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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
The Black Cauldron (1985)

The Black Cauldron (1985)

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Released 11-Jun-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Animation Game-Quest For The Black Cauldron
Short Film-Trick or Treat (7:55)
Gallery-7
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 1985
Running Time 76:47
RSDL / Flipper Dual Layered Cast & Crew
Start Up Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Ted Berman
Richard Rich
Studio
Distributor

Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.
Starring John Hurt
Grant Bardsley
Susan Sheridan
Freddie Jones
Nigel Hawthorne
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $29.95 Music Elmer Bernstein


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Norwegian Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Danish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 2.30:1
16x9 Enhancement
Not 16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 2.20:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
English for the Hearing Impaired
Norwegian
Danish
Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    In the dark ages of the Walt Disney Company, nothing seemed to go well at all. The dark ages were of course the 1980s, before the release of a little film about a mermaid wanting to be a person. Once that film was released, and my semi-frequent visits to Walt Disney World started, everything was once again right with the empire built on a mouse. Why things went awry with the company is really not that hard to explain. They first of all lost Uncle Walt, and never underestimate how much his hand was involved in every aspect of the company's operations. The 1970s also saw the departure of many of the wizened old hands that had guided the animated feature from its beginnings with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, not unnaturally so considering some of those old hands had been with the company for forty-odd years. In their place came a whole bunch of new guys who simply did not understand the Walt Disney way. The result was of course directional instability and that is no more reflected than in the quality of the animated features during the 1980s. The instability showed in a lack of commitment to the one thing that always has to be paramount in any film - the story. If you don't get the story right, no amount of dollars is going to fix the problem. Thus what we have here is the quintessential piece of rubbish churned out by the company during the 1980s.

    Now understand that the film is not entirely crap, for there are some indications here of coming to grips with a changing company and a changing film world. There are indications here of a new breed of animator flexing their talent - just not enough of them. But the predominant problem is that the story was never right and the film suffered enormously because of it. The Black Cauldron was based upon the Chronicles Of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, a collection of books I might add that is unknown to me. Despite the large source material available from those books, and the combined skills of nine screenwriters, the screenplay simply never got going and the overall result is a somewhat disjointed, unfocused film with no great redeeming features. Despite the problems with the screenplay, there are signs that different directions were being looked at. This is the first animated feature from Disney that did not feature the stock-in-trade of catchy songs. You will not find a catchy song anywhere in this baby. The villains also take a slightly darker turn, another change of pace for Disney - and you will of course note the un-Disneylike PG rating, garnered because of the dark nature of The Horned King and his henchmen. Unfortunately, the new directions did not extend to no cute animals - and this baby is blessed with one of the most annoying cute critters to ever appear in a Disney film: the dreaded Gurgi (no, not the dreaded lurgy but the dreaded Gurgi). This character is so annoying that the urge to throw something at the screen is very difficult to overcome...

    The woeful story sees us in the company of Taran (Grant Bardsley), a pig boy with dreams of being a great warrior, a pig boy who is in charge of the care of one unusual pig called Hen Wen. For Hen Wen is no normal pig - she has the ability to see the future. Yes, okay I know this is not sounding good, but hang in there - it might get better. It seems that Hen Wen is the property of a sage by the name of Dallben (Freddie Jones). One particular piece of information that the said pig is in possession of is the location of a mythical pot of all evil called The Black Cauldron. Naturally, the location of the said cauldron would be very worthwhile knowledge for someone like, oh say, The Horned King (John Hurt) to be in possession of. World domination, the power to control the evil lurking within the cauldron, is of course the reward for gaining its use. Naturally enough it is important that The Horned King does not find out that cute little piggy-wiggy happens to have access to this information. But he does and so Taran is sent off into the Forbidding Forest to protect said piggy-wiggy from harm. He fails miserably of course and ends up being captured by The Horned King, along with the increasingly looking-like-being-roasted porker Hen Wen. However, Taran has by now come across the extremely grating Gurgi, who tends to blight things a bit from here on in. Tossed into the dungeons, Taran must find a way to escape and save the porker from unmentionable barbaric acts of torture. Cue Princess Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan) who leads Taran out of the dungeons, along the way also saving Fflewddur (Nigel Hawthorne), a lutist of no great stature. Thereupon the chase is on to save Hen Wen and/or find The Black Cauldron and destroy it before The Horned King can gain its powers and raise an army of the living dead.

    Of more importance is whether there is any blasted way that they can kill Gurgi.

    Sorry, I lied, it did not get any better.

    It really is one of the most disjointed, unflowing and at times ridiculous stories to ever grace a Disney film. There are plot holes the size of a politician's intelligence here, character development is woeful, character usage is even worse and the message is so rammed down your throat that you will choke on it. It is grating stuff of the highest order. On the positive side, the animation is not that bad - as long as you can dispel all thoughts of what was to follow later in the decade. The main fault here is perhaps the diversity of animation style, which does detract a little from the film being seen as a whole as opposed to a sequence of tacked together glimpses of episodes. The cutesy look that adorns any scene involving the dreaded Gurgi and increasingly annoying Princess Eilonwy is the visual equivalent of saccharine overdose.

    Funnily enough, of all the Disney animated features this is the only one that I have not previously seen in some form. Its impression on me is not great and I found myself rather bored for the entire time. Whilst it does serve as an interesting bridge from the genuine classics of Disney's past to the new classics of the 1990's, it is perhaps a film best viewed by aficionados of the genre or the company. Others might have difficulty classifying where this falls - slightly too scary for kids and slightly too bland for adults.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    In some respects it is quite fitting that one of the poorest offerings in Disney animation is blessed with one of the blandest presentations yet seen.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.30:1 and it is not 16x9 enhanced. The latter problem is potentially the cause of the most serious problem afflicting the transfer, of which more anon. The theatrical ratio of the film was 2.20:1, so the DVD transfer is close but not quite there in terms of accuracy.

    Given that some of the animation is deliberately soft in feel, the transfer is reasonably sharp throughout, and the detail is pretty good. Since this is animation not quite of the standard we would expect nowadays, this is about as good as we could expect for a film that even Disney has a hard time admitting as one of their own. Naturally shadow detail reflects the fact that this is animation and really is nothing of an issue. There did not seem to be any particular problem with grain in the transfer and overall clarity was quite decent.

    The colours come up quite well too, but this really is not a a bright vibrant transfer at all. Much of this is simply a reflection of the way the film was made, for softer, pastelly colours are often to the fore, especially away from the villain's castle. Even in the castle, there is something not quite natural about the colours on offer. Blacks certainly do not have great depth to them and the overall feel here is again always a little soft. There are no problems with oversaturation or colour bleed at all.

    The Region 1 release apparently suffers a little from compression pixelisation, but this does not seem to be a problem in this Region 4 release. The main problem with this release is the copious amounts of aliasing, which at times is really bad (notably the steps at 35:03). The constant aliasing really does detract from the whole film, and you know that you are in for large doses of it from the opening credits. The fact that Disney themselves don't exactly revel in this being one of their animated features is reflected in the fact that this is a transfer well blessed with film artefacts. Nothing too horrendous mind you, but just enough evidence of film dirt, dirt marks and so on to indicate that this is not a restored film and certainly not a well cared for film.

    The slick indicates that this is an RSDL formatted DVD, but in view of the length of the film and not being able to note any layer change, I would suggest that in fact it is merely a Dual Layered DVD.

    There is a rather impoverished collection of subtitles here, but at least the English efforts are more than reasonable.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three soundtrack options on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a Norwegian Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a Danish Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Given the rather banal dialogue on offer in the film, it probably would not be a bad idea to try out one of the foreign language options - but I stoically toughed out the English soundtrack.

    Aside from a slight softness of tone when Princess Eilonwy speaks, the dialogue is generally easy to understand. The normal rules of animation sync exist here, but nothing other than as expected for a film of this era.

    The music score comes from Elmer Bernstein, and it just about takes the prize as the best bit of the film. It is quite a decent score indeed, but the reality is that the film didn't need help in this area - it needed it elsewhere.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is pretty good overall, but really does not make full use of the higher bit rate available. There is a decent amount of low frequency channel use, but I really felt that there should have been more oomph to the sound than this. Surround channel use was not bad but there could perhaps have been a bit more use of background sound to provide a more satisfying ambience than we have here. The lack of body is perhaps the one aspect of the sound that disappoints, as I would have thought the nature of the film should have allowed a more intimidating soundscape at times.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    Not exactly an inspiring collection here, but given the lack of interest in the film by Disney themselves this is hardly surprising.

Menu

    Adequate but not much more.

Game - Quest For The Black Cauldron

    Yawn! I checked out the extras before watching the film and this seemed to be no impediment to answering the questions necessary to get to the black cauldron before The Horned King (he moves whenever you answer a question wrong - four wrong answers and he wins). The reward for winning? You get to see the short film. I really do wonder if these sorts of games are actually sought after extras amongst the kiddies (they hold sod-all fascination for adults). Hardly the stuff to get the pulse racing...

Short Film - Trick Or Treat (7:55)

    One of the best cartoons to feature Donald Duck and by far and away the best part of the extras package. The only problem is that I have a vague recollection of seeing it on another Disney release some time back. Released in 1952, this still raises a smile. It is presented in a Full Frame format that is not 16x9 enhanced, and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. It is well blessed with film artefacts, mainly dirt specks, and features some consistent colour bleed in Donald's feet. The latter is hardly a great distraction.

Gallery - 7

    Split into seven parts - Visual Development, Character Development, Behind The Scenes, Voice Talent, Layouts And Backgrounds, Tokyo Disneyland and Promotion - this totals some 108 individual stills spread over 13 pages. Interestingly some of the character development sketches are from a bloke called Tim Burton. Nothing that we have not seen before on a Disney DVD, the only particular comment is that the navigation between sections seems a little clunky.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The equivalent Region 1 release of the DVD was once again released some time ago. As far as I can ascertain, the Region 4 release misses out on:

    There is once again nothing much to choose between the Region 4 and Region 1 releases.

Summary

    It is not hard to see why this is perhaps the least celebrated of the animated features from the Walt Disney Company, for there is nothing much here that smacks of serious quality. It is perhaps not as bad as some people may have made out, but The Black Cauldron is certainly not one of the animated features that I would readily watch for enjoyment. The transfer itself leaves something to be desired.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (Biological imperfection run amok)
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDDenon DVD-1600, using S-Video output
DisplaySony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-795
SpeakersEnergy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL

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