Day 25: One Pig To Rule Them All

THE BLACK CAULDRON (1985)
Directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich
Starring the voices of: Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, Arthur Malet, John Hurt

For years, it was impossible to see The Black Cauldron.  It was something of a mystery.  It was Disney's most expensive feature to date, yet no one involved would talk about it.  It wasn't available on home video.  If you owned a bootleg copy of it, the Disney SWAT team would descend upon your house and you were never heard from again.  Or at least, that's how the urban legend goes.

Why all the secrecy?  This was Disney's biggest flop ever.  The loss was so substantial and the reaction so negative that Disney just started pretending it didn't exist.  There have been dozens of books released by Disney themselves that chronicle their history of theatrical animation, and you'd be lucky to find maybe ten whole pages that even mention this film. 

But a few years ago, they finally released The Black Cauldron on DVD.  And now...all the world can see why this film was such a fantastic flop.

First of all, let me say that the animation is pretty amazing.  They went all out here.  After years of doing things on the cheap, Disney (led at the time by Jefferey Katzenberg) opened up the purse strings and poured millions into creating elaborate and powerful effects animation.  When you're dealing with a story about an evil witch king raising a army of the undead, it had better look impressive.  And they don't disappoint here.

Unfortunately, the story is extremely weak.  It's little more than a rehashing of "Lord of the Rings" and pretty much every fantasy novel that has ever been written.  And this was in 1985; many years before the populace at large knew what a hobbit was.  And the first plot point involves a pig - a pig that can produce visions and see the future.  So instead of a ring, our "hero" named Taran (Bardsley) has to protect a pig.  Along the way, the pig is captured by the evil Horned King (Hurt) who uses it to find the location of the Black Cauldron, a magical device that can raise an army of undead warriors.  Along the way, the pig and her boy are separated, and Taran runs into the incredibly annoying Gurgi, a furry dog-thing that's sort of mix between Gollum and Jar-Jar Binks.  He also meets a princess (of what?  They never say) named Eilonwy and an old bard named Fflewddur Fflam.  None of these characters contribute anything to the story whatsoever.  They don't help Taran in his quest for the One Pig; they only stand around looking befuddled and making lame jokes.

And the other problem is the insistence on force-feeding whimsical, kid-friendly characters into a story about undead armies.  Not only is there Gurgi, but the Horned King has a squatty assistant named Creeper and an entire village of little fairy-sprite-things who rescue the Pig at one point, but contribute little else but whimsy.

The problem here is that the film makers were much more concerned with making the film look great than with the story, and the film suffers because of it.  No wonder Disney swept this one under the rug.  They were (and still are) rather good at visual storytelling.  But The Black Cauldron all style and no substance.  It plays more like one of Disney's direct-to-video sequels than a stand-alone feature, only with better animation.  I can only recommend this if you're a completest.  Otherwise, it's not worth it.