The Black Cauldron (1985)

"Oh that horned king.  That black hearted devil." -Dalben
"Munches and Crunches."-Gurgi
"We do not give.  We do bargain." -Witches

The Black Cauldron gets a bad wrap and part of this comes from that it was released in 1985 and Disney did not release a home version until 1998. *There have only been two versions released, the 1998 release and the 25th anniversary dvd in 2010. Happy 30th to the Black Cauldron this July.* This was its supposed punishment for box office failure: to be forgotten.  Ask most even moderate Disney fans and they will have never heard of The Black Cauldron.  It doesn't exist for them.  There are no songs.  No rides. No characters. No attractions and very little merchandise. One begins to wonder how truly dreadful the Black Cauldron must be to merit willful societal memory erasure? *Made me think of George Lucas buying back all the physical copies of The Star Wars Christmas Special.

The answer is: Bad but not so bad as to deserve its fate.  The Black Cauldron suffers from an extreme lack of production execution, writing, and storytelling.  What it does not lack for is ambition. Disney swung to try and make "Snow White" for a new generation and ended up missing the mark, spinning around and looking silly. We should all want them to keep trying, despite that The Black Cauldron is pretty awful.

A little historical digging produced a number of interesting and laudable point that are pro Black Cauldron. 1. This was the first Disney film to use any kind of computer assisted animation. 2. They planned and made a serious effort at attempting a holographic sequence in 1985. 3. The sound track by Elmer Bernstein was recorded in the latest Surround Sound and is beautiful. Oh and the general word used to describe the voice of the horned king (John Hurt) is sepulchral..."chilling".

On the con side: The writing is terrible.  The story makes no sense. The characters have really difficult names to pronounce like Princess Eilonwy (eye-lon-wee) -That's not a con so much as just a barrier to understanding. Oh and I really dislike Gurgi.  He's like a Jar-Jar before there was a Jar-Jar. Well..ok he's better than that but not by much.

On the uncomfortable side:  There is a un-forgettable scene wherein Fflewddur Fflam gets turned into a frog by some witches and the proceeds to get lost in one of the witches cleavage. Too far Disney!

On a scale of regular born to cauldron born, I have The Black Cauldron 1.9 out of 5 stars.