AThe Cygnus is just absolutely metal as fuck. It looks like those old Petra albums with the guitar spaceships on the cover, only with a kind of steampunk Gothic feel to it. Utterly rad.
AThe Cygnus is probably the most beautiful on-screen spaceship ever.
The lights in it were so hot that they had to make the whole thing out of brass to stop it melting.
And once filming was complete some nobhead dropped it…
The Black Hole and Flash Gordon were my sci-fi and space opera of choice as a young boy. I went to see ESB when it came out, but it didn’t capture my imagination nearly as much at the time as those two films. I cried my little crybaby eyes out at B.O.B.'s sacrifice and Maximilian was the scariest thing I had seen. Watcher in the Woods freaked me out as well when my primary school teachers decided it would be a good option for a rainy afternoon. I was 6. They learned their lesson though. The next time it rained we watched The Fox and the Hound, which didn’t scar anyone for life at all…nuh-huh.
Agreed on both fronts - Horner’s score is good, but a better one got rejected. I’m very pleased that Delerue’s score got a proper release recently. According to the liner notes, his work wasn’t rejected due to quality concerns but because after Disney re-edited the movie, the cues didn’t line up anymore so it would have to be re-scored anyway. They elected to go with a new composer to better reflect the altered tone of the new cut.
I’ve done a little digging into THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN, and wow…
I think I kind of have to track this down, now.
You don’t. It’s not a very good movie.
I haven’t seen the movie in close to 30 years but I remember both Gould and Cosby giving strong performances, and I think it’s worth Belloq’s time to see another example of Disney pushing the envelope – regardless of how it succeeds on a quality level. Considering some of the other problematic movies on that list, I think it deserves a shot.
Fair enough. I just wanted to properly set expectations. That last ‘Roses and Rainbows’ song is a fucking earworm that has stuck in my head since 1981, so you are hereby warned.
Expectations will be at realistic levels, but I’ll give it a shot.
ADefinitely bump a Bill Cosby movie to the top of your queue.
@_@
Maybe I’ll make a whole day of it and toss in some Polanski movies while I’m at it.
AMix yourself a nice qualuude cocktail. Make a day of it, a day you won’t remember.
Got some Fatty Arbuckle to throw into the mix as well?
I keep an entire shelf of movies made by people with questionable (or nonexistent) morals.
What about HICKEY & BOGGS?
Bump two.
On the subject of darker Disney, what do people think of Tim Burton’s stop-motion FRANKENWEENIE from a couple years back? I know it’s more “macabre” than “dark,” but I blind-bought the Blu-ray for $2 at a yard sale today, and am curious what I’m in for!
While I’m glad the spider scene works for you guys, I find it hard to focus on anything other than the fact that the actors playing Will and Jim are (approximately) fifty years older than they appear in the rest of the movie. The mirror maze climax suffers from Glaring Reshoots Syndrome (GRS) as well.
One of the more obscure PG-rated titles in the catalog is TAKE DOWN (1979), which was distributed (but not produced) by Disney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Down_(1979_film). Never released on DVD.
Also Michael J. Fox’s film debut, the teen comedy MIDNIGHT MADNESS (1980), the John Hurt thriller NIGHT CROSSING (1982), and the comedy TRENCHCOAT (1983) starring Margot Kidder and Robert Hays.
More well-known but underrated is the S.E. Hinton adaptation TEX (1982).
It’s everything you’d expect from current vintage Burton doing a stop-motion animated film. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on how you feel about current vintage Burton.
I will say Laika’s ParaNorman mops the floor with it though.