Walt Disney Pictures' The Black Cauldron is an ambitious animated fantasy based upon Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, an acclaimed series of novels rooted in Welsh mythology with a medieval setting.
With dreams of becoming a great warrior, assistant pig keeper Taran embarks on a quest to rescue his missing porcine ward, Hen Wen. The evil Horned King kidnaps the pig to use her oracular powers to secure a magical black cauldron in order to resurrect a skeletal army. Joining him are Eilonwy (Disney's forgotten princess), minstrel Fflewddur Fflam and the eternally hungry Gurgi, a furry creature of undisclosed origin. The ragtag gang must locate the cauldron and destroy it before it falls into the Horned King's bony hands.
The Black Cauldron had a famously troubled production. 10 years in the making at a reported cost of $25 million*, it became the most expensive animated feature to date. It was subject to editing by a new studio regime who found the Tolkien-esq fantasy too dark for family audiences. Roughly 12 minutes were cut from the film, the first time finished animation had been removed from a Disney movie. It was a practise unheard of and a controversial move on the part of studio heads. With its release delayed from Christmas 1984, The Black Cauldron finally hit cinema screens in summer 1985. The response from critics was generally negative, while audiences were indifferent. The movie failed to recoup its massive costs and quietly slipped into obscurity.
Four years later the studio would release the widely acclaimed blockbuster The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989). With the animation department's reputation back intact The Black Cauldron was little more than a distant memory. However, I would argue that in some respects The Black Cauldron is a more impressive film than The Little Mermaid.
Not to suggest the movie is perfect. It is, indeed, flawed and most of these flaws are in its storytelling. As might be expected from a film based on a five volume series of books, The Black Cauldron suffers from an episodic, rambling narrative. Worse is that the characters seemingly do little to advance the story. While it is not difficult for audiences to identify with Taran and to wish the group succeed in their quest, they have no real influence on the events at hand. Their own adventure becomes secondary to the mechanisms of the Horned King.
The detrimental effect of editing is felt most in the sequence in which the Horned King unleashes his army of skeletal deathless warriors; impressive while it lasts, it is all too brief and feels anti-climatic. The overall pacing feels slightly off, languid at times. It also feels derivative of earlier Disney movies. Taran feels like a close relative to another would-be warrior, Wart in The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1963); The Horned King visually recalls Maleficent the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959); Gurgi is a cuter, more lovable version of Gollum from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
At a time when big screen reissues of earlier Disney classics was still common practice, the movie's somber mood and lack of songs undoubtedly alienated audiences. However, kids like me who were lucky enough to see this on original release in all its 70mm glory were treated to the most visually stunning of all Disney movies in more than 25 years. The looser, sketchier art which chracterised Disney features of the 1960s and 70s is replaced by a fuller, bolder animation style, recalling the Disney product of earlier decades. The extensive use of the multi-plane camera and effects animation, particularly effective use of light and shadow, give the film a rich texture and lavish quality on a scale not seen from Disney since Sleeping Beauty. The Black Cauldron is fresh, experimental and edgy while retaining an old-school Disney feel. It is certainly more visually appealing than the similar The Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi, 1978).
I am not going to pretend that The Black Cauldron is a better film than The Little Mermaid. It isn't. With its tighter grip on storytelling, excellent musical score and inventive use of the camera, The Little Mermaid is the superior feature; a well deserved hit with audiences and critics. However, I believe that its arresting visuals alone make The Black Cauldron worthy of far more recognition than it receives. Disney were striving for something really unique with this movie and for the most part I think they achieved it.
The Black Cauldron is an underrated movie from an overlooked period in Disney history. It is not their best film of the era, but it is my favourite and one that I believe is long overdue for reassessment.
*In his 2009 documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, production manager Don Hahn suggested the budget was closer to $44 million.
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