The Black Hole: A Great 1960/61 Cast -- In 1979

"The Black Hole" (1979) was from Disney in those "dark and unguided years" between Uncle Walt dying in 1966 and Top Hollywood Moneymen (led by Michael Eisner) taking over in 1986.

The premise was pretty damn good. Four space explorers stumble onto a "Gothic spaceship at the edge of the black hole". There was an element -- yes -- of Psycho or any OTHER "old dark house movie" in how creepy and Gothic that floating spaceship looked. Given that this was still a Disney production, it couldn't go as far as "Alien" of the same year(not at ALL), but it was still pretty dark and some people got killed in it. And the idea of that "Bates Mansion in the sky" floating off its orbit and INTO the Black Hole(where who knows what awaited the humans) was...a pretty spectacular idea for a climax.

But alas, neither the script nor the budget nor the production value was there -- certainly not against Star Wars of 1977.

But my fascination here extends to the cast, which included:

Anthony Perkins (Psycho, 1960)
Yvette Mimeux (The Time Machine, 1960)
Maximillian Schell (Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961 Schell won the Best Actor Oscar for this)
Ernest Borgnine (Marty, 1955)

yes, The Black Hole had "the best star cast of 1960" if you averaged them out.

Plus: Robert Forster: young and pretty much the "contemporary male lead" of the movie.

But still, seeing Perkins, Mimieux, Schell and Borgine in the leads (a) gave The Black Hole a "weird retro vibe" and (b) demonstrated how QUICKLY a movie actor can lose their "contemporary value." Perkins -- 28 when he made Psycho, was only 47 when he made The Black Hole..and already drifting away. Thank God Psycho II came along.

Now, Schell was the arch villain of the piece...a Captain Nemo for the disco era. I can't remember if he was a good scientist gone mad or a bad scientist, period...but villain he was, and he, too seemed "past his star power date."

And yet: what a great cast of proven, known actors with movie charisma -- two Best Actor Oscar winners(Borgine and Schell) among them.

SPOILER: Perkins' quite innocent science officer gets killed by one of Schell's robots -- stabbed and slashed open by a bad robot's cuisinart arm . It was all bloodless(Disney) but rather fitting to see Perkins "die by the blade."

NOTEABLE: A comic was sold of The Black Hole, and while the other actors were drawn like they really looked -- Perkins character was replaced with a bald guy with white hair around the ears. Given that Perkins would later refuse to allow his image to be used in a comic version of Psycho (the faces of Leigh, Balsam, Gavin and Miles were intact)..I guess ol' Tony just didn't like to be represented in comics.

REGRETTABLE: When our heroes(less Perkins and one other star) finally drift into that Black Hole a finale that COULD have matched the "Stargate" trip in 2001 was...quite underwhelming and underproduced.

People say "remake the bad ones with great ideas" so, go ahead -- remake The Black Hole with better effects. You'll never get Tony Perkins or Max Schell duplicated, though.