CHUD’S 50 BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS, DAY 8

Welcome to the next CHUD List.

It was
the mid-’70s and Disney’s business wasn’t what it once was. Walt was still
dead. Brother Roy and his successor Donn Tatum seemed to like theme parks more
than movies. Animation was more expensive than ever and live-action fare churned
out by the studio hardly inspired passion: Herbie Rides Again and Escape
To Witch Mountain? Yipe. Even the animation arm produced decidedly
second-tier ‘classics’ like Robin Hood. Then 1977 hit, and what
did the company have to combat Star Wars? Pete’s Dragon.

The film
that eventually became The Black Hole began production
during that dismal mid-’70s period, but didn’t see the light of day until 1979.
It should have been the perfect stopgap film between Lucas efforts, and a
family-friendly counterprogram to Alien (albeit a few months late) to
boot.

The cast
looked good: Perkins. Borgnine. Forster. Maximilian freaking Schell. That
B.O.B. looked like a flying R2D2 didn’t hurt. And the story teetered on the
brink of being an ideal mix of juvenile adventure (laser guns, space ships) and
adult metaphysics (humans turned into automatons, the heaven and hell ending).

Here’s
the crux: from the opening credits until the moment you see Schell’s eyes
burning through Maximillian’s helmet, this movie is fucking boring. It’s
morphine on celluloid. You’d get more adrenaline by chewing on Errol Flynn’s
dessicated thigh. Instead of an infectiously hummable theme song, it has an overture! That
worked for 2001, but in a post-Star Wars climate slow ‘n’ stately
wasn’t going to cut it.

To make
the flatlined pulse more frustrating, there’s no arguing the film’s visual
distinction. Maximillian was so badass my large-scale model of him escaped an
M-80 fate until there was simply no other cannon fodder. The set design and
model construction are often perfectly blurred together, and the rolling
fireball that appears towards the film’s climax is awe-inspiring, if also a bit
ridiculous.

But I challenge anyone to endure the running
time – 98 minutes that feels like 189 – without sneaking a snooze or two. When
Disney needed a massive, rousing hit, they dropped this over-wrought,
underbaked dud instead. It’s a wonder there was ever an appetite at the studio
to make Tron. – Russ

A
lazy, and yet oddly appropriate way to address this film would be to tap the
ever-ubiquitous screencap of William Hurt toward the end of A
History of Violence complete with the “How Do You Fuck That Up?”
caption. If your average every day blockbuster with a star-studded cast is
supposedly a slam dunk, Harlem Nights was poised to be an NBA
Jam-esque monstrosity with Jordan descending 40 feet from a halfcourt
leap to deposit a flaming basketball through the rim (…and the floor. And half
of the Earth’s crust). That is how
frickin’ money Harlem Nights was…

..on
paper. Once shooting began, it quickly began falling apart. Eddie Murphy was
writing and directing for the first (and last, thank God) time. Richard Pryor
was visibly uneasy with playing second fiddle to Murphy, and he somehow managed
to invest less here than he did phoned-in, paycheck jobs like The
Toy. Redd Foxx just drifted about the margins, his third of the
underlying “Three generations of great black comedy!!!” theme having never been
taken seriously by Murphy at the script stage. Foxx and the film’s other major
representative from that era, Della Reese, were little more than punchlines in
this meandering vanity project. One could forgive Murphy if he was genuine
about trying to craft an affecting black (as in gravitas, not the race) comedy
set in 1920s Harlem. But this film balances comedy and drama about as well as
Lindsay Lohan balances working and doing blow. It’s never even remotely close
to as funny as you would expect (aside from Murphy’s back alley fight with
Reese, a deservedly immortal comic scene), and the story was far too hackneyed
to ever be affecting. This film will forever be notorious as one of the biggest
wastes of time, talent, and potential to hit the screen, and it makes as a poor
last go-round for the likes of Foxx and Pryor. It’s clearly the beginning of
Murphy’s creative decline, as he would soon follow this up with Another
48 Hours, Vampire in Brooklyn, and The Distinguished Gentleman before
descending fully into latex and kiddie-flick hell. – Micah