BACKGROUND
The Black Cauldron is potentially Disney’s most controversial film.
It was barely referenced in the Disney theme parks, even back in the 1980s, was locked up tight in the “Disney Vault” for years, and it was one of those films that Disney would rather you just didn’t know ever existed – and if you were born after 1985, chances are many of you didn’t know it existed until many years later.
For those who were around in 1985, either you watched The Black Cauldron or you didn’t, and if you did, you may not have liked it so much. Then again, you may have liked it back then, and still like it today. Either way, I’m not judging but I think the Walt Disney Company would probably rather you just forgot all about it, because it is not their proudest or finest moment.
Opinions have always been split over The Black Cauldron and its strange concept. The mostly negative reviews of the film are down to two key reasons. The first is that this was the first Disney animated movie to be given a PG rating, meaning that it is much darker and more intense than the types of movies Disney had been releasing at the time, and therefore may have put parents off letting their children watch it – or they did let them watch it and potentially traumatised them.
The other reason is that The Black Cauldron was developed within a particularly difficult time for the Disney Animation department. In the 1980s, there was a huge shift in the management as people from other film studios came in to shake up the company, especially the animation department, which had been struggling with its movies even before then.
More on those difficulties later, but nowadays The Black Cauldron has gained a cult following, especially amongst those who are fans of light horror and fantasy. I am not one of those, which is probably why it doesn’t appeal to me so much, but even though I don’t particularly like it, I have still seen The Black Cauldron a handful of times. It wasn’t for years after its release though, and was actually in the late 2010s when the UK and some of Europe had access to an early version of Disney+, an app called DisneyLife that had many of Disney’s animated and live-action movies available to watch.
To be honest, I find The Black Cauldron kind of boring in places and I think it looks quite grotesque, which isn’t something that appeals to me. I struggle with the look of Pinocchio (1940) and this is much worse for me! However, I do like the lovable little sidekick Gurgi, and find the ending of the film quite moving, so even I can find some positives here.
PLOT
The Black Cauldron follows Taran, an assistant pig-keeper – that’s his actual job title – who works for a man called Dallben, looking after his clairvoyant pig Hen Wen. Dallben is trying to hide Hen Wen’s powers from The Horned King, who wants to use Hen Wen’s visions to find the long-lost Black Cauldron and use it to raise an army of undead soldiers, to make him an invincible ruler. Dallben sends Taran off with Hen Wen to go into hiding.
Taran, annoyed at his lesser state in life, with dreams of being a warrior, spends too much time daydreaming on this journey, and Hen Wen runs off alone. As Taran searches for Hen Wen in the forest, he meets Gurgi, a strange fluffy greedy creature who, in exchange for an apple, will tell Taran where Hen Wen went. Unfortunately, we see that Hen Wen is being chased by dragons, minions of the Horned King, and Gurgi runs away frightened, leaving Taran to retrieve her himself. He fails, but follows the dragons to a run-down castle, the home of The Horned King. Taran enters the castle and saves Hen Wen before she can reveal the location of the Cauldron to The Horned King. Taran throws Hen Wen into the castle moat so she can swim to safety, but Taran is captured and thrown in the dungeon.
Here, Taran meets Princess Eilonwy, a fellow prisoner, captured for her magical bauble which The Horned King thought would help him find the Black Cauldron; needless to say, it didn’t. As the two team up to escape the castle, Taran finds a magical sword which can vanquish any opponent, including the Horned King’s guards, and they find Fflewddur Fflam, a minstrel who is also being held captive by the Horned King.
They all manage to escape the castle into the forest, where we see Gurgi again. And he runs away – again – when Hen Wen’s tracks lead them to a vortex in a lake. Instead of taking them somewhere awful as Gurgi expected, it actually takes them to the kingdom of the Fair Folk, who are fairies living underground. It turns out they have rescued Hen Wen, and will return her home to Dallben. They also tell Taran that the Black Cauldron is in Morva, with a trio of witches, as Taran and the others seek to destroy it once and for all. The Fair Folk take Taran and his friends to Morva.
At the home of the three witches, Taran, Eilonwy, and Fflewddur Fflam find that these witches don’t like humans and like to turn them into frogs, however, Fflewddur has captured the attentions of one of the witches, so he is safe. The witches listen to Taran speak of the Black Cauldron, but they never give anything away, so they allow Taran to try to bargain for the Cauldron. They spot the magical sword that Taran possesses and want that in exchange for the Black Cauldron. Reluctantly, Taran gives up the sword and the deal is done; they have the Cauldron and the witches have the sword, except they forgot to tell Taran that the Cauldron cannot be destroyed, and that its dark powers can only be stopped if someone sacrifices themselves to it, which will kill them.
All look’s lost for the humans, as they find that their bargain didn’t get them any further, and worse still, The Horned King’s dragons have found them and take they back to the castle along with the Black Cauldron. Now, the Horned King can enact his plan. He casts a spell over the Cauldron, which allows him to raise an army of the undead. Taran, Eilonwy, and Fflewddur Fflam can do nothing but watch, horrified, as The Horned King wins.
Except, luckily, Gurgi returns to save the day, freeing the three of them from their shackles, but the Black Cauldron’s powers have not stopped. Taran decides that he must be the one to sacrifice himself, and tells the others to leave. However, Gurgi sees this and does not want his friend to die; Gurgi throws himself into the Cauldron instead, saying that “Taran has many friends, Gurgi has no friends” in a truly sad moment for the film… The army of the undead begin to die right in front of The Horned King’s eyes. He blames his henchman, Creeper, and goes to see what is happening by the Cauldron.
Instead of running out of the castle, Taran tries to retrieve Gurgi from the Cauldron, telling the others to run, but the spell is too powerful and Taran struggles against it. The Horned King, and his henchman Creeper, find Taran by the Cauldron and The Horned King plans to throw Taran into the Cauldron to finally defeat the boy so he can try the spell again. But The Horned King ends up being pulled into the Cauldron and is destroyed forever. But Creeper is free to not be tortured and tormented for the rest of his life, so a small win for him!
As the three finally leave The Horned King’s castle via a boat, the Black Cauldron reappears in the water in front of them. The witches of Morva plan to take it back as it has no use for the humans anymore. Fflewddur Fflam reminds them that they always like a trade. The magical sword is returned to Taran, but Taran doesn’t want it anymore and would rather have Gurgi back. The witches take the sword and the Cauldron back, but don’t seem to want to return Gurgi. After Fflewddur Fflam claims they don’t have the power to do it, they leave Gurgi in the Cauldron’s place and vanish in a cloud of smoke. It seems that Gurgi isn’t alive, but when Taran picks him up, he is revived, wanting some more “munchies and crunchies”. Typical Gurgi! Everyone is thrilled to see him alive again and in a final moment of annoyance from Gurgi, he pushes Taran and Eilonwy’s heads together so that they kiss. The film ends with the four heading home through the forest as heroes, with Dallben seeing this through one of Hen Wen’s visions, saying Taran did well on his quest.
CHARACTERS & CAST
Taran is the “hero” of the story, though I find him to be arrogant at times, and unfeeling towards others. Throughout the movie, he constantly moans about how he is just an assistant pig-keeper and wants to be a brave warrior, so he is overjoyed to find this magical sword that seems to have infinite powers, but he isn’t bothered by friendship at this point. In fact, he is rude to Princess Eilonwy when they first meet and he is cruel to Gurgi, calling him a thief and a coward almost every time he sees him. But eventually, Taran does seem to understand the value of Eilonwy, Fflewddur, and Gurgi’s friendship and it is quite a touching moment when Taran tries to stop Gurgi from throwing himself into the Black Cauldron and then when he bargains for Gurgi’s return. I guess Taran did learn a lot on his journey. He also finally understands why Hen Wen needs to be looked after by him, because she has powers that can be abused by evil people, so again, he learns that too! Speaking of Hen Wen, the name means “Old White” in Welsh, and is a character in Welsh mythology, however, in the myth, Hen Wen, or Henwen, is an enchanted pig whose offspring were meant to cause devastation to Britain. Obviously, that is not mentioned in the Black Cauldron but she is still enchanted. Taran was voiced by Grant Bardsley here, who was a child actor in the 1970s and 1980s, and appeared in the BBC television adaptation of Wuthering Heights (1978) and in a couple of episodes of The Famous Five television series (1978-79).
Of all the human characters in The Black Cauldron, Princess Eilonwy is generally the most likable, as she is confident, kind, and smart. She is the one who manages to get Taran out of the Horned King’s dungeon, with the help of her magical bauble, and she is kind to both Gurgi and Fflewddur Fflam when Taran isn’t. Although her introductory line of “I’m Princess Eilonwy” sounds just a bit precocious. Eilonwy was voiced by Susan Sheridan, who voiced the characters of Noddy, Tessie Bear, and Dinah Doll in the British children’s series Noddy’s Toyland Adventures (1992-94), and voiced Trillian in the radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 1978. Sheridan continued to do voice work up until her death in 2015. In a behind-the-scenes documentary at the Disney Studios in 1981, Hayley Mills, who starred in the Disney live-action films The Parent Trap (1961) and Pollyanna (1960) as a child, stated that she was back at Disney to read for the part of the Princess Eilonwy in The Black Cauldron[1]. It is unclear why she did not end up voicing the part.
Fflewddur Fflam is the minstrel who is captured by The Horned King and seems to just be tagging along with Eilonwy and Taran for the ride, instead of escaping when he has the chance! He is a little bit annoying and kind of bumbling, so he needs to be saved much of the time by either Eilonwy and Taran, but in general, he doesn’t come across badly – he does help convince the Witches of Morva to do the right thing for example – but Fflewddur is just sort of there! Unfortunately, Fflewddur Fflam seems to have been unlucky with his portrayal in The Black Cauldron, as Fflewddur Fflam seems to have had a significant number of his lines cut from the movie, therefore, we don’t get to see, or hear, too much of him[2]. Fflewddur Fflam was voiced by English actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne, best known to Disney fans as the voice of Professor Porter in Tarzan (1999). He also starred in the British sitcoms Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (1980-88) as Sir Humphrey Appleby, and won a BAFTA for Best Actor for his portrayal of King George III in the movie The Madness of King George (1994). Sir Nigel Hawthorne died in December 2001.
Then the final hero to talk about is Gurgi. Gurgi is my favourite character of them all, but again, he doesn’t appear all that much in the film, though he is the one who saves the day, and I’m glad he is revived at the end by the witches. We don’t really know what sort of creature he is, just some sort of fluffy thing! He runs away a lot, yes, but all he wants is a friend, because he seems so lonely out in the forest on his own. That’s why he’s hungry and steals food from people. Taran is just heartless for being mean to him; Gurgi is the best character in the whole film. John Byner voiced Gurgi, saying that he added child-like inflection to his lines because he is supposed to be fun and greedy, wanting to eat anything he can get his hands on! Byner is a comedian, actor, and impressionist, who voiced characters in the cartoon series The Ant and the Aardvark (1969-71). He went on to appear as a guest in many television series including the sitcom Soap (1977-81).
The Horned King is a terrifying villain. He looks terrible, with glowing red eyes, and a strange skeletal form. I’m not sure if he’s meant to be human or not – I think he is in some way, but he’s also very demonic. He’s the main reason for this movie being too scary for children. The Horned King was voiced by legendary actor, Sir John Hurt. Hurt stated that to get the voice of The Horned King he dredged the voice “from the bowels of the Earth” to get that really deep, evil sound[3]. Hurt played Ollivander in the Harry Potter film series and starred in major movies such as Alien (1979); The Elephant Man (1980), for which he was nominated at the Academy Awards in the Best Actor category and won the BAFTA for; and The Midnight Express (1978), where he was nominated at the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, and won it at the BAFTAs. Hurt was no stranger to voice acting at the time of The Black Cauldron either, having voiced Hazel in Watership Down (1978) and Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings (1978). Later in his career, he also voiced The Great Dragon in the BBC series Merlin (2008-12). Sir John Hurt sadly passed away in January 2017.
The Horned King has many scary-looking henchmen, but then he also has his goblin sidekick, Creeper, who’s always being mistreated for his incompetence. I think Creeper is meant to be the comic relief in the film, because he is always getting things wrong and letting people escape. When The Horned King gets sucked into the Black Cauldron, Creeper realises he is now free, and at the end of the film, he flies away on the back of The Horned King’s dragons, knowing he no longer has to serve him and risk his wrath whenever he does something wrong! Creeper was an original character for the film and did not appear in the original books that the film is very loosely based on. Phil Fondacaro voiced Creeper in one of his earlier screen roles. Fondacaro went on to appear in the film Willow (1988) as Vohnkar, as well as appear in the television movie Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (1993), alongside Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Later in the 1990s and early 2000s, Fondacaro had a recurring role as Roland in the series Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Those are the characters who get the most screen-time, however, there are a few others to mention. Dallben is Taran’s employer and we only really see him at the start, when he is scared about Hen Wen’s powers being used by The Horned King. He doesn’t seem to think much of Taran at the start of the film, but sees that he did a good job on his quest by the end. Dallben was voiced by Freddie Jones who appeared alongside John Hurt in The Elephant Man (1980) and played Sandy Thomas in the soap Emmerdale from 2005 to 2018 in his final appearance before his death in 2019.
Then there are the trio of witches. In the original book series, the three witches resembled the Fates of Greek mythology. They used a loom to control the destinies of everyone living, but they were not good or evil. In the film, the witches appear only for a short amount of time, unlike the book series where there was more time to establish the characters, therefore making the film’s witches not particularly memorable characters. Yet the witches are involved in the two most important moments of the film, trading Taran’s sword for the Black Cauldron so it can be destroyed, and returning Gurgi to the group after the task has been completed. The Witches of Morva are named Orddu, the leader of the group; Orgoch who is the most disagreeable; and Orwen, the curvaceous, flirty one, who is in love with Fflewddur Fflam. The witches were voiced by Eda Reiss Merin, Billie Hayes, and Adele Malis-Morey. Hayes went on to voice characters in many animated series such as TaleSpin (1990-91), Rugrats (1991-2004), and Johnny Bravo (1997-2004); The Black Cauldron was her first voice role[4]. Hayes passed away in April 2021.
PRODUCTION
The really fascinating thing about The Black Cauldron isn’t the movie itself, but the production and making of it. It had so many difficulties and complications it’s a wonder it was even made at all. The troubles go back to the 1970s, when the Disney Animation department was still struggling after the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The lack of guidance was sorely missed, and as a result, the films of the 1970s, like Robin Hood (1973) and The Aristocats (1970) were criticised for missing the original charm of Disney’s earlier films. Therefore, Disney knew they needed to take a risk to try to get back on top.
Ron Miller, then-Disney president, and husband of Walt Disney’s daughter Diane, was looking for an idea for a new film. He believed that The Chronicles of Prydain, a five-part book series written by American author Lloyd Alexander and published between 1964 and 1968, had the potential to be the Snow White of their generation. The rights were bought around 1973 by Disney. The book series is a fantasy series based on creatures and characters from Welsh mythology. Despite having fantasy elements that could have rivalled those of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis’ books, The Chronicles of Prydain have only been adapted once for the screen, with Disney’s The Black Cauldron. Due to the amount of material and the complexity of the plotlines within the five books, story man Mel Shaw was tasked with reading all the stories and condensing the storylines and characters into a workable story for a screen adaptation. He made close to 250 coloured pastel sketches of key moments from the books and put them into a twenty-minute presentation to pitch his version of the story[5].
The original stories had over 30 main characters with the storyline encompassing many years. Producer Joe Hale planned to combine the story elements of only the first two books of The Chronicles of Prydain: The Book of Three (1964) and The Black Cauldron (1965) to deal with this. The originally minor character of The Horned King was made into the main villain of the story.
Despite the rights being purchased in 1973 and the early work of Mel Shaw, not much more happened with The Black Cauldron for many years due to issues around management and the differing generations of animators. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were three different generations of animators. The youngest artists were overzealous and full of energy, wanting to get started and make their mark on Disney Animation. The older veteran artists were due to retire shortly, and the second generation felt they were underutilised and underappreciated, showing a lack of harmony between the three sets.
Ron Miller wanted a new style of animation for The Black Cauldron, but felt that the younger artists weren’t ready to tackle it yet, so they were assigned to The Rescuers (1977). They were then put back onto The Black Cauldron, with a release date of 1980 being chosen. But it was put on hold again in 1978, to then be released in 1984, because Miller felt the artists were still not ready for this assignment so they were put on The Fox and the Hound (1981), during which production the remaining members of Walt’s original animators retired. Don Bluth, one of the second generation of artists, was fed up waiting to be given his opportunity to show what he was capable of, and ended up leaving the Walt Disney Company, taking half of the animators with him. This pushed back The Fox and the Hound by six months[6]. Don Bluth would later go on to produce and direct such films as An American Tail, which would beat out Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective at the box office in 1986; The Land Before Time (1988); Thumbelina (1994); and Anastasia (1997). He also made his directorial debut with The Secret of NIMH (1982) during Disney’s production on The Black Cauldron; it was well-received, putting more pressure on the Disney artists.
The Black Cauldron was finally officially put into production in 1980, with a $15 million budget assigned to it, but the troubles were still not over as there were constant changes in the artists and directors working on the movie, due to clashes over “artistic differences”, delaying progress. John Musker was one of these people who left to make the (more successful) movie The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Another was Tim Burton whose character designs were considered too “out there” for Disney, so he left the company altogether. He seems to be doing well, from what I’ve heard…
Eventually, the movie seemed to be getting somewhere, though the budget had grown to $40 million, and they wanted to now use CGI to push their designs further, after The Black Cauldron producer Joe Hale saw it being using in The Great Mouse Detective, which was in production at the same time. CGI was therefore used on scenes of the Black Cauldron itself, as well as Eilonwy’s magical bauble. They had also decided to shoot The Black Cauldron in Super Technirama 70mm, the first Disney film to do this since Sleeping Beauty (1959), and 6-track Dolby Stereo sound, as well as introducing the first in-theatre holographic effect in an animated film, during the sequence of the raising of the undead army. This scene just looks blurry when watching on a home release now.
Then, plot-twist, Ron Miller was removed as CEO in 1984, with Frank Wells, who had previously worked at Warner Bros., and Michael Eisner, coming from Paramount Pictures, taking over. They became the first people to have been brought in to Disney management from “the outside”. Eisner and Wells then employed Jeffrey Katzenberg, also from Paramount Pictures, to take over the Animation Department, however, his background was in live-action, not animation, so he didn’t understand the process or the artists themselves. This caused issues between him and the animators, especially when, on seeing the work on The Black Cauldron, Katzenberg was appalled by the film’s length and the graphic, violent scenes. He wanted to edit the movie, but the animators said this couldn’t be done at this stage, however, Katzenberg disagreed and showed them that this could be done, by cutting twelve full minutes of finished animation from the final movie cut. These cuts included a scene of The Horned King’s henchmen dissolving, and a man’s throat being slashed with the sword[7]. Some of the edits are actually quite obvious, as sometimes the characters’ mouths do not match with the words; some are still talking when there is no sound coming out; and some of the jumps to new scenes are a bit clumsy.
Despite these edits, The Black Cauldron could not escape being given a PG rating, making this the first Disney animated feature film to have a PG rating. It was also the last to have been made at the animation building at the Disney Studios in Burbank, as the Animation Department was then moved to Glendale in December 1983 as their building became used for live-action productions. Glendale was a less than inspiring place to work and the animators spent a few years fearing for their job security…
MUSIC
The Black Cauldron was also the first Disney animated film not to have any songs within the movie. The score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Trading Places (1983), and at the Grammy Awards for his work on Ghostbusters (1984) whilst working on The Black Cauldron[8]. Sadly, I don’t recall much of Bernstein’s score, probably because I’m too stunned by just how grotesque some of the movie looks, but listening to the score separately, it does highlight the fantasy and mystery elements of the story well.
RECEPTION
After almost five full years of work, yet another delay to the release date, and at an official cost of $25 million, which may actually have been closer to $40 million, The Black Cauldron was finally released in the US on 24th July 1985. However, The Black Cauldron only managed to gross $21 million at the US box-office. It was even beaten out by The Care Bears Movie, which had been released in March 1985, this being a huge blow to the team who worked on The Black Cauldron[9].
Not only that, but it received mixed reviews. Some heralded it as a return to Disney animation, enjoying the more gruesome and perilous elements of the story, whilst others called it mediocre and thought it was a missed opportunity given the potential of the book series. It generally considered too dark to be a family film. Some said the plot was convoluted and the characters were dull. Lloyd Alexander, author of The Chronicles of Prydain series, said in an interview with Scholastic Inc. before his death in 2007, that Disney’s The Black Cauldron bore little resemblance to his books, but that he had enjoyed the film, just watching it as a movie, without the context of the source material. Alexander also said that there was a possibility of Disney making more movies based on his works, such as Time Cat, but this never happened[10].
For a brief time around 1990, Disney re-released The Black Cauldron under the new title Taran and the Magic Cauldron, in an attempt to brand the movie more “family-friendly”. It avoided mentioning the evil Horned King and the dark powers of the Black Cauldron too much, and chose to focus on the magical elements of the story, like Taran’s sword, and the hero’s journey. This was reflected in both the trailer and the movie poster, where The Horned King was no longer overlooking the heroes walking through a scary looking forest and the Cauldron was no longer pouring out green smoke. Instead, the poster for Taran and the Magic Cauldron is light and bright, with sparkles coming from the Cauldron and the sword. The movie was re-released in this way in some cities in the US and some international markets, but it did not help change audience opinion on the movie. The Black Cauldron then was not released on VHS until 1998, thirteen years after the initial release, where it found a new audience and became a “cult classic”[11].
LEGACY
You’d think a movie like The Black Cauldron would not have been featured at all in the Disney theme parks, given its reputation, right? Wrong! At the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, what is now the food stand Friar’s Nook in Fantasyland used to be named Gurgi’s Munchies and Crunchies, from 1986 to 1993; “munchies and crunchies” is one of Gurgi’s catchphrases. Before being named after Gurgi, the outdoor quick-service location was named Lancer’s Inn, and after 1993, was named Lumière’s Kitchen, where it generally operated on a seasonal basis. It has been named Friar’s Nook since 2009.
There is photo evidence that walkaround characters of Princess Eilonwy, Taran, and Gurgi did exist at some point after The Black Cauldron’s release in 1985, however, it is unclear exactly what year, or years, they did so, and in which parks, however, given the dates, it would have to have been either Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Tokyo Disneyland, as these were the only Disney theme parks open in the 1980s. It is unlikely that the characters appeared after this decade, given the financial flop of the film.
Speaking of Tokyo Disneyland, the biggest and most surprising reference to The Black Cauldron is actually the Tokyo Disneyland attraction the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, which ran from 1986 until April 2006. I had never heard of this attraction until I watched a video on YouTube and it is so interesting. The “tour” was a guided tour by a cast member through the basement area of Tokyo Disneyland’s Cinderella Castle. It started off with a speech about various Disney heroes and heroines like Pinocchio, Aurora, Snow White – and Taran. The group would then be interrupted by the Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)who would awaken the villains. The group would be led down tunnels, showing the Evil Queen’s lair, Maleficent’s goons, and a projection of Chernabog from Fantasia, before arriving at a tapestry about The Black Cauldron. At this point, the guide would have to recount the plot of The Black Cauldron because chances were not many of the guests had actually seen the film. A member of the group would also be chosen at this stage to hold the Sword of Light before going into the next room, to come face-to-face with a huge animatronic of The Horned King, standing over the Black Cauldron, saying how everybody in the room would be sacrificed to the Black Cauldron so he could raise his army of the undead. At this point, the Sword of Light would be pointed at The Horned King, shooting beams of light and defeating him, and then the tour group could leave the castle.
It sounds bizarre but also kind of cool, especially if you are a fan of Disney villains, like me. I’m surprised this was designed for a Disney theme park given The Black Cauldron’s reputation, but to then run for twenty years is impressive. It was quite popular too, at least at the beginning, and it clearly didn’t matter if you’d seen The Black Cauldron or not[12].
As The Black Cauldron had its 35th anniversary in 2020, naturally, a MagicBand was released that year that featured The Horned King, Taran, and Gurgi. As part of the 1980s Disney100 Decades Collection, for the Disney100 celebrations, a new MagicBand+ with The Horned King and Gurgi was then released in 2023. There are also Funko POP figurines of The Horned King and Taran available, however, merchandise around the film or its characters continues to be hard to come by for any fans of the movie.
Outside of the theme parks, clips from The Black Cauldron were used for part of the plotline of the direct-to-video film Once Upon a Halloween, which was released in the UK in September 2005. It featured clips and songs from many of the Disney villains as the Evil Queen planned to conquer Halloween. It also featured other under-appreciated villains such as Alameda Slim from Home on the Range (2004), Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).
On screen, there has been talk around whether The Black Cauldron will be remade as a live-action film, especially given how many remakes of animated films have been announced in recent years. It was said that Disney had re-acquired the rights to The Chronicles of Prydain in 2016 in order to look into developing a live-action series. There was then further talk around this in 2020, but no further news has been released since. Though many fans would like to see this remade, especially as fantasy films have been successful in recent years, like The Lord of the Rings franchise, and the fact that they could do so much more with the original stories for a modern audience, it is unlikely to happen because The Black Cauldron does not have a huge fanbase so would not be able to bring in the same number of viewers as big hits like Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994).
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Black Cauldron is just ok for me. I actually don’t mind the plot so much; it is generally quite fast-paced. My main issue is just how horrible it looks at times, especially when compared to the majority of Disney animated films. You probably only get about ten minutes total of lush landscape in The Black Cauldron, with the majority of the film being quite dark and eerie, with lots of brown, yellow, and green, with detailed animated scenes of skeletons rising from the dead, and The Horned King’s flesh being torn from his skeleton, and his bones being burnt to nothing… That is a bit too much for me.
As I said earlier, The Black Cauldron is a cult classic and there will be some people who are fierce fans of it, whether that is for the artistic qualities, the fantasy themes, or the darker elements of the movie. If you’re looking for a family-friendly film, full of humour, bright colours, and enchanting magic, this is not one to watch. It is not one of Disney’s best animated films and they certainly could’ve done more with the source material.
However, it is still worth giving The Black Cauldron a go if you want to understand a bit more about the history of Disney Animation. It took a lot of work and a lot of hassle to finish, and let’s not forget that by making these mistakes, the Disney animators learnt from the experience and managed to give us some of their best work just a few short years later.
REFERENCES
[1] Credit: Disney, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (1981).
[2] Credit: Mark Davies, ‘The Troubled History of Disney’s “The Black Cauldron” & The Lost Cut Scenes’, Yesterworld YouTube Channel, uploaded 17th May 2021.
[3] Credit: Disney, The Disney Family Album: Voice Actors (1985).
[4] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘The Black Cauldron’s Witches of Morva’, CartoonResearch.com, 10th July 2020.
[5] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Animation Anecdotes #265’, CartoonResearch.com, 3rd June 2016.
[6] Credit: Don Hahn, Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009).
[7] Credit: Jim Hill, ‘Why For did Disney’s “The Black Cauldron” fail to connect with audiences back in 1985?’, JimHillMedia.com, 10th September 2010.
[8] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘The Black Cauldron (1985)’, pp. 73-75.
[9] Credit: Don Hahn, Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009).
[10] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Animation Anecdotes #144’, CartoonResearch.com, 3rd June 2016.
[11] Credit: Mark Davies, ‘The Troubled History of Disney’s “The Black Cauldron” & The Lost Cut Scenes’, Yesterworld YouTube Channel, uploaded 17th May 2021.
[12] Credit: Kevin Perjurer, ‘The History of Disney’s Scariest Attraction, Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour’, Defunctland YouTube Channel, uploaded 26th October 2018.
The Disney Purist 