- Offhand, I can name three science fiction movies about black holes: Interstellar, Event Horizon, and this film, Disney's The Black Hole. Two out of three of these films, including this one, depict the inside of a black hole as some literal manifestation of the Christian concept of hell. That's weird, right? Sure, any halfway decent astrophysicist would admit that physical conditions are expected to get pretty rough somewhere inside the event horizon (if not before), but I don't see why that translates directly into demons and people being tortured. I'll freely admit that a gateway to hell is more interesting than a five-dimensional bookshelf or whatever Interstellar was doing, but I feel like there must be an as-yet-unused third possibility that would make more sense than hell or bookshelves.
- Much to my surprise, The Black Hole starts off as the strongest of the three listed films with a bombastic John Barry score that introduces the spacefaring USS Palomino and its crew (Robert Forster, Anthony Perkins, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine). Guided by the quote-deploying robot VINCENT (voiced by Roddy McDowall), the Palomino stumbles upon a long-lost Earth ship in the proximity of a giant black hole. After some difficult docking, they discover that the ship is helmed by the infamous Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and a crew of automatons. Whereas VINCENT is a pleasant bumbler clearly modeled on C-3P0 and R2-D2, Dr. Reinhardt's red-plated robot Maximilian is the type you wouldn't count on to obey Asimov's laws.
- As is the case for many science fiction films from the 70's (I'm looking at you, Silent Running and The Omega Man!), The Black Hole doesn't even attempt a consistent tone. In one scene, VINCENT and the explicitly Texan robot Old BOB (voiced by Slim Pickens) engage in a silly recreational shooting contest with a robot who constantly attempts trick shots. In later scenes, Maximilian horrifically murders a crew member and engulfs Dr. Reinhardt in some eternal torture embrace. Weightlessness in the Palomino is depicted quite faithfully alongside some laughable robot-human E.S.P. The film's set designs, for both the ships and the black hole itself, are fairly impressive for their time. The rest of the film is a goofy attempt at cashing in on the popularity of Star Wars that ends up being slightly more fun than Interstellar and slightly less horrifying than Event Horizon.
