Released: July 1985
Directors: Ted Berman, Richard Rich
Rated PG
Run Time: 90 Minutes
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Genre: Animation/Fantasy
Cast:
Grant Bardsley: Taran
Susan Sheridan: Eilonwy
Freddie Jones: Dallben
Nigel Hawthorne: Fflewddur Fflam
John Byner: Gurgi/Doli
John Hurt: The Horned King
Most of Disney’s animated films from the 1930s all the up until today have been mostly successful with amazing stories, animation and fantastic music. Disney essentially had a “monopoly” on the animation aspect of film making. Believe it or not, there was a period in which some of Disney’s movies were not particularly successful. This also includes some of their live-action films. From 1979 until 1989, Disney suffered a number of setbacks with some of their movies. The Fox and the Hound was met with a simple…meh from both critics and audiences, Oliver and Company was panned by many critics despite a strong box-office showing. Some of their live-action films including Dragonslayer were not well-received, but gained a following on home video. A good number of these films were fairly dark in tone. There was one animated film that was very dark and damn near bankrupted Disney’s animation studio: The Black Cauldron.
Based on The Prydain Chronicles by author Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron follows young Taran as he dreams of becoming a great hero and warrior. One day, while attending to his duties as a pig-keeper, the sow Hen Wen begins acting strangely. Taking the pig to Dallben, who manages to get Hen Wen to show them her visions of a mysterious black cauldron and the evil Horned King who seeks the cauldron to destroy the world. Afraid for the pig’s safety, Dallben sends Taran and the pig to a cottage at the edge of a forbidden forest. After meeting some interesting characters along the way, Taran inevitably runs afoul of the demonic Horned King. The story is actually rather interesting that is centered around a cauldron that is essentially the source of evil in the land of Prydain. Sure, it’s pretty the standard Hero’s Journey that you see in so many adventure films, but this film has a far more gothic element to it that makes it unique.
The tone of The Black Cauldron is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. It’s great because it doesn’t really pull punches when it comes to the visuals. This is a visually stunning film. There’s a lot of fantastic animation involved here. The character designs are pretty stellar across the board, including the Horned King himself. On the other hand, a lot of the visuals in this film can be very frightening to younger children, hence the PG rating. The skeletons and the Gothic overtones of the film can be very disturbing. The Horned King himself is a very terrifying character in his own right. He desires the cauldron to summon an army of the dead so he can rule the world. That’s not exactly the kind of film you really want to be showing your kids at an early age. The imagery is haunting. This would be great to show at Halloween, though.
Let’s talk about the characters. Like I said before, all the characters have their own unique designs and personalities. Taran as a character, though, is rather bland and absent-minded. As a result, his character ends up in more trouble than he needs to be in if he would just pay attention instead of day-dreaming. Then again, I guess that’s kind of the point. Gurgi is this little furry man-beast that shows up and steals an apple from Taran. If there was a character that was almost annoying as Jar Jar Binks, Gurgi would be it. He’s a thief and a coward. He also has this really irritating voice that just won’t go away. The princess Eilonwy shows up out of nowhere and inadvertently saves Taran’s neck. She’s not exactly a damsel in distress, though, so she’s got that going for her. On the villain-side, we have these three witches who were apparently the original owners of the black cauldron, but they’ve been relegated to turning people into toads and eating them. The Horned King is one of the most visually freaky villains that Disney has ever created. That being said, he’s not exactly the most competent villain in Disney’s library. Like many Disney villains, he surrounds himself with incompetent fools. The characters are uniquely designed, but they’re not particularly well-written.
While the characters themselves may not be the best written, the performances by the voice actors is nothing short of fantastic. The real standouts in the film are Freddie Jones as Dallben, who is Taran’s mentor and the late John Hurt as the Horned King. John Hurt makes the character positively frightening, as delivers a very menacing voice to the goings-on. Freddie Jones does pretty well as Dallben. Everyone else is pretty standard fare, though.
It’s not hard to see why this movie wasn’t a hit at the box office. It’s a little too scary for the audience it was aiming for, namely little kids. It was not received well by critics or fans. The author of the Prydain Chronicles himself said the film doesn’t bare any resemblance to his books whatsoever, which is a very damning accusation. The film cost a whopping 44 million dollars to make, which made it the most expensive movie at that particular time and it nearly bankrupted Disney’s animation studio. It was so poorly received that it didn’t even receive a home video release for about a decade. That’s how embarrassed Disney was with The Black Cauldron. Is it really that bad of a movie, though? I don’t think so. It surely has its problems as I mentioned above, but it still some really good things going for it. The animation and artwork is simply stunning, and the music by Elmer Bernstein was phenomenal. I can’t say that I would give the film my full-blown recommendation, but it’s a really interesting look at one of Disney’s darker pictures. It is surprisingly entertaining. It’s worth renting, that much I will say.
Final Score: 7/10.