chronicles of prydain the black cauldron

British actor John Hurt provides the voice, wrapping his resonant, cultivated tones around lines like, 'I presume, my boy, that you are the keeper of this oracular pig.' The Creeper, for his part, plays Peter Lorre to the King's Humphrey Bogart.Īnd it is in the evil world that the animation can dazzle you. The Horned King is the Surly Green Giant, a corpse-like figure with laser eyes and a nasty temper directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich make him scary by keeping him in the shadows, shooting him from low angles. Like many of the Disney tales, 'The Black Cauldron' only really gets going when it delves into evil, into the world of the Horned King and his toady, the appropriately toadlike Creeper. The story could use more twists, and the good kids could use some characteristics besides good kidness - they're like Zeppo without his brothers. 'The Black Cauldron' is a sort of 'Conan the Destroyer Jr.': collect your gang, infiltrate forbidding castle on island, recover grail, watch castle collapse. Along the way, he picks up a cohort of colorful losers, including Fflewddur, a musician whose harp pops a string whenever he fibs Gurgi, a squirrelly mop top with a voice full of helium and, of course, a girl, Eilonwy, every bit as bland as himself. Taran is the appointed protector of Hen Wen, a visionary pig who bears the cauldron's secret.

If the Horned King can get his hands on it, he can raise an army of the dead so Taran, the youthful hero, is going to make sure he doesn't. Technically brilliant though short on narrative, 'The Black Cauldron' is a painless, old-fashioned way to take out the kids, and a triumph for the animation department at the Disney studio, where it has been in development for almost a dozen years.īased on Lloyd Alexander's series of children's books, 'The Chronicles of Prydain,' the movie centers on a black cauldron that imprisons a spirit of true evil.

Chronicles of prydain the black cauldron