for you?

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
Nothing in the actual film. It made me wonder about
all sorts of stuff, especially the whole ESP angle. And
you know the idea that you know, clear Maximilian is
sort of thematically presented as kind of like this, this
devil and this, and perhaps you could interpret him as
being like the the embodiment of the darker corners of

(01:20:13):
Ryan Hart psyche or something or soul. But you know,
it's not really explored beyond you know, just sort of
the visual appeal of it. But yeah, if there, if
we are in fact in a world where esp between
robots and humans is common, you know, you could use that,
you could build that up somehow. I'm just remembering. There's

(01:20:33):
also some mention about robot human esp as a means
of having long distance communication in space. It's just thrown
out there really quickly as well. But that also brings
to mind all sorts of like what a strange you know, universe.
This could be if it was just developed and they
leaned into that weirdness a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, why does Reinhart fear the robot
he created all of a sudden, I don't know. Well,
he sort of goes back on it, though, because then
she's like, if there's any justice, that black hole will
be your grave. So he commands his robots to take
her to the hospital, which seems to be where humans
are zombified and transformed into robots. So from here we

(01:21:17):
get the third act and it turns into an action
movie for the rest of the time. So Kate alerts
Vincent using esp Dan, and the good robots go off
to the rescue to save her. They battle their way
through a bunch of Century Droids. They rescue Kate and
fight Sentry Droids to make it back to the Palomino,
a lot of blaster battles along the way that were

(01:21:37):
not especially thrilling to me.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
Yeah, just blasters a go go.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
Yeah. But meanwhile, Reinhart begins launching the ship into the
black Hole, and this is some good stuff. There is
a twist here. While all the action on the Sickness
is happening, Ernest borgnine. At one point he like fakes
a leg injury. Then he tries when they're like, oh, okay,
we'll come back for you, he runs off on his own,
gets in the Palomino, launches it by himself, and tries

(01:22:04):
to escape without everybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Just a sudden, unearned heel turn right here for Borgdine's.

Speaker 3 (01:22:12):
Character, Yeah, he's like, yep, I'm going home without you.
But Reinhart shoots down the Palomino, killing Ernest borgnine. His
final act was one of treachery and cowardice.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird choice, Like maybe it's one
that at some point earlier on was more supported in
the script, you know, mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
But okay, Now only Captain Dan Pizer and Kate McCrae
and the two good Robots are left. With the Palomino destroyed.
Their only hope of escape is to steal Reinhart's Probe ship.
So there's munch of action scenes, you know, blaster battles
with Century Droids. Also, the ship at this point is
being pelted with meteoroids, and there are some nice special

(01:22:52):
effects shots here, including one I liked where the heroes
are running across a bridge in silhouette in the foreground
while a giant glowing orange ball rolls toward them from
the background. I thought that looked cool.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
M yeah, I strongly remember that one from previous viewings
of the film, very captivating.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
At one point, Reinhart is so that the ship's all
busted up, and Reinhart gets pinned by a falling piece
of metal and his robots do not help him. And
then there is a battle between Vincent and Maximilian that
was so okay, good cute, little floating R two D
two robot versus Maximilian, and it ends with no joke,

(01:23:31):
Vincent drilling Maximilian in the guts and Maximilian unleashes a
goat scream.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
It's a this is a robot battle I always liked
as a kid. I mean, watching it now, I can
see the limitations of what they were working with, but
you know, it's it's like Vincent has ranged weaponry, Maximilian
does not. Maximilian, though is heavily armored, Vincent is less.
So they end up, you know, grappling, and Vincent has

(01:24:00):
like electroid paddles that he's using to like to grat
to hold on to Vincent. But yeah, he's not suspecting
that secret drill attack from Vincent, and that's what gets him.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
So our heroes escape onto the Probe ship, but the
Probe ship is sucked into the black hole, so everybody
goes into the black hole. But there's like this long,
weird ending scene where they're all just going like boo.
It's playing all these like lines from the movie or
echoing in people's heads.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
And not even necessarily lines that have like a lot
of emotional thang to them. I don't know, like it's
just there. It just lines from the movie. There's not
necessarily any any sense of it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
But then the ending, which on one hand it's almost
a non sequitur, but on the other hand, I think
it really makes the film. The ending is like they
all sort of go to heaven and Hell. Like there's
a scene where you see an older version of Reinhart

(01:25:03):
floating in space, like his hair is grown out and
his beard has grown out and it seems to have
turned gray. And then he's like merging with Maximilian, like
you see his eyes inside Maximilian. And then there is
a scene with the Maximilian Rhinehart being standing on a
mountain in Hell with flames leaping into the sky and

(01:25:26):
like doomed figures in hoods crossing the bridge of Kose
of Doom. And then there is another sequence with a
figure flying through the air in robes through a hall
of mirrors into a blue clouded sky, and then our
heroes emerge from the other side of the black hole
and they see like a planet in the distance. It
is a bizarre ending, but I do love it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yeah, I mean, and it's mostly left open to interpretation.
I mean, granted, they're really leaning into the heaven and
hell angles here, but as far as what that like
literally means or if we're supposed to literally interpret it
at all, it's just wide open. Uh. Like I was
like just concerning the hell landscape, which is the most
impressive and just just like impressive to look at this
flaming landscape and the hooded figures. I couldn't tell the

(01:26:11):
hooded figures are meant to be the the cyborgs from
the sickness, like maybe with their their faces their their
face coverings lost, or if they're indeed like the souls
of the damned, and this is like a Dante's Inferno
type of situation. I don't know. It's just left to
the viewer to interpret it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Seems like in his in the bad afterlife that Reinhart
has earned, he will be tortured by the robots he created.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Yeah. But then for the for the blessed crew members,
what awaits them a new heavenly planet.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
Yeah, new home, kind of a planet in eclipse, like
eclipsing a star.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
Yeah yeah, habitable life, perhaps.

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):
Haitable life you can live in. Okay, Well that's all
I got to say about The black Hole.

Speaker 4 (01:26:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
I really enjoyed it. I was really drawn into the visuals,
the sweeping score, some of the performances, and of just
of course the robots, especially Maximilian. Maximilian still still got it,
still beautiful, still enthralling, Still one of my favorite robots period.
I just wish I knew what his other arms did.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
He kept making me think of that Beastie Boys song Intergalactic.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
Oh yeah, yeah. I think that's one of the things
that's appealing about him, is there aspects of it that
look like he could be a costume, But especially in
full profile, there's no way it could be a costume
because against this free floating form. So anyway, I could
go on and on beautiful robot.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
May Maximilian drill all of our guts.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
All right, we'll go ahead and close it out there,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if
you have opinions on the black Hole, from watching it
back in the day, or watching it as a kid,
rediscovering it now, viewing it in the light of Star
Wars and so forth. It's all fair game. Did you
have any of the toys? I've looked up images of
the toys. I didn't have any of these, but they
look pretty cool, you know. I guess you could. You

(01:28:03):
could bust these guys out and maybe you're you know,
your your David Lynch Noone Action figures, maybe some Dick
Tracy dolls, and have a fun time with toys that
maybe not that many kids bought. But yeah, right in,
we'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder that
we're primarily a science podcast here and the stuff to
blow your mind podcast feed, but on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns and just talk about weird movies

(01:28:25):
on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a
full list of what we've covered thus far, you can
go out over to letterboxed dot dot com. That's L
E T T E R B O x D dot com.
We have a profile there called weird House, and if
you go there you'll see a list of all the
movies and you can put different filters on them if
you want see like, you know, look at them by
decade and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:28:45):
It's it's really cool, huge thanks to our excellent audio
producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: The Black Hole