The Black Cauldron

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Amberly

Disney, what were you doing? This came out the year I was born and apparently almost bankrupt the company. It's not hard to see why. I believe this is the first PG rated animation from Disney and it had to be cut to get even that. There's a bit of animated blood which is unusual for Disney. It's a very dark and creepy film that is rather awkwardly and perhaps inappropriately punctuated by horrendous cartoony comedy relief. As such the tone of this one is a bit of a mess. It's just very hard to know what to make of this film.

Some good things:
•John Hurt is evil as the Horned King. Scary evil. Awesome.
•Cinemascope! Yes! Bring it back! First time since Sleeping Beauty! But for god's sake frame your shots appropriately if you're going for the widescreen approach.
•The Annoying dog/gollum comedy relief thing dies. Yep, they kill him off. Brutal Disney. Brutal.

Some not so good things:
•Elmer Bernstein I love your score, but your instrumentation is just bizarre. I don't think anyone has taken Theremins seriously since the 50's sci-fi b-movies made them such a cliche.
•Story structure/character/plot. These elements must have been in the original novel or you probably wouldn't have spent 15 years to make a film from it. Perhaps they cut that out too. It's a rather short runtime at 77 mins. Actually maybe that's a good thing.
•The Annoying dog/gollum comedy relief thing comes back to life at the end. Thus the film looses any credibility it had earned killing him off in the first place.

I'm all for Disney making more "boys adventure" animations instead of the broadway musical princess stories. I happen to love Atlantis: The Lost Empire and quite a few bits of Treasure Planet too. I'm also all for going dark and spooky with their tone and adding a sense of genuine danger. Just as long as it's consistent.

This is a fascinating film when seen in the context of the rest of the disney cannon, and knowing the context in which it was made and the transition that lead to the so called "Golden Age" of disney I grew up watching. But if you aren't as into animation history as me, I would probably avoid this one, or treat is as a strange curiosity.