Animation Defenestration: The one that could have killed Disney

 

Title: The Black Cauldron

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Runnerup/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

As of this writing, the big development has been that I’m working on a “worst” movie feature. As a further consequence, I have several times had to make a judgment call what belongs in that feature as opposed to elsewhere. With the present review, I have a movie that’s a case and point. It’s exactly the kind of movie I meant to cover when I started this feature, from the heart of the strange doldrums that were the 1980s animation “Dark Age”. On the other hand, it’s also one of the most notorious failures in the history of the medium, and still controversial at best and heavily criticized at worst. I debated where it would go right through an actual viewing which just left me more ambivalent. Nevertheless, I’m forging ahead, under the feature that first led me to consider it. Here is The Black Cauldron, a movie based on a beloved YA fantasy series that became the biggest money loser in Disney’s history.

Our story begins with an introduction to Taran, a boy apprenticed to a magician whose main need is someone to take care of a magical pig named Hen Wen with the ability to predict the future (which mostly made sense in the books). Naturally, Taran dreams of being a warrior, and he gets his chance when the prophetic porker is captured by the Horned King, a possibly undead warlord with a face as threatening as a Halloween mask. With no particular effort, he infiltrates the Horned King’s castle and frees the pig, only to be captured himself. In the dungeons, he meets up with a bumbling minstrel, a standard-issue spunky princess, and an annoying half-sentient creature who followed him in. Together, they stage a jailbreak, freely using a magic sword that nobody can draw in the books, but discover a much greater threat: The Horned King is after an artifact called the Black Cauldron, which can resurrect the dead as invincible skeleton warriors. After losing the Cauldron themselves through every fault of their own, they must go on another daring raid to destroy it once and for all. But to do it, one of them must give up his life!

The Black Cauldron was an animated adaptation of Lloyd Alexander’s series The Chronicles of Prydain, mainly The Book of Three and the following novel of the same name, made by Walt Disney in collaboration with Silver Screen Partners II. The movie was made mainly from 1980 to 1984, following preproduction as early as 1973, with the involvement of such personalities as Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Ted Berman, the last of whom was ultimately named as director. The production budget reached an estimated $44 million, making it the most expensive animated film up to that time, far exceeding the $9.3M budget of Heavy Metal. The film’s voice cast included John Hurt (see The Plague Dogs) as the Horned King, Nigel Davenport as Fflewddur Fflam and Freddie Jones of Krull as the magician Dallben. The soundtrack was composed by Elmer Bernstein. The film fared poorly at the box office, earning an estimated $22M, potentially due in part to declining interest in fantasy films. It has remained available on home video, and is currently included in the Disney Plus library.

For my experiences, what stands out strongest in hindsight is that I read two of the Prydain books as a kid, but knew virtually nothing about the movie beyond its existence. Meanwhile, I got my first impressions of the movie reading the books of Thomas and Johnson, both of whom were friends of my extended family, and their very unfavorable view of the film in The Disney Villain. Eventually, I read the full series in college (and concluded the ones I read back one were the ones worth reading), but it was still many years before I saw the film. My immediate reaction was merely baffled. When I got back to it for this review, however, after trying to sort out what I could remember of the books, I very quickly got angry.

Moving forward, what this movie represent first and foremost is an egregious case where mediocrity is far more frustrating than “bad”. At one time or another, I’ve covered a good part of the 1970s-‘80s fantasy boom, and I would be the first to concede that there were many that are no better than this. Yet, even the most ridiculed examples (Krull and Conan the Destroyer are right up there) are far more original and entertaining than this. The most exasperating part is that this film was in production long enough that it’s very likely other animated and/ or fantasy films were greenlit just to meet the expected competition, but it still came in last and least. Then the overriding common denominator is everything is made generic, toned down and tame even factoring in significant censorship I’m well aware of. If anything, I take far more issue with what’s added or overplayed, especially the “comic relief” characters. In the novels, the likes of Fflam and Gurgi serve to lighten the quite serious tone, but here, even the outright lethal witches are played for laughs (with virtually misogynistic crudeness at that). The end result isn’t even “Disneyfied”, but a moral guardian’s selective memory of older and better Disney films that endured precisely because they were allowed to be “dark”.

Even with that rant out of the way, there are still severe problems with how the movie handles the source material. It’s bad enough that whole arcs are mangled or ignored, conspicuously the challenge of drawing the magic sword. What’s far more problematic is the consolidation of several major and minor villains into the figure of the Horned King. A lot of further controversy has centered on the character, whom Frank and Ollie considered “as ordinary as the leader of a street gang”. I can muster a better opinion, mainly in light of Hurt’s fine voice work. On the other hand, I find the skeletal face and especially the clearly mobile jaw simply distracting; it makes it clear he is not meant to be human, without making him any more threatening. But the most fundamental issue is that the single villain takes away the most fascinating aspect of the books. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the series is that most of the characters have their own angle. Those who are neutral or “dark” can still unwaveringly oppose the main villains, while those who start among the good guys can become a menace if they recognize an opportunity (a major plot point of The Black Cauldron in particular). It was a gritty, morally ambiguous world of a quite different character than the usual youth-oriented fantasy, in some lights even exceeding Tolkien, and the film all but willfully insults it.

That leaves the “one scene”, and there is truly one that pushed me over the edge. Around the middle act, Taran and his party discover the Fair Folk, which I didn’t remember being in the book or not. After reading a synopsis or so, I confirmed that they are present, in the same form most common in actual lore (and the occasional “sighting”!): Human-like entities shorter or more slender than mortals, still within “normal” human size. Of course, what appear are tiny winged pixies of the type Disney helped popularize far beyond their importance in authentic folklore. We get some sense of individual personalities as we see children and grouchy bearded elders, every one in psychedelically bright colors. Then, just when you might be thinking this could be interesting (see Wizards, and how is that the good example???), they assemble into a friendly swarm to amuse the princess. It’s truly a defining moment for the movie, turning a complex work based on ancient folklore into a cliché of other cliches. And it might have gotten this movie on my “worst” list, because that would have given me the option to quit watching and write about it anyway.

In closing, I come back to a question I was tempted to tackle earlier: Is this the “worst” Disney movie? And if not, what is? I was already considering that question when I reviewed A Bug’s Life, which made this review a continuation of the same train of thought. My verdict is that this was definitely on the “short” list, and perhaps even the worst I have personally seen. I still have to say it probably doesn’t belong in the top spot, simply because it is still reasonably well-known. By comparison, I had no trouble coming up with plenty more contenders that most people would probably say they never even heard of, even if they came out well within my and their lifetime. To investigate those leads can wait for another day. For now, the present movie will do well enough as proof that Disney can fail hard, and that on the whole, they are better for it.