The Black Cauldron (1985)

While Disney has made a number of horrible animated movies - many of the worst being in the last two to three decades - there are two movies the studio has always regretted making.  One, of course, is Song of the South, which remains locked away in their vault until the time comes that an angry mob won't burn down their theme parks if it gets shown.  The other was The Black Cauldron, the company's only attempt until requiring Pixar of making animated movies for those who have ages in the double digits. 

The Black Cauldron had been in production since the early 1970s when Disney bought the movie rights to Lloyd Alexander's series of books known as The Chronicles of Prydain.  The books themselves were based on an ancient Welsh collection of prose called The Mabinogion.  The movie is a truncated and simplified version of Alexander's first two books, omitting a number of side characters and subplots.  Still, the aim of the animators was to make Disney's first movie for an older audience, in this case younger teenagers, as the books themselves were aimed at young adults.  The problem was that teenagers in the 1980s typically did not want to see Disney cartoons, and so parents brought the usual audience - and then complained loudly when the movie gave the kids nightmares. 

Taran (Grant Bardsley) is a ward of Dallben (Freddie Jones), tasked with taking care of the old man's pig Hen Wen.  Hen Wen turns out to be special, as she is able to tell the future.  Unfortunately, when Dallben uses Hen Wen to scry what the Horned King (John Hurt) is up to, the latter catches wind of the pig's powers and sends his minions after it.  It turns out what the Horned King wants is the Black Cauldron, a relic imbued with the spirit of an ancient bloodthirsty ruler that can raise an army of the dead. 

Taran is told to take Hen Wen to a safe place, but soon the pig is captured.  As Taran goes after her he runs into a strange creature called Gurgi (John Byner), who warns him not to head to the king's castle.  Wanting to be a hero and to make Dallben proud, Taran ignores Gurgi's warnings and attempts a rescue, only to quickly get captured himself.  While in the dungeon he meets Eilonwy (Susan Sarandon), who was captured because of a globe of light that follows her and that the king thought might lead him to the Cauldron, and a bard named Fflewddur Fflam (Nigel Hawthorne).  The trio escape and reunited with Gurgi and begin a quest to find the Black Cauldron before the Horned King. 

In all honesty, although The Black Cauldron is not the most original movie of its type, it is in no way a bad film.  For me it is better than most Disney films; it's not aimed at small children, and it spares the viewer of having to sit through the awful songs found in most of their cartoons.  I myself have never been a fan of the company's regular output, even as a child, finding most of it quite boring and infantile.  This movie is one of the few times where they surprised me.  Unlike a lot of animated films I have seen recently it feels like it successfully achieved what it wanted to, despite the fact that the movie was butchered before release. 

A major problem was that when it finally came time to seriously put The Black Cauldron into production the executive level at Disney had changed as had the animation staff.  A lot of the old-timers were gone, replaced by a whole new group with new ideas, while even the new executives at Disney largely wanted to keep things the way they had always been.  The battle between the animators and the executives, particularly Jeffrey Katzenberg, came to a head when test screenings showed that many of the scenes involving the Horned King and his army frightened small children.  Katzenberg himself seized the film and began editing it himself before he was stopped by Michael Eisner, but there is still a good chunk missing from the final theatrical release.  

To be honest, from the descriptions of what was cut, it may have ended up being Disney's first PG-13 (as the rating was brand new) or R-rated cartoon, which honestly would have been a great step forward for the studio and would have legitimized animation in the U.S. as not just being for children.  If any of the footage still exists Disney has not seen fit to restore it to the original cut.  Although no one was happy with what was being released (the directors thought their vision was compromised, while Katzenberg still thought it needed to be cut more), the movie was too expensive to sit on the shelf.  Thus, the version released to theaters had about 20 minutes are missing, resulting in some clumsy jumps from scene to scene and in the soundtrack - mistakes that did not go unnoticed by audiences or critics.

But for all that it still tells a fun, compelling story, with characters that are recognizable but also happily quite different from what one would expect.  Taran, for instance, is not a chosen one, and tends to fail at his attempts to be a hero as much as he succeeds.  In fact, when it comes time to sacrifice himself for the greater good, he fails to do so, with one of his friends ultimately having to step up.  It is refreshing to have a character that is still flawed and, since he's a boy, still makes the mistakes of a boy, even when he gets his hands on a magical sword. 

Voice acting is wonderful.  Gurgi is one of those cutesy Disney sidekicks, but he has always been one I liked, even if Taran probably didn't deserve to have him along.  Rather than just be pretty and wish for a man, Eilonwy many times does a better job at being a hero than Taran does.  Also, the scenes with the three witches are some of the most memorable - as is, of course, John Hurt's portrayal of the Horned King.  

Hopefully some day we get to see a full, restored version of The Black Cauldron, but what we do have is more than worth seeing as it is.  It is proof that Disney can be more than just a factory churning out the same tired watered-down fairy tales year after year.  When given free reign they have the money and the resources to make great animated films.  Unfortunately, even today, unless it's Pixar, the will seems to be lacking.

The Black Cauldron (1985)

Time: 80 minutes 

Starring: Grant Bardsley, Susan Sarandon, Nigel Hawthorne, Freddie Jones, John Byner, John Hurt

Directors: Ted Berman, Richard Rich