Black Hole, The

The Black Hole Movie Poster

"A journey that begins where everything ends".  The Black Hole, a Disney science fiction movie, was released in December of 1979 and played in theaters well into 1980.  The movie was one of the most expensive created for the time, and it did ultimately turn a box office profit.  Reviews, however, were mixed.  The movie starred Maximillian Schell as Dr. Hans Reinhardt, Anthony Perkins as Dr. Alex Durant, Robert Forster as Captain Dan Holland, Joseph Bottoms as Lt. Charlie Pizer, Yvette Mimieux as Dr. Kate McCrae, and Ernest Borgnine as Harry Booth.

In this movie, the USS Palomino spacecraft is heading back to earth when it encounters a black hole.  At the mouth of the hole is the USS Cygnus, a long lost ship that appears to be unaffected by the black hole’s gravitational pull.  During an investigation, the Palomino is damaged and must dock with the Cygnus, which appeared to be in some type of gravitational void.  They find Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Schell) living on the ship with a horde of androids.  Come to find out, the androids were actually the lobotomized and reprogrammed original crew, which tried to mutiny when Hans refused to return to earth.  When the crew of the Palomino realizes what is going on, Hans tries to turn them into androids as well, and in the chaos that followed, the Cygnus was damaged and Hans escaped in a probe ship headed into the black hole.  The inside of the black hole is a glimpse between heaven and hell, and the last seen shows the probe existing the black hole and continuing onto a nearby planet.