The Black Hole (1979) movie review - Sneak Previews with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- This is the original review of The Black Hole by Siskel & Ebert on "Sneak Previews" in 1979. All of the segments pertaining to the movie have been included.
Dear Eric Stran.... I cannot thank you enough for uploading these classic Siskel and Ebert bits.... and in good quality! As a die hard fan who missed out on their early years, this has been an absolute treat! I thank you Sir!
4:04 "Can Disney even make a good movie anymore?" Wow, such prophetic words by Siskel way back in 1979.
I noticed that too. Man did he call it
3:49 1979: "I think at Christmas time when we go to a new Disney science fiction movie, we want to see something we haven't seen before."
2019: Let's go see the "new" Disney science edition of a 40-year-old franchise, featuring corpses of Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing.
Not cool
Not cool, but it was true when it came to Rogue One. The least they could have done with that was understand how much the CGI Moff Tarkin clashed with the real actors and just had his image on a video screen or in a hologram. Disney doesn't want people that understand movies to actually make them.
@@blazerocker1734 Disney has redeemed itself with The Mandalorian and Andor, but before that, yeah...why they just didn't simply replace Tarkin and Fisher with new actors, who knows. Anyway...
I was a little kid when I saw this, and I hated the last few minutes. "Hell? Really? Stuck inside his own robot? Come on!"
I read the ending was changed LAST minute to dithering fairly incomprehensible
Event Horizon, just 20 years earlier with no CGI and no naked Sam Neill.
I've not seen _The Black Hole_ but I've seen _Event Horizon_ and I'm sure this movie is better than that one.
"Little kids might like the last few minutes."
Ah yes, kids would certainly like the imagery of Hell and damnation, Gene.
I remember crying when old BOB died in this movie 🙁
Forty years later and Disney is back to the basic "we can't make good original films anymore" trope again.
Funny how history repeats itself. Especially good entertainment. Only time will tell.
Though, The Black Hole wasn't entirely bad. At least, I thought the whole spaceship exploration and the disappearance of it's crew was intriguing.
It was more the opposite issue. From 1979-83 Disney swung big on ambitious movies, but whiffed at the box office. Black Hole, Condorman, Tron, Dragonslayer, and Something Wicked This Way Comes didn't have built in audiences.
In the past 20 years Disney doesn't create new content. They buy the rights to things that people have liked for 40 years and make new versions: Muppets, Peanuts, Marvel, Star Wars, Oz.
@@75aces97 unfortunately they tried new things back in the day but they were not particularly well made flicks. Maybe it's cause the tech had not caught on on the imagination yet. Then again films like Star Wars and Raiders and ET and Jaws were great flicks with great special effects. All these films by Disney felt outdated from what Lucas and Spielberg were doing. I have a special place in my heart for Dragonslayer and Condorman but a lot of it was corny and looked cheap.
@@johnnyskinwalker4095 true. I liked Tron and Condorman a lot as a kid. Not sure how well they hold up now. When you look at some movies from that era, the execution was very difficult even when the studios did spend money. King Kong (1976), Jaws 3, early attempts at Narnia and Hitchhiker's Guide, and some of these Disney films had ambitions that pre 2000 filming tech weren't up for.
@@75aces97 Sometime I daydream about Marvel movies being made in the 80s and how they would have looked like with the effects of the time. Maybe in the case of Hulk they could have borrowed Rob Bottin who did the effects of The Howling for the transformation mixed with the animatronix of Harry and the Hendersons. Robocop was kind of a successful take on Deathlok. It's also a window of what Iron Man may have looked like. The space marines of Aliens were essentially buffed up versions of Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos/Shield. You replaced these aliens by Skrulls.
The problem, then as now, was not the level of special effects but the terrible scripts. Dragonslayer had great effects and an intelligent script; Condorman and The Black Hole had awful scripts
John Barry score is good. I got big laugh on siskel comment about a blue donut and bathtub drain.
John Barry finds ways to add wonder to things that desperately needed it. Not only The Black Hole, but another Star Wars cash grab in the James Bond franchise "Moonraker". But then, John Barry had been doing great James Bond soundtracks since 1963. And lets also not forget his amazing score for Dances With Wolves. Barry is definitely an underrated movie composer that deserves so much more.
I didn't know he did Dances With Wolves. Interesting.
Really like John Barry's score, if some of if a bit samey. Never seem the film, but do enjoy John Barry's score for Out of Africa.
And Raise The Titanic @@k1productions87
40 years later Disney still doesnt know how to respond to Star Wars.
Yep, score is awesome. Dying for a remake.
The score is crap.
I'd rather see a prequil of the Cygnus.
It's ironic that The Black Hole is actually a much better film than the Disney Star Wars sequels.
40 years later and Disney still can't produce decent sci-fi films.
They produced Tron, a film with an innovative visual imagination just a few years later. It was a high point of Disney CEO Ron Miller's career.
This one wigged me out as a kid. That end where the bad guy is inside the robot, what the hell was that
The only good parts are the last 20 minutes and the score by John Barry. The rest of it is the cure for insomnia.
Black Hole felt like an early 60s Disney movie ripping off Star Wars with a horrible music score
I remember seeing a mockup of the VINCENT robot at a shopping center display in Kansas City when I was 7. At the time I was thrilled to see another science fiction movie after Star Wars. I was drawing battles between the Palomino crew and legions of robots for many months afterwards. :-) The scene where the true identity of the drone workers was revealed really freaked me out, as did the ending!
Siskel and Ebert were a bit too harsh, I thought Maximillian Schell was superb as Dr. Reinhardt and the music score was quite good.
I saw the same display!!!!! As a child, I was in awe of it.
I remember how shocking it was when Disney came out with a PG-rated film. They were trying to keep up with the times, 13 years after Walt died.
And IIRC, the gravitational pull from a black hole is the same as it was from the original collapsed star; from 100 M miles away, it feels just the same.
Important as being the first Disney film with the avoided PG rating. "Black Hole" is recycled "Forbidden Planet"...
Yeah, it’s pretty bad, but I saw it when I was 14 years old, so I’ve always thought of it as a guilty pleasure. It does have a terrific score by the late John Barry.
That's how I recall it too.
The black hole here reminds me of the blood swirling down the drain in another Anthony Perkins movie...
Yeah, still better than Disney Star Wars films
John Barry did the James Bond score.
Boring
There's much I appreciate about The Black Hole, the Cygnus is gorgeous, the bridge set is very neat and the basic story is surprisingly dark for a Disney film, the score is very good. Of the actors, only Schell and Perkins were really interesting. The rest of the cast felt so dated by 1979, the film feels more like a late 50s or mid 60s style sci fi film. Still love that it was made and can't believe how God awful Disney has become. They also made Tron and Something Wicked This Way Comes in the 80s. Disney has been utterly out of new ideas for a couple decades now. All they make are reboots, sequels and really bad 're-imaginings' of old properties. Imagine modern Disney without CGI, it seems to be the only way they make any films anymore.
I'd rather watch any 50s science fiction film over The Black Hole. It even bored me as a child.
Wow, I never agree more with Siskel and Ebert on The Black Hole. The only good things about The Black Hole were the John Barry music score and the opening credits. The Black Hole went downhill big time after the opening credits, the robot characters of V.I.N.CENT and Old B.O.B were terrible, and V.I.N.CENT along with Old B.O.B were both just as awful as the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi. I never liked the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi and I always remember that 1983's Return of the Jedi was the first decline of the Star Wars Franchise due to the absence of Gary Kurtz as a producer and the bored performances from Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher.
They decry this is a crummy version of Star Wars, and then complain that didn't have unknown actors like Star Wars but instead had actual Stars in the cast!
It's not that they used recognizable stars, but the actors were simply miscast for their roles. Maximillian Schell was fine as the antagonist captain of the big ship.
No as bad as the recent SW franchise...at least there was originality, the Cygnus is breathtaking, the score haunting...Maximilian Schell is great as Dr Reinhardt. I rented it heavily on VHS as a teen in the early 80s...
Hey sister you forgot how good petes dragon was that came out two years earlier.
Meant siskel
My parents didn't care for this either.
This is boring? But every time Scorsese came out with another boring long drawn out mafia movie they were crabbing their jeans for it. Admittedly, Black Hole was made for an audience that didn't exist in the 70s but I'll watch it over and over before I watch ten minutes of a Scorsese snooze fest "cinema".
With all its flaws, The Black Hole is still one of my most favoritest movies ever.
I have to admit, though, Gene's blue donut crack had me laughing.
I liked it. It was counter-culture to the Star Wars movies. It was dark and foreboding. It actually was depicted pretty well. A haunted house of a movie with intelligence reigning throughout. There were many things I liked about it.
Funny there is a part of this movie where you could easily tell they did use an actual sink or bathtub drain for the black hole. I saw this on opening night(Dec 21, 1979?) I remember calling the movie theater's hotline and the recording would say the movie times along with the rating and runtime I was shocked when they said this was only 93 minutes! And two weeks before this came out I was super excited about Star Trek The Motion Picture(Dec 7, 1979), which ran far too long. I'll be honest at least The Black Hole had a pretty good start it just fell apart from the middle on to the disastrous ending. Funny, I even remember the exact end of the 70's. On New Year's Eve I walked about a half mile expecting Woolco to be open(they sometimes stayed open during holidays you never knew for sure). It was about 10:30 at night Dec 31, 1979 I walked and the closer I got to Woolco I could eventually see no cars in the parking lot and the store lights were out. That was goodbye to the 1970's!
Lol so interesting to hear your anecdotes and that you actually had to CALL a hotline to hear the ratings and runtime...and I am not Gen Z or whatever, I am a late Gen Xer, born in 1978. But I started checking movies out online routinely about the time I was 20 or 21. Things change so fast these days. Thank you for your reminiscences, they are of a time not that long ago but still vanished.
@@squamish4244 that's great you were born early enough to remember that every weekend there was a chance to see a very good movie. Those hotlines were high tech back then, we could get the start times in the paper, but not the run times. I'd call the hotline just because it was new, plus the added bonus of hearing the young teenager's(who was picked by the manager to make the recording) excitement in their voice as the announced the movie, synopsis, start/run time. During baseball season I memorized the hotline of the Kansas City Star sports hotline. I would call to hear the recap of the Royals baseball game, even if I watched it on TV lol. 234-4350. We had two phones, one had push buttons, the other was rotary, you had to dial the number, which obv. was much slower. Back then high tech was pushbutton phones, Cable TV, Cassettes, Arcade games, Small Am/Fm radios, Atari 2600(cartridges), one high tech gadget back in 1981 was a GE AM/FM clock radio with pushbutton controls, green LCD display, 2 alarms(the ad called it The Great Awakening). That sucker was expensive, it cost $79. I got it for Xmas in 1981, it was a little bulky but it went around the world with me until it finally broke in 1994. Last night I watched an old interview of Carl Sagan in 1996, it was right before he died he warned of the incredible danger that such leaps of technology could wreck our future. It's incredible how right he was.
@@erichaynes7502 Idk, Rotten Tomatoes and other online reviews have helped me avoid some real stinkers of movies lol. I don't think I've had to sit through an actual bad movie since The Postman in like 1996. God that was an awful three hours.
I realized during the movie at the end that Maximilian Schell was stuck inside maximilian's shell in hell. So Maximilian Schell in maximilian's Shell in hell poetic ending so to speak....
Disney was in a dark period here and had older filmmakers try to imitate Star Wars. I don't think they started releasing decent movies again until 1981's "Dragonslayer" and especially "Tron" (1982).
Nothing that hadn’t been seen before?!? When did you ever see anything like the Cygnus before this film?
Disney was so salty about Star Wars they had to buy Lucas films to satisfy their shame.
Funny how back then Disney was behind the times in outer space/post-Star Wars spectacle. Now they OWN Star Wars! This was the end of Disney's worst decade, consisting of nothing but inferior live-action slapstick and adventure movies.
The 1970's was definetly Disney's worst decade. I think the rise of the blockbusters influenced Disney to make a wide variety of movies and quit making so many slapstick comedies. As for the movie, I didn't like it but I didn't hate it like they did. It has some interesting ideas but I found it goofy.
It is pretty dark and bizzarre but I love this film. It still scary af
"can Disney make a good picture anymore?"
Oh. My. Goodness! 1979 is when Disney was still in its prime! That question should have been impossible back then! My apologies if this comment has been said before as I don't feel like going through all the comments.
I remember getting The Black Hole collector cards from Wonder Bread.
I must disagree here. While this movie obviously isn't the blockbuster hit that Star Wars was it's unfair to be comparing it and every other sci-fi movie of the day to Star Wars. Regardless of what some say, The Black Hole is not a ripoff of Star Wars. One thing that these two gentlemen completely missed is the fact the film has a dark tone and feel to it. This may be off-putting to some but I find it to be a unique quality that most sci-fi at this time didn't have. Space can be a dark, mysterious and scary place and I'd say they did a great job at representing that i this film. All the robots had a unique design to them, none of them copies of anybody else's design. The Black Hole is a quirky film for sure. It does have moments of fun scattered throughout the dark moments. And it was never a dull moment for me.
Perkins, Mimieux, Borgnine. Had last been seen in Psycho, The Time Machine, The Wild Bunch. As Ebert says, what was the point ?
$20 million wow!
Al Ramone $400M in today’s budget
I loved it! I mean I was like 5 when it come out, but it's a Disney classic I think.
"And now Gene starts with the black hole..."
3:54 This is the basic answer to making blockbusters.
After watching the movie on Disney+ last night, I can kind of agree on how not engaging most of the film was. But there were some bits that I did like, such as when V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (Roddy McDowall) beat captain star in the laser shooting game while remarking, but he doesn’t like sore losers as S.T.A.R. is blowing up from overheated circuits.
Towards the end, the film actually was engaging. But the ending left me quite confused I mean, was it supposed to be a metaphor of heaven and hell? Especially when Maximilian Schell got inside his big red robot? I don’t know.
So yeah, I thought “The Black Hole” did have very cool visuals, but the story and writing left much to be desired.
I saw this when it was released years ago. Then, as now, I was left wondering whhhaaaaattt?
this very review is why I never listen to film critics to this day MANY years later.
3:52 they get their wish with Tron literally 3 years later
He is wrong about the beginning. The Black Hole has a good first act, set up, just falls apart very quickly. Messed up screenplay.
sometimes Gene forgets how to let himself enjoy things, he gets too hung up on certain things and refuses to let go. He made no mention at all of VINCENT's personality, only that he looked like R2. Same goes for Maximilian... which they didn't even mention by name, only "looks like Darth Vader"... which he really didn't. They got so focused on visual association that I wonder if they even listened to the dialog at all.
Siskel & Ebert: I give a big fat NO to your lame opinion.
The Black Hole was a Disney film I never saw before, but I was impressed by how it tried to almost be like Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Definetly a great cast (along with an evil red robot, named Maximillian) in it, but the quality and story of the movie, certainly was like how Gene described it- “a long, long wait” to ever get into The Black Hole, when we should’ve got in there, in the middle of the film, just before reaching the end.
I loved the black hole ..and still do , its a comfort movie for me...the music is epic to
I saw this movie when it first came out in 1979, I liked it! But I was only 15, so what did I know…right?
If you thought this movie left something to be desired. I saw this in late Dec, 1979..exactly 2 weeks after seeing the premiere of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Ouch.
Disney proved at the time that it was not ready to make modern science fiction movies. The music dragged, and the entire movie did too.
I saw the movie but I don't remember any of it. But what is funny about the Black Hole is that what I remember what there was so many toys and products about the movies almost as big as Star Wars. It was everywhere. So maybe the movie sucked but they understood this important part about Star Wars. lol
You know, they’re not wrong. Most of the movie isn’t very good. Acting is terrible for the most part and Vincent and Bob look ridiculous. But, I love the concept, look of the big ship and the hellish ending.
I saw it as a kid and I enjoyed it. It was kind of like Star Wars but a bit more dark and scary.
they wouldn't bash Disney i this day and age. Their careers would be over the next morning.
Actually if they were alive, today, they wouldn’t have their careers over, whether critique on a Walt Disney movie or not.
The Black Hole is basically the Cloud City segment in The Empire Strikes Back, but stretched to an hour and forty minutes with endless talking, no interesting characters, no real tension, very unexciting action, and a lousy screenplay.
Ok, The Black Hole is trash. But I still love it.
the Black Hole is not great,... but I wouldn't call it trash. There is a lot to love in this movie.... if you give yourself permission to love it.
I would be interested to see a VFX update though. Not a full remake with new cast and such, but just replace the effects shots.
The ending of the movie was far too ambitious than the filmmakers could deliver. With a better director and script it could have been something.
The whole ESP thing was dumb too. It was the movies version of the Force. The fact that a human and robot can communicate via ESP is just dumb.
Siskel went all carl Sagan during his review
Black Hole, great movie. For a Disney movie, it feels like a sci-fi horror from the’50s, like a big budget B Movie. Compared to Star Wars, Black Hole feels a little bit cerebral.
it's not the acting it's the zombie crew and just dark theme of it all. Nope not a kids movie. But i loved it. scary but loved it.
I think Disney was going after more of a Forbidden Planet vibe than it was Star Wars. I think it’s a decent film, but it has it’s fair share of flaws.
Not the best movie in the world, but something to watch on a late night when there's nothing else to do.
The ship doesn't look as dark on Disney +
Love the score!
The lesson from the Black Hole. If you can't beat the competition, buy it and then run it into the ground. But as a kid, I loved this movie from the score and its opening graphics all the way through to its theme park ride into the black hole...which apparently is the galactic gateway into... religion. I always thought of it as a metaphor for life and Space Mountain. You keep your limbs and head seated in the cart and you will be fine but if you don't...it's HELL for you.
The criticism is about the look on the black hole and how long takes to go through it? Then they miss the whole point of Sci-Fi movies. Science fiction movies are not about weird things happening. I'm not about the inside of a black hole, or inside of a star, or even creepy ugly aliens. Science fiction is about story and most sci-fi is a morality play. I find Disney's Black Hole to be a very good science fiction story. The two problems I have with it is that in many shots you can see the wires they used for the weightless scenes and the movie could not decide whether it is an R-rated sci-fi horror film or a child's fun adventure. I personally would have rated the black hole rated R due to all the grotesque violence. But that's just me.
I honestly feel that neither Siskel nor Ebert ever understood Science Fiction at all. They're so hung up on Star Wars for everything, they confuse Sci-fi with Fantasy, and that is what they really want. Can anyone name a science fiction film they really enjoyed, except maybe Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan? And that film was basically a simple revenge plot with a pseudoscience planet-builder that was almost fantasy in itself (and they barely discuss it in the film). Yeah, a Trekkie who doesn't drool over Wrath of Khan, what a concept LOL
I personally enjoyed The Black Hole, both when I was a kid and now as an adult. Are some things cheesy? Of course, but you don't focus on that. Its like still being able to enjoy the original series of Star Trek, or oldschool Battlestar Galactica (which they would also compare with Star Wars). Star Wars set the bar to almost impossible heights for the time,... but I feel if Star Wars was a straight up science fiction and not a Fantasy set in space, Gene and Roger may have had different opinions about it.
Yeah, I like the old school Star Trek series better than new ones.
@@k1productions87 They love 2001, Close Encounters, and Dark City. Roger himself is a science fiction fan and even made his own fanzine in high school.
@@k1productions87 Ebert had Blade Runner the Final Cut, Solaris, Contact, A.I., Metropolis in his great movies collection. Does Alien count?
@@malafakka8530 Those were all more than half a decade later, when we also got some decent Star Trek films.
They didn't exactly give a glowing review of Alien, and they spoke about it more in context of horror than Sci-fi, but they didn't appear too impressed.
Tron was a master piece
I really enjoyed this film as a boy
Thank god i was 1 when this movie game out
Nobody, but nobody, calls Ernest Borgnine a 'mulp' and gets away with it
these two are crazy. this was a classic and masterpiece.
Both movies are space-based, hence The Black Hole is a Star Wars clone. That's such a lazy take...
wrong
I saw it as a kid and didn’t really think too much of it at the time. I just watched it on TV and thought it was God-awful. The worst acting I’ve ever seen.
So last night I see these two dopes just fawn over Clash of the Titans and praise the special effects. Then I see this? What a bunch of baloney. I like Clash ok. It's crappy fun. But the Black Hole is a MUCH BETTER film. Much better special effects. To praise the special effects (really hokey) of Clash and then badmouth Black Hole just goes to prove that these two dopes have no consistency at all in their reviews.
Yeah, they really blew it with this one but their other reviews were usually pretty accurate.
Overall, I'd say that S&E were the best & most conscientious movie critics of their era. In the
modern era, Grace Randolph (Beyond The Trailer) is carrying that torch.
Gene said "flu" instead of "few"?
I have a soft spot for this film
It’s cheesy
Great Cast
The Black Hole is one of my favorite Disney films sitting alongside the animated Beauty and the Beast, Lilo & Stitch, the animated Robin Hood, and Condorman.
That was an unfair dig at Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine!
😊great movie
One of the few times that I disagreed with these two. 😊
Interesting NO mention of the intriguing story about the ship's captain, what he did with the crew, and his plans...which was kind of the whole point of the film. Jesus...
It’s a surprise, but I don’t think it’s intriguing enough to make up for the rest of the plot.
They also make no mention of VINCENT's personality, only that he supposedly looks like R2 (which he really doesn't). They don't even name Maximilian at all, only that he supposedly looks like Darth Vader.... which he DOESN'T. They are both so wrapped up in comparing everything to Star Wars that I believe they didn't even hear the dialog, I think they spent the entire movie talking among themselves about how it "ripped of Star Wars with this, that, and the other thing" instead of ... y'know... WATCHING the damned movie
Corniest-looking robot of all time.
👍 from me
Such a creepy movie 🎥 I was a scared 8 year old when it came our
Interstellar much
The dullest reviewers. Never cared for these guys.
Well, if George Lucas can turn to Japanese theatre for HIS opus; Disney can turn to Shakespeare. You can't condemn the film for being unoriginal, guys. That's not exactly something Disney is known for.
But the movie bored me to tears. Admittedly, they got Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens to voice the obligatory cute robots, so it was fun in spots, and that's still Yvette Mimieux there. I think I appreciate it now more than I did then, but it's still a boring piece of work with much outdated special effects. And, you cast your space adventure film with Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Perkins?
And who could have known that Disney would one day own Lucasfilm and make REAL Star Wars films. Real being a technical term since there IS no Star Wars without Lucas, and I can't STAND the sequel films.