The Black Cauldron (Dir. Richard Rich & Ted Berman, 1h 20m, 1985)

Time has not been kind to the films of Disney's two Dark Ages. At best, these films are regarded as a change from the formula, throwing action and adventure into an otherwise relatively safe concept, or pairing the familiar Disney style with quirky settings, characters and concepts. Each of the two, after all, produced films as beloved as Lilo and Stitch, The Rescuers, Mulan, and Robin Hood. Yet, these films are also, in certain quarters, regarded as a pale shadow of the company's output at its best, and both Dark Ages eventually pushed Walt Disney Animation into a colossal change of tack, often back towards emulating their output under Walt Disney himself. At their very worst, they show a company completely out of touch with their audience, poorly made, often childishly skewed films, and experimentalism covering up a studio running out of ideas.

There are several films that highlight this, from the star-studded New York-set Oliver and Company, retelling Dickens' Oliver Twist, to Tarzan, the film that arguably banged the final nail home in the resurgence Disney enjoyed in their 1990s Renaissance, to Home on the Range, arguably the single worst film ever made under the Disney banner. But none of these films have the reputation, the storied creation, nor the faintly alarming revisionism that saw it practically excised from the studio's history for many years that accompanies The Black Cauldron. Yet, for all its commercial mauling-in its ninety-two year history, only the exorable Mars Needs Moms and the woeful The Lone Ranger and John Carter were bigger failures at the box office, with Black Cauldron infamously losing out to The Care Bears Movie-it is a film unfairly judged by its financial success. Despite everything, it is still one of the most singular of all Disney films, a remarkably dark fantasy epic that, for one brief moment, could have rivalled even the best of the studio's fairy-tale work, in scope, tone, and scale.

The story of The Black Cauldron, however, is not merely one of a studio losing their way, but of raw ambition meeting boardroom requirements, of the arrival of the most divisive figure in Disney history, and the film that was once regarded as the new Snow White eventually forcing the studio back towards the Disney norm. It is also one of good against evil, of a young man finding his place in the world against the forces of a dark and powerful warrior bent on seizing the power of the Black Cauldron, and raising an army of the dead. It is, 35 years on, one of the strangest, and unDisneylike films ever to come from the studio.

The year is 1971. Walt Disney has been dead for five years, and whilst the two films released between his death and now have been decent commercial successes (The Jungle Book and Aristocats) the studio are beginning to run out of ideas not inspired by or agreed by Disney, with Robin Hood, based on a vague idea Walt had, stretching back to the 1930s. The question that has essentially hung around the collective necks of Disney, "What Would Walt Do", has, in short, begun to hamstring the company. But, something is on the horizon. Though the deal does not go through till 1973, Disney option an adaption of acclaimed American fantasy novel series, The Chronicles of Prydain, based upon Welsh mythology, which see assistant pig-keeper Taran go from child to young man, through a series of adventures with his friends. 
It seems perfect, not only at a point where fantasy works like JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings remain popular, (including Ralph Bakshi's ambitious but ultimately uncompleted adaption), but where battles between good and evil, including 1977's Star Wars are wildly popular. Moreover, the scale of the film is like nothing Disney has tried before; some inside the studio regard it as a proving ground for new animators, a masterpiece in the making, and its ongoing production is eventually co-opted as a recruiting tool.

 Production on the film carries on through much of the 1970s, at a point where Disney's relatively rapid-fire release schedule of a film every two to three years has slowly broken down to the point that, despite Winnie the Pooh and The Rescuers both releasing in 1977, the next film, The Fox and the Hound will not release till 1981. Moreover, adapting The Black Cauldron from five novels down to a single film is proving difficult, and the release date is reluctantly pushed back to 1984, and the problem of the film, according to then Disney CEO Ron W Miller is this; the film is too ambitious.
For fourteen of the animators, this is the last straw. Their leader's view is simple-not only is Disney losing its way, but with the cost of animation only increasing, they are beginning to cut corners, and fed up with Disney simply not wanting to spend the money to look like Disney used to, he jumps ship to form his new company. Along with thirteen other animators, Don Bluth sets off to make a film arguably darker and even more epic than The Black Cauldron, 1981's The Secret of N.I.M.H. This departure, and Bluth's production of N.I.M.H sets the studio reeling, with much of the staff left behind either unproven new recruits, or the old guard of animators, with Disney now determined to release Cauldron.

By 1980, however, the film is still in a state of flux-concepts by an animator by the name of Tim Burton have been thrown out, with veteran Milt Kahl brought out of retirement to design the characters in a more typically Disney way, along the lines of 1959's Sleeping Beauty. But, there is hope for the film, with producer Joe Hale essentially combining several of the series' villains down into one, the Horned King, voiced by John Hurt, who lends the character a cool, almost detached menace throughout most of the film, whilst Taran and Eilonwy, the film's hero and heroine, underwent more redesigns to make them more Disneyfied

And it is here that the ambition of the film meets cold hard truth. Whilst the ambition is clear, and even the film's darker tone clear, with the centrepiece of the film the resurrection of the Horned King's army in the form of genuinely dark and disturbing skeletons a potential bonus in bringing back a chunk of the teenage audience that regarded Disney's fare as childish, the film's ambition is outstripping the technical abilities of the depleted animation department making it. Sloppy mistakes, such as the entire film's art being drawn in the wrong ratio, painstakingly technical moments, such as a mooted 3D element to the spectral warriors, undone by the cost of the projectors, and a ten-week strike cost the film irreparable damage. But worst was to come

On the 8th September, 1984, Ron W Miller was ousted from Disney-by this point, the company was fending off takeovers, buyouts and other attempts to take control of the company. In charge for only four years, Miller had led the company through some of its most difficult years, and, to his credit, set up Touchstone Pictures, one of the few successes of Disney in this period. Replacing him, and bringing fellow Paramount talent, Jeffrey Katzenberg was former Paramount CEO, Michael Eisner. With The Black Cauldron the only film in production by Disney's animated department at the point of the takeover, it, of course, became the first test of both of the new executives.

So, shortly before the film's Christmas release in 1984, Katzenberg and a test audience sat down to watch the film. Whilst these test screenings have become mythologised as a veritable exodus of screaming children, it's fair to describe that reaction to melting skeletal warriors in full, and rather graphic, Disney animated glory was perhaps not what the studio had been expecting. It, certainly, was not what Katzenberg had expected. Katzenberg demanded the film be edited, and when told that, due to the very nature of animated films, they cannot be edited down, he took to the job himself, eventually requiring Eisner himself to arrive and calm his friend and colleague down. The Black Cauldron had to be edited for a more-child friendly audience, and whilst some of these cuts were hidden by reanimated sequences, others are glaringly obvious.

What therefore arrived in cinemas in July 1985 was a dark fantasy film where most of the darkest scenes have been chopped out to make it child friendly, a spectacular set of visuals created by an overworked animation department where measures had got so desperate that anyone who could hold a brush was being pressed into cel painting, a score by Elmer Bernstein that is grand and dark and as impressive as any film score ever produced for a Disney film, but in service to a butchered story. The Black Cauldron is a film where its history practically permeates every inch of the film. Taran (Grant Bardsley) is the keeper of the oracular pig, Hen Wen, who can create visions of the future; Hen Wen is coveted by the Horned King (Hurt) who hopes to use the pig to find the location to the titular cauldron, resurrect his warriors, and thus have an invincible army.

Hen Wen is promptly captured by the Horned King's forces, and Taran, having been daydreaming of becoming a hero gives chase, crossing paths with the creature, Gurgi and reaches the castle belonging to the villain and his forces, a location that the film returns to several times. Here, he first comes face to face with the Horned King, and is then thrown into the dungeon, meeting with Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan), and the bard Fflam (Nigel Hawthorne), who become his allies. Finding a sword that proves useful against the Horned King's forces, and reuniting with Gurgi, the quartet find themselves on the trail of the escaped Hen Wen, eventually arriving in the kingdom of the Fair Folk, who direct them to the Cauldron, which, relucantly, Taran trades for the sword with a trio of witches who guard it.

However, the Cauldron is indestructible, and at this point, the quartet are found by the Horned Kings forces, with Gurgi fleeing, and his plan is put into action, an army of undead raised, in spectacular style with the power of the cauldron only breakable by someone sacrificing themselves. Though Taran attempts to sacrifice himself, it is Gurgi who takes his place and the Horned King and his army are defeated, and following another trade, the Cauldron vanishes to be replaced with a now living Gurgi. Roll credits

In places, the ambition of The Black Cauldron shines through-this is after all, the first Disney film to use CGI, and when the visual work is well-executed, it is visually stunning; cut down as the cauldron army are, their appearance is positively unique in Disney's output, and still compelling. The flight from the castle, as well as some of the monsters in the pay of the Horned king, are also beautifully animated pieces-but elsewhere, the film's rushed creation rears its head-shots of Taran approaching the Horned King's castle are notably of poor quality, and oddly flat, whilst the King himself at points sports cartoonishly glowing red eyes with black pupils that make him look like an escapee from Masters of the Universe. In short, one gets the sense of a film at once trying to be visually a dark fantasy film, ironically like the equally poorly performing but later cult N.I.H.M. and a film that is overtly Disney. The only thing that captures this perfectly is Bernstein's score, with his theme for the Horned King a chaotic crashing of piano giving way to ominous horns, whilst elsewhere; the theme for the Army of the Dead is unsettling choral work.

The characters, for their part, are competent-Taran ironically feels like a better wrought character today than in the mid-1980s, a young man pulled in two directions between fame and friendship, whilst Eilonwy feels like a prototypal version of many of the more proactive Disney Princesses of the 1990s and beyond. Gurgi, often maligned as a Jar-Jar Binks esque figure, a poorly created comic relief character, is at points grating, but, occasionally, one cannot help but compare, particularly in John Byner's vocal performance, the strange creature to Andy Serkis's Gollum of the Lord of the Rings series. Hurt's Horned King is, perhaps, though, the standout role of this film, a quietly menacing performance in which Hurt's cold, almost detached delivery captures the malice of his character perfectly.

Where The Black Cauldron falls down is tone, and this cannot help but be blamed on Eisner and Katzenberg, men at one point tempted to close down Disney's entire animation department, defanging a film that could have brought back a teenage market in its fantastical setting, dark visuals, and surprisingly un-Disney characters. Watching Cauldron 35 years on is a fascinating piece of cinema saddled with being a Disney film, and thus beholden to its rules, form of storytelling, and style. In places, the former beauty that could have been shines through, but too often it is diminished and faded by people who did not understand what they had. Is it a disappointing film? Yes. Is it a film worthy of being cinematically wiped from existence, barely represented in the Disney canon-even given the slew of merchandise for practically every property the studio has, it is only in the last five or so years that the film has begun to receive any attention, and was the last Disney film of the lot to get VHS and DVD releases? No. Though The Black Cauldron may have been a failure, in an era where PG rated, and more intense fantasy films, even from Disney, are the norm, it feels more prophetic than ever.

But perhaps the biggest impact of The Black Cauldron is this. Whilst Disney's next film The Great Mouse Detective, proving to be a commercial success, and the following Oliver and Company proving that Disney could still take familiar stories and put a new, and overtly Disney twist on them, both would eventually be overshadowed by an idea pitched alongside Oliver, of an adaption of the Hans Christian Anderson story, The Little Mermaid. If The Black Cauldron was the moment that Disney came closest to the collapse of its animated division, it is also the moment where its renaissance, and the return to Disney's classical animated style, began.

Rating: Highly Recommended