I didn't realize that my casual mention of The Black Hole a couple days ago would touch a chord among some of you, but then you never know.I know I loved The Black Hole as a kid. I saw the movie a few times. I had the 45 record/storybook combo (you know, one of those "turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this..." jobs) and must have listened to/read that a few thousand times. And Maximillian totally terrified me. Up until about age 7, the top three things that scared me were (in order) Jaws, Darth Vader, and Maximillian.
As with most things that evoke a strong reaction in you as a child, I look at it now and wonder what the hell I was thinking.
Mind you, I haven't actually seen The Black Hole since about that time, but I don't think I need to to start picking it apart. For starters, just what was so terrifying about Maximillian? Surely it couldn't be the fact that he'd probably helped Reinhardt lobotomize the entire crew of the Cygnus -- I wasn't really old enough to understand what a lobotomy was. It must have been that he had food processors attached to his motionless arms... oooo. Maybe if you didn't walk away from him fast enough, he might float into you... oh no!
But being scared shitless of Maximillian isn't the most puzzling thing about The Black Hole when I look back on it now. I wonder more what it was I ever saw in the movie. It's boring as hell! I think more happens in 2001: A Space Odyssey -- you know, the movie they stylistically ripped off for their ending. I was way too young to understand any of what that ending was all about. Maybe like 2001, you need to be stoned out of your mind to be entertained by that.
I was definitely too young to appreciate that.
Anyway, fond memories of childhood, which I don't think I'll risk ruining by actually going back to watch The Black Hole again today.
7 comments:
It was probably the musical score when ole maxi was on screen.
why are we afraid of Maximillian? that picture says it all. he looks pretty scary without even doing anything.
I haven't seen it in a long while either but I remember a few gunfights with the neat double barreled blasters
and I had the Vincent action figure it was the coolest!
the mole
Evan, take that back! Maximillian is still shoulder-to-shoulder with Darth Vader when it comes to terrifying me even a little to this day. (Okay, you have to throw out Return of the Jedi and his cameo in Revenge of the Sith to put Vader back on that level.)
And, One More Thing....
This is the kind of movie that deserves a remake. The Hitchcock-in-space thing is ripe for a once over... for a fresh audience that needs more intellect in their entertainment.
Of course, I'm the kind of guy who actually liked Solaris, and I'm the kind of guy who hates it because the station's set design is contrary to logic and physics.
You jogged a memory with that film - Maximilian was just cold, dispassionate evil personified doing nothing. That's pretty damn scary.
I saw it once and that was enough. Being older I guess I'd realised that there were real life scary things happening in real life. Marharet Thatcher for example.
Various printed materials:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/6822/othrpics.html
My dad still has the Read Along record and the 33-1/3 LP. For a while, I had the coloring book. I might have had the lunch box.
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/rv/el_max.htm
The Maximillian model. Even at that size, it was pretty scary.
Dammit! I cannot find a single good stock image of Maximillian on the whole damnable internet!
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