posted
Hey, I like The Black Hole as well! Campy, yes...but so is Forbidden Planet. Both are still great vintage sci-fi flicks.
The BTTF trilogy is very nearly right up there with Star Wars and Indiana Jones in my book. At the very least, it had a major impact on the genre and pop culture at large. But then, we've had this debate before.
And I haven't seen it in ages, but just what the hell was wrong with Event Horizon??? As I recall, it was quite atmospheric and creepy, which is quite obviously what was intended. Not every film is supposed to be as high-concept as 2001: A Space Odyssey...
Oh wait. You didn't like that either.
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Come on now, Forbidden Planet is a classic (I am quite fond of it) but it too is lame and dandruffy at times. So were Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers. And TOS. It was the era. (Not the same era in all those cases of course.)
Besides, as I was hinting at before, the intent of a film is important to keep in mind when judging it. The Black Hole was primarily intended for a young (kids/teenagers) audience. It was exciting and creepy and and pretty there's a "cute" flying R2-D2 ripoff in it. What's not to like?
You don't watch Mary Poppins and complain that it's too silly and sugar-coated, do you? No. You take it for what it is, an entertaining children's film that is most certainly one of the finest ever made. If you don't find it sufficiently diverting as an adult, it's only because no one ever intended to make it so.
And truthfully, it's down to a great deal of mindset as well. If you are in the mood to make fun of something or be bored with it or otherwise not enjoy it, you will surely find justification to do so. On the other hand, if you let go the criticism and elitism, you can get caught up in the enjoyment of almost anything. Heck, that's the very reason why TWOK is soooo bloody popular...
Not to say that there aren't good films and bad films, but you've got to be careful about which standards you apply to which ones.
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
You don't think the scene where the cook asks the Robby to "make some more of this stuff for him" to be maybe perhaps just a little campy? Come on, now.
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
BTTF is okay if you look at it as comedy, but it's not really sci-fi (to me). Just like Spaceballs is not really sci-fi.
The Black Hole just sucks out loud. I read an artick on it's making that explained that the actors refused to wear the (stuffy) hoods their uniforms had (which were supposed to somehow act as spacesuits) so the director just filmed the spacewalk sequence without them. Plus, the main spaceship is a flying greenhouse.
That's bad on a scale not seen since Ed Wood stopped making movies.
Event Horizon sucks for the same reason Fifth Element sucks: they made a bueatiful movie with several neat moments that had no plot whatsoever.
They're flashy 2 hour music videos. Even Heavy Metal made far more sense.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Heavy Metal is actually pretty good for the time and the odd "story within a story" style (matched only by Cat's Eye) way it's told.
As a kid, I really loved it (for the sexy bondage bits if nothing else).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
You guys throw the word "camp" around without even understanding what it means.
v.t. To give a deliberately artificial, vulgar, or banal quality to: "camped up their cowboy costumes with chaps, tin stars, and ten-gallon hats."
The BATMAN show was camp...it was arch and deliberate. TOS wasn't camp ("I Mudd" aside). "The Black Hole" wasn't camp, it was dreadfully serious but for it's kiddie relief. "Flash Gordon" which came out the following year was completely camp.
Maybe TOS and Forbidden Planet have qualities that seem campy to some by today's standards, but that's only because styles have changed. Bonanza's style is just as antiquated, and no one calls it camp.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
Registered: Feb 2001
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