A year and some change ago I wrote a script about "Treasure Planet",
Disney's 2000's sci-fi super flop, and it did...okay - but while I was researching  the  
Kingdom That Never Sleeps, particularly their cinematic fumbles throughout the millennia,  
it was an uncharacteristically grim, miss-managed mesh of fever dreams and fantasies that ended up
capturing my affection a great deal more than the film I had originally elected to write
about. Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning the cardinal catastrophe
in the video and every day since then I've been physically accosted
by people  asking me when I'm going to write about it.
Well, in the spirit of Hallow's Eve, I figured what the hell,
so put on your witchin hats and strap in!  
I'm really smart, and this is  
"The Black Cauldron - Disney's Halloween Masterpiece"
(sorry for the wait on screen)
Alright, before we talk The Black Cauldron specifically and why it's deserving
of a seat in the pantheon of crucial Halloween flicks, we first need to
define what a Halloween movie...is. Which is sort of a problem
because we don't really  know what a Halloween movie is.  
There is no widely agreed upon criteria - at least not one I could
find - so, if I asked you to name me a Halloween movie off the top  
of your head - whether your response was Hocus Pocus, Her, or Happy Feet -  
nobody could really call any of them a wrong answer. At least...not in a way that's  
quantifiable. And therein lies the pitfall of a question with no wrong answer.
There can never be a right  answer to it - either. And when it comes to discerning
what features do or don't belong to a grouping of films, this very
quickly crosses the threshold from charmingly paradoxical into sincerely  
annoying. So, with no prominent touchstone of tiers to go by in order to  
classify Coraline or Casper as an official Halloween hit, the only
path forward is to start at the beginning(?) and create a new one.
  
The very beginning.
(Segment Card: "Halloween's History - Pretty Much The Gist Of It")
There's this really big island that kind of looks like a dog standing in  
the wind, and around 10,500 BC people started popping up on it.
From then until the early 17th century when it fell under the complete  
control of King Henry the 8th because he was a dick, it oscilated between  
the total and partial rule of its native people; the Gaelic.  
If you hadn't guessed yet, by the way, the dog is Ireland.
Anyways, the Gaelic were a fascinating culture with an incredibly long and
rich history, stretching across most of Northwestern Europe - but perhaps
their most well known contribution to the modern world is a Pagan festival
by the name of Samhain (Sow-In), which took place between October 31st and
November 1st, marking the beginning of Winter and the dark half of the Gaels' calendar year.  
One of four seasonal festivals, and existing as a polar opposite to  the festival of  
Bealtaine (Beal-Tenna) which denoted the beginning of Summer, Samhain (Sow-In)  
was a festival of death. It was thought to be a time when the boundary between this world  
and the "Other-World" thinned, allowing the Aos Si (Iss-Shee) - spirit-like fairies  
within Gaelic mythology - to more easily enter and interact with  the world of humans;
and along with them would travel the spirits of the dead - seeking their old
homes and desiring hospitality. Places would often be set at tables or by fires to  
welcome the dead home and tributes of food would be left outside along with portions of crops
being left unharvested in hopes of pacifying the Aos Si (Iss-Shee) in exchange for blessings.
And - all of this was done  to ensure that the Gaelic people could survive the harshness of the coming Winter.
Most of the still-known myths of Samhain (Sow-In) describe werewolves, demons, ghosts, and  
the sacrifice of other humans in the characterization of the forces of nature during that time of year.  
Personifications of coldness, chaos, darkness, death, blight, and drought occupy the overwhelming  
majority of these stories. People gradually began to adorn costumes and masks representing these  
spirits and, along with bonfires lit as protective barriers against these forces of Winter,
they had also begun hollowing out turnips to hold candles in - both as a means to ward off the
unkind spirits and as lanterns for the young to light their paths as they gathered food for the feasts
and carried out mischievous acts and pranks across their villages. Soon these traditions
spread to Britain and Wales, from Britain and Wales to Germany, and from North-Western  
Europe to the Roman Catholic Church itself - inspiring Louis the Pious in 835 AD
to switch the holy day of All Hallows Eve from May 12th to October 31st...as well.
A little under 1200 years later and with a gentle push from marketing, more
than 175 million Americans planned to celebrate Halloween this year, spending an estimated
$9 billion dollars between costumes, decorations, treats, greeting cards, and - you guessed it -
movies - thanks almost entirely to the oral traditions passed down by the ancient Gaels of Ireland.
So, now that we've done a bit of brushing up on our history, we're able to separate the holiday of
Halloween  into two hemispheres of representation. The seasonal and the spiritual. And from these two
hemispheres, we can distill 5 basic criteria for what makes a Halloween movie - a Halloween movie.
One.  Is it made clear that the film takes place in the season of Autumn through either setting or dialogue?
Two. Does it reference the existence of or belief in spirits or the living dead?
Three. Do the color palettes predominantly contain the colors of Autumn and/or the onset of Winter?
Four. Does it feature "monsters" or other-worldy beings such as werewolves, demons, and vampires?
Five. Does it feature an unsettling or otherwise macabre selection of music in its soundtrack?
And - viola. If any feature can check at least  three of these boxes, it's earned itself a room in  
the Halls of Hallow's Eve. And now that we're crystal crystal clear on why nobody can
say Mean Girls is their favorite Halloween movie just because there's a costume
party in it, we can finally talk the Big BC and why it gets an A plus from me.
Starting with the decade and a half that it spent in Production Hell.
Or - as I've taken to calling it(?) - Disney's Inferno.
(Segment Card: "Disney's Inferno - How The Cauldron Was Burned")
A lot of big things happened in 1966. David Bowie released his first single,
Wilt Chamberlain broke the NBA career scoring record, and India elected a woman -
Indira Gandhi - as their 4th Prime Minister. It was a time of great excitement and great
turmoil in a rapdily developing Post-World War II humanity - and it was during this time that one
of the brightest lights to have ever graced the world of animation - quietly flickered out. Before he could see  
his dream, the city of EPCOT, come to fruition - the animation titan Walt Disney passed away from Lung
Cancer at the age of 65. And with the release of Wolfgang Reitherman's The Jungle Book in October of the  
following year, Disney animation's already decade-long doldrum soon slowed to a crawl. The company had become
a shadow of its former self, known internationally almost exclusively for its theme parks and live action films,
and the frequency by which they released animated features dropped from once every 1 1/2 years to once every 3 1/2.
1971 brought the passing of Roy Disney, Walt's brother and CEO of Disney Productions, and over the following
decade, its animation department saw a majority of The Nine Old Men - Walt's senior council and most
experienced artists - retire, a mass exodus of their brightest animators, lead by Don Bluth,
an industry-wide strike, and a corporate power struggle that ended with the replacement of Disney insider,  
Ron Miller, with animation outsider Michael Eisner - as their new CEO. An event that would come to be the single
greatest impetus  for The Black Cauldron's now-notorious murder and burial. The Black Cauldron's
journey starts around the same time Roy's had ended, in 1971, after Disney decided to option a
wildly popular, five-volume Children's fantasy series based on Welsh mythology.  
The Cauldron was handed off to artist and writer Mel Shaw, to begin rendering
pastels of the upcoming feature for use as recruitment tools for soon-to-be CalArts graduates,
eager to participate in what they thought at the time would be their generation's Snow White
and the long-awaited re-awakening of the once-beloved sleeping giant of animation. Pre-production didn't
officially begin until 1973, when Disney finally obtained the rights from its author, but with
corporate miss-management and Don Bluth's departure in 1979 as a protest  to it, there hadn't been anyone
to stand at the project's helm - until 1980 when veteran layout artist Joe Hale assumed command
as the film's producer. With nearly a decade of fragmentary progress behind the film already,
Hale's first Herculean task in what would later become a famously grueling struggle to
craft the film,  was taking the living and breathing world that an author had built over the course of 5
books and condensing them into a single, coherent film. To accomplish this daunting feat, Hale combined
the major plot beats of the first two books, along with some minor details from the latter three,
and picked a minor villain from the first - The Horned King - to crown as the old-but-new-to-him
film's sole antagonist. It was during this early period of shaping what the film would truly become,
that Disney Veteran and Art Director Don Griffith along with a young talent by the name of Mike Hodgson
were quickly pulled on to the project, contributing a great deal to the world and character designs of
the finished film - using Mel Shaw's prodigious pastels as a visual guide. In an effort to pool ideas
and invigorate the film with a more diverse range of artistic influence, Hale also invited some of the
new kids on the block - ones with names like Michael Peraza and Tim Burton - as well as accomplished
artists outside of the Magical Kingdom's domain, such as Mike Ploog, the original artist for Marvel's Ghost Rider,
to contribute concept art of the film's characters and environments. Despite Hale's best efforts though, the books
still proved to be an incredibly difficult body of work to condense and adapt. The film's trio of
directors - Art Stevens, Ted Berman, and Rick Rich - began to feel that their sequences had become almost
stagnant after months of re-works and seemingly directionless toil. Their lack of inspiration eventually
became so perceptible to one another that they  traded each-other their sequences  - citing no other reason than
to have a fresh pair of eyes. And - it's hard to blame them for having their inspiration, albeit temporarily, sapped from them
when you consider the circumstances of their reworks. See - The Black Cauldron was set to be Disney's second film
ever - to be formatted for and shot in 70mm. And, a few weeks after  the layout department had been given new
charts to plan and compose the film's scenes on, it was discovered by one of the new kids I mentioned earlier,
Michael Peraza, that the charts didn't actually line up  with the charts from Disney's first 70mm feature, Sleeping Beauty.
As they would soon come to find out, the charts that the layout artists had been given weren't actually the right dimensions
and all of the work that had already been done so far on the film would have to be scrapped and re-drawn. By this point,
fairly understandably, everyone involved in the feature  had started to feel that maybe the production was simply
cursed  - later being cited by Tim Burton as the reason he quit animation - but unbeknownst to any of them,
their troubles had, unfortunately, only just begun. As the waves of this first catastrophe began to subside,
the animation industry went on strike - pushing back the film's eventual release date even further. And in an almost
cosmically cruel twist of irony, nearly as soon as the animators had returned to their posts and resumed their work
on The Black Cauldron, the production team would be told that Ron Miller - Walt Disney's son-in-law and chosen
successor - had been ousted by non-Disney affiliated suits from Paramount - ones that most people in the department
had never even heard of before. And, better still, they would soon come to learn that their new leaders had never touched
an animation before - either. Enter Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenburg. Not only had these guys
not worked on animation before, but their introduction to the animation studio was a historically bad foot
to get off on - demonstrating a shocking lack of even a primitive understanding of the company's work;
Eisner famously announcing during his introductory speech how happy he was to be at Disney, followed by  
"After all, who could ever forget Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse?"
A CBS cartoon.
As the suits began to settle in and as the work that had been completed so far for The Black
Cauldron was screened for Katzenberg, he requested to be shown cover shots - and was puzzled to find
that having a surplus of material, such as a multitude of shots, only existed in live action productions.
And it was after this, when Katzenburg was eventually screened the completed film, that The
Black Cauldron was issued...its death sentence. As the film came to an end, and the closing credits began to
roll, Katzenburg expressed his deep displeasure for it and commanded Joe Hale and Roy E. Disney,
Walt's nephew, to have the film cut by 10 minutes - despite it already being in full color. A ludicrously
costly and insulting demand, and one that was not only virtually unheard of in the world of animation,
but one that was completely impractical for the film being so close to its release. After cutting
as much as they could from the film without causing what they felt would be irreparable harm to its
narrative, Hale and Disney showed Katzenburg the Cauldron again - to which Katzenburg's only response
was; "Is that10 minutes?". When Roy and Hale replied with no and a desperate explanation as to why,
Katzenburg simply repeated his previous demand and, in a fit of frustration with the feature, rushed into  the
editing bay himself   and cut nearly 3 minutes from the picture, having no experience with
either animation or the editing of films - prompting the terrified animators to drag Eisner himself down
and order Katzenburg to stop. Eventually he emerged from the room, but under the knavish condition that Hale and
Disney cut 12 minutes from the picture - an un-thinkable and ruinous act to any animated feature. His obsession
with the film's marketability to children, despite its intent for a teenage audience, as well as his contempt for a
department that he hadn't yet earned the respect of - causing a figurative cataclysm of The Black Cauldron - leaving its
pacing, its structure, its animation, its score, and its voice-over work a diminished reflection of what it originally was.
One of the most ambitious and grand in scope projects to ever depart from the Magic Kingdom - what was
expected to be the next generation's Snow White and the strike of lightning that would finally rouse the tired
company from its slumber - forever condemned to failure and obscurity. A victim to its own ambition and  the
subversive forces of corporate interest that wished to repress it.
(sad sigh)
Anyways, with its production woes now laid before us, it's finally time to dive
into the Cauldron itself. This part of the video is called "Story, and Why I  
Don't Care What The Book Says".
(Segment Card, Text Appearing w/ Words: (Story, and Why I Don't Care What The Book Says - or hot takes for short")
The Black Cauldron is nothing like the story or series of stories it bears its name to - and I love it.
Every beat in the film, from its Exposition to its Denouement, are completely separate from any
one entry in the fantasy pentalogy that it serves as a very loose adaptation of, The Chronicles of Prydain,
and the film instead represents a sort of "dark fantasy jambalaya" consisting of a myriad of landmarks,
plot beats, and themes found throughout the collection of books - and it is a fantastically unconventional
and surprisingly harrowing film for doing so. This tremendous deviation from its source material, however,
put its already broken form at an overwhelmingly more arduous disadvantage in winning over some of its
target audience and critics because - The Chronicles of Prydain was still a very popular series of books
at the time of The Black Cauldron's release. See - making the decision to adapt a written work to
the screen in any capacity is, historically, one of the most daunting and rewarding tasks that you
can undertake as an artist - and it is one that demands a tremendous amount of talent and prose to
do so with any kind of success. Many of the greatest films from many of the greatest film-makers of all
time(?)  have been adaptations and notoriously difficult films to complete. Uh - The Shining, Seven Samurai,
Orson Welles' Othello, and Apocalypse Now being some of the first examples that come to mind.
And among the other countless adversities of creating any film of  any scope in any setting, it is with
adaptations specifically that you must present your works to the unrelenting and unforgiving gaze
of the readers - the most critical and least appreciative movie-going demographic on Earth.
("DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?" clip)
(progressive reverb, whiny-ish voice)
(screencap of article ending from MTV)
"Hundreds of tweets, thousands of reblogs, and at least one Facebook group later,  
Michael Gambon had better hope he never ends up stuck in an elevator with one of  
the millions of fans who will hold a grudge about this for the rest of their lives."
Eugh.
Saying "the book was better" about a film is the cinematic equivalent to saying
you prefer your mom's cooking when you're eating at a restaurant. Nobody told you it
was bad  in the first place but everybody wishes you had stayed home.
It's the same ingredients, it's just the chef's own  recipe  - and that's exactly
what an adaptation is supposed to be.  Whatever the filmmaker wants.
(exasperated exhale)
Anyways, point is every change a producer, director, writer, set designer, editor, actor, or anyone else  makes
when they're adapting a literary work lowers a figurative Sword of Damocles one foot closer to their shoulders
and most of the time the best route to making a compelling and unique cinematic experience is just letting
it stab you right out of the gate. And that's exactly  what The Black Cauldron does.
The film opens with a fade from black into a dark chamber, a current of ghastly green mist
slowly sweeping towards the left of frame to reveal a great, Black Cauldron - the unnerving strings
of composer Elmer Bernstein and the foreboding, reverberated narration by the legendary John Huston,
work in unison with the low angle shot to establish with a great deal of immediacy that this  is going
to be the true master of our fear throughout the rest of the film - as the prologue explains precisely what
terrors could be wrought from its use. Checkov's Cauldron, if you will. After a thunderclap of symbols
and the soaring of various horns and strings to underscore the film's title card, we then cut
to the signature multi-plane camera dollying shot that usually acts as the introduction to Disney's
films. And - it is with this shot - the roaring orchestra from the title card now replaced with a solitary,  
gently humming flute accompanied by the bright chirping of birds - that nearly all semblance
to Disney's well-established aesthetic and aural trademarks...ends.
The apprehensive strings are re-introduced with the cut away from our establishing shot and,
as we're taken into  this quaint cottage, we're introduced to our protagonist - but not before
we're introduced to his care-taker. The first line of dialogue in the film, "Something's wrong.",
delivered in his brooding, elderly voice, awakens a cat and - following its lead - the camera
departs from the darkened corner we've taken up residence in - panning over to the sun-drenched center
of the room, and more importantly, over to Dallben - just as he says the name of the film's antagonist.
(The Horned King clip, audio fade i/o)
After a little more brooding and another slow pan, this time following the cat and Dallben both,
we cut to our first shot of Taran - our boy-hero protagonist - staring longingly into the sunlight, paying no
heed to his darkened surroundings or the cauldron, presumably one that he was left in charge of, that
has begun to boil over just a few feet away from him. A candid portrait...of youth. Once Dallben
has managed to sieze him away from his day-dreaming, Taran not only immediately forgets to
do what he was asked - instead proposing worriedly that he might not get a chance to fight
against The Horned King, who Dallben just ended a very anxious monologue about -
but he then burns his hand on the already-forgotten cauldron and is reminded, once then
and again with Dallben's particularly foreshadowing response to it, of the folly of untried bravery -
before being assigned his chores for the day, cuing us in to the next scene - one that both introduces
us to the prophetic plot device pig, Hen-Wen, and re-iterates Taran's youthful naivete.
Discontent with his humdrum life as an assistant pig-keeper,  
Taran quickly submerges himself in another daydream, acting out a courageous stick sword fight,
until he's knocked to the ground and quickly found by Dallben who, laughing away Taran's
hastily pieced together excuse, tells him to give Hen-Wen a bath - and herein
lies The Black Cauldron's next significant  step away from the classic Disney formula.
Our dream-obsessed boytagonist puts his adorable forest friend in a bath as his affable care-taker
exits stage left, and if Disney has taught us anything about cinema it's that this is prime time  
musical number real estate. But - as we boil over in anticipation to hear our young lead
bear his soul to the high heavens - he just...talks. And nothing else happens.
Not only is there no musical number, there's no music during this moment - at all.
Where the John Hudson Elder Scrolls intro monologue and the antagonist's name being
The Horned King were just signs, this  quiet moment - denying even our basest of instincts that
have been developed and nurtured over Disney's past 24 feature releases and 50 years leading up to it -
is a giant flashing billboard with pyrotechnics above it periodically spelling out "not that kind of movie"
in morse code. And before we're able to even process our circumvented expectations, this happens.
(Hen-Wen bathtub meltdown clip)
The uneasy strings return a third time and  accompanying them is a chorus of terrified squeals.
As Dallben rushes out and beckons Taran back to the cottage, we return to a now blackened interior and
are given the big reveal of Hen-Wen's powers - Taran and Hen-Wen's following, hastened departure
book-ending the front-loaded exposition sequence for our coming adventure. The only thing  we truly
know by this point being what to  fear -  and this is communicated to us through our King's Quest stand-in
by Dallben's reminder that being a courageous protagonist doesn't guarantee you clemency from death,
much less a king that...commands it. So - the star players so far are Taran and The Horned King, and,
if we've learned anything about T Grizzly from our first 8 minutes with him, it's that he's almost
100% going to lose Hen-Wen within the next two scenes.
(Taran losing Hen-Wen w/ text "within the next two scenes")
Before we're able to find out, though, the film cuts to another darkly lit, low angle shot - this time of a terribly
grim and commanding keep, bearing resemblance to the castles of Disney's past only in its extreme
sheerness - existing otherwise as a singularly foreboding structure within its lineage - accentuated perfectly
by the spine-chilling strings and musical saw of Bernstein's composition suddenly erupting in an
uproarious crash of symbols and horns as we're taken into  The Horned King's keep.  
The thunderous orchestral piece that had been gaining momentum as we faded in to the keep's interior,
suddenly comes to a screeching halt with the film's next transition - a static shot of lustrous, blood red - assailed
on all sides by shadows. Rather than entering from the left or right of frame, the Horned King's blackened
silhouette penetrates from below - and the intimacy of this debut relative to the comfortable distance kept by the
other character introductions throughout the film - instills a tremendous amount of discomfort and fear with
considerable haste. In this following shot, we're introduced to his achingly cold, almost frostbitten voice as it reverberates
through the open hall of corpses that he stands amidst - and it is with this menacing monologue that we are
given our last drops of exposition for the film. Precisely as John Huston told us, and as an answer
to Dallben's question from his introduction - The Horned King means to capture The Black Cauldron
and, harnessing its awesome power, raise an army of undead warriors to wreak havoc among the living.
So - within the first 10 minutes of its run-time, The Black Cauldron  has already exhibited
a beautiful diversity in artistic influence and an assuredly refreshing attention to detail - both
in its visuals and its soundscapes - between the comforting and pleasant lines, colors,
and sounds of Caer Dallben - and the incredibly rigid, dramatic, and sharp line-work - accompanied by the
especially dramatic lighting and disquieting music - of The Horned King's keep. And - it's within this
introductory sequence that one detail in particular makes the world of Prydain and the lives that
our characters have lived within it - feel a great deal more believable. There's barely...any food.
Uh - I mean, there is some  food, it's acknowledged as a necessity a number of times throughout the first few minutes
of the film, but between Dallben's reluctance to eat, the food they do have being an unappetizing slop even
to the animals, and Taran only being given a very small slice of bread and an apple as he departs for a perilous,
multiple day minimum, might-never-return journey - as well as the severity of his reaction when the apple is taken
from him soon after this - all point to this world being one that is sincerely perilous.  The sole
instance of food being enjoyed in abundance throughout the entire film, in fact, taking place within The Horned
King's own banquet hall. Uh, sure, there is a bushel of apples sat outside of Dallben and Taran's cottage for a grand total
of one shot, but their being laid outside - away  from the food the characters are interacting with - is  an
important distinction as well. They aren't indulging in their excess because the food, more than likely, is not for
them.  Rations and crop taxes, especially in times of great war like the one taking place off-screen,  exist  to
these characters(!). Though the good and their lack of indulgence juxtaposed against the evil and their
gluttony may be be a relatively minute detail, paling in comparison to the many wondrous set pieces and action
sequences throughout most of the film, it is this  eccentricity that I would argue aids  The Black Cauldron in
separating itself from its familial bonds and presenting a living, breathing world, the most.
Uh, speaking of detailed environments and The Horned King's keep, I think now
would be a good time to talk animation, special effects, aaaand editing.
(Segment Card: Red Dead Re-Drawers)
Alright, so, remember earlier when we talked about the whole 12 minutes of completed
footage being cut from the film thing? Right - so - turns out doing something like that leaves
some pretty gaping holes in your film's story. Not just narratively, but visually as well.
Many of the  shots cut from the originally completed Black Cauldron were transition shots or
shots which contained too much violence  to stay at the PG rating that Katz and the gang were
gunning for. The problem with this, or at least the greatest of many problems with it,
is that without some of these sequences being re-animated - The Black Cauldron would
have released as a mostly incoherent sequence of disconnected moments. So - the last year of the film's
production saw the re-animation of some of these shots, but with brevity being vastly favored over
quality. And - the result is a film that is mostly coherent - at least from a narrative perspective -
but one that features a myriad of visual inconsistencies.
Uh - here, actually - this is one of my favorite examples.
This is the introduction of Gurgi - when Taran, in his search for Hen-Wen,
is assailed from above and then robbed of his apple by the forbidden forest's favorite dog-child.
Keep an eye on Gurgi's color and his line-art.
(clip - Gurgi introduction)
Got it? Alright, we'll pin that up right here.
Now let's watch Gurgi's second appearance - only 3 minutes later.
(clip - Gurgi warns Taran)
Notice anything? Gurgi's fur from this point until the end of the film is noticeably desaturated
in comparison to his introduction, regardless of lighting - and with this re-emergence to
warn Taran of the dangers awaiting him in the Horned King's keep, his outline  changes as well -
from this olive-blue we originally saw to a solid black like the rest of the cast - for the rest of the film.
Oh - here's another example. One of the most eviscerated sequences in the entire film
is the Cauldron Born sequence near its conclusion, which in its original state had infamously
caused Disney's test screening to be stormed out of by almost every child and parent in the audience.
Watch this.
(clip - Cauldron Born jump)
Half eyes, no eyes, then - full eyes.
  An ocean lies between the first two shots and the latter third shot, in terms of quality,
but what makes this inconsistency so compelling  is how and why this was changed to begin with.
So - first of all - these two shots are not a character appearance and then a following cut on action
of that same character. The first skeleton is wearing an iron helmet and has faintly glowing pupils that
a few  of the Cauldron Born are pictured with. After the cut, second skeleton emerges
with a cracked skull wearing leather armor with no  helmet. This is because this sequence  where the
Cauldron Born emerge and quickly kill and then resurrect The Horned King's living soldiers as more Cauldron
Born, is  supposed to have lasted way, way way way, way  longer. All three of these shots take place in different
areas of the  keep  and all three of the human soldier reaction shots are of different groups of men.
The first two are cut together to give the impression this is one skeleton, lunging forward
and allowing the skeletons in the third shot to follow-through on this movement. The scene
is pieced together this way and its third shot was hurriedly redrawn, because every sequence that
takes place within  The Horned King's keep throughout the film  originally featured remarkably
violent moments. During Taran's original escape from the castle he actually kills a number of
soldiers with his magic sword, and in the original version of this Cauldron Born awakening
sequence - a skeleton slices a soldier's throat open and this trio of Cauldron-Born are not only pictured
leaping onto the terrified men, but the film cuts  to a shot of the two men's skin boiling, melting,
and decomposing as they scream - leaving only their bones to bolster the forces of the Cauldron-Born.
The film was actually so  graphic and so consistently committed to its macabre aesthetic in its original form that,
if it had remained untouched, and had Joe Hale been able to release the film his team had struggled so much to create -  
The Black Cauldron would have made history as the  first Disney animated feature to receive an R rating.
More than cutting violence, though, Katzenburg forced Hale and Disney to cut out entire interactions.
When Taran is first imprisoned within the keep, lines that he'd said to Dallben echo in his mind
before he picks up a conspicuously light rock and clacks it against the stone wall behind him.
The only problem is Taran never said  some of those lines in the final cut we were given.
Another example is here - when Fflewddur and Eilonwy meet Gurgi for the first time.
Notice how he completely changes the direction he was facing and how Eilowny lets out two
differently pitched sighs, one right after another? There's an entire sentence that was cut out
of this interaction, leaving only a disjointed series of sighs and Gurgi snapping over 100 degrees.
In fact, this sequence, in which the trio - following their escape - fall into an argument  and temporarily
split from one another - was originally much longer as well. That's why the scene begins  as Fflewddur is
reaching the end  of a song he's written - and why Eilonwy seems to giggle in bizarrely quick succession
throughout this conversation. Perhaps the most grievous of these cuts, though,  is the removal of the
fellowship's reaction when the cauldron erupts from the ground in Morva - before the trio of Witches
mock them for their inability to destroy it.
(clip - Cauldron Del. Scenes P 1 storybook)
This  is exactly the kind of scene that Hale and Disney tried in vain to save...in their first cut.
It  perfectly captures the unshackled, youthful vigor that our unlikely fellowship
is bound together with and - is a reaction that is both gratifying and expected  given
the immeasurable terrors we know the Black Cauldron can unleash. Denying its viewers
another glimpse of unrestrained and foolhardy and desperate action saps the sequence of
  its tension and momentum - leaving a hole more noticeable to its audience than any
minute jump in the score or short desync with the ADR ever could - even though this
exclusion(?) left neither in its wake. And - that's the true pity about The Black Cauldron.
Even with  so much of it cut and re-sewn together, pieces of its second act being ripped
from its foundations and placed in the first act to be used as a character introduction,
  awkwardly floaty movements feeling as if they were slowed down to fill the length of a shot and unnecessarily
rigid ones feeling like they were sped up to shave run-time, the film still manages to retain nearly all of
its spirit and is - to me - a wonderful and enchanting watch - but the few instances where it truly  suffers  
from these cuts are instances that didn't actually  need  to be taken out and are ones that we know
wouldn't  have been had Katzenburg just left Disney and Hale to finish their film, or at least relented
after they cut their first 6 minutes. There is no issue of pacing or strong display of violence that could bump
up its rating to PG-13 and make it harder to market to kids by including this, and it's at most an
additional 20 seconds of run-time - but what is lost  is one of the most candid expressions of who
our characters are and who they are written for  in the film.
(sad exhale)
But, despite its inconsistencies, The Black Cauldron truly was the Snow White of its time.
The animation on display throughout a majority of its run-time is some of the most fluid
and convincing movement I've ever seen copied to a cel, and the intensity of its special effects -
as well as its use of early CG  - amplify an already electrifying and at times nightmarish film
to create one of the most visually arresting experiences that Disney has ever given us.
The fervency of Hen-Wen's desperate sprint that we're given a birds eye view of,
and the ferocity and strength captured in the Dragon's impact with both the ground and her,
are even more agonizing and imposing than the screams she lets out in response to it.
The decrepitness and the terrible strength still lying beneath The Horned King's hands
as he effortlessly shatters a chalice or crushes Creeper's wind-pipe as well as
his slow but deliberate foot-steps instill a greater, much deeper fear in the hearts of
The Black Cauldron's audience than any other Disney villain from any Disney era.
It is a film so convincing in its depiction of the slow decay and terrible strength of death
and of life's thunderous and unrelenting charge against it that even in its eviscerated form it
remains Disney's scariest animated feature - as well as one of its most technologically
progressive. Having realized the potential for computer imagery fairly soon after its
introduction to film, Don Griffith and Joe Hale pulled the CG  team  from The Great Mouse
Detective and, with their help, brought to life the whimsical, iridescent bauble of
Eilonwy's - as well the Black Cauldron itself and the terrible flames that it belches forth
during the climactic conclusion of the film. The Black Cauldron's special effects team brought
such  blinding and intense and chilling images to the screen that its visuals were without equal  in
animated features until long after the film was released. Every glowing strike of lightning from Taran's
sword, every dancing cauldron in the witch's hovel, every Faire Folk's delicate flight,  and every sibylline
sequence of Hen-Wen's watery visions sets an incredibly high benchmark  that even contemporary animated
films feel like they either struggle to reach or don't try to reach - at all.  It feels as excited and eager  to lean in to the
future as it does boldly defiant of the arbitrary  standards and expectations projected upon it by the family it belongs to.
It is to me - 45 years after its production began and 33 years after its release -
still Disney's most sincerely and singularly youthful film.
Which brings me to characterization.
(segment card: Youth In Revolt)
The Black Cauldron came out during a time when the theatrical and retail markets
for adolescents was at an all-time high thanks to a little known remake of The Hidden Fortress
and needless to say a lot of board members at the House of Mouse wanted in. We may
have been given a cottage window instead of a binary sunset but no mater how you cut it Taran
is the closest Disney ever came to owning their own Luke Skywalker until they owned Luke Skywalker -
and this is where, narratively, The Black Cauldron doesn't just shine - but is paradoxically helped
by its relationships and personalities being underdeveloped as a result of Katzenburg's forced cuts.
Uh - hear me out.
In the original Black Cauldron there's a moment when Taran and Eilonwy nearly
kiss on accident,  before their almost-kiss near the end,  and it is just after a longer
version of their argument following their escape from The Horned King's keep.
In the original cut of the film, obviously, there is a clearer and more reasonable
catalyst for their disagreement to build into an argument and the discourse itself
lasts slightly longer before provoking Eilonwy and Taran's very strong emotional
reactions. However, in The Black Cauldron that we were given, this entire argument
from beginning to escalation to eruption to end takes something like 50 seconds.
Eilonwy questions if Taran really wasn't scared of the thing he was obviously scared of,
Taran says she's just a girl so what does she know, and Eilonwy understandably wants to hit him
in the face for it. The original version of this argument sounds like a believable interaction between adults, and
that's kind of the  problem. Or, would be a problem, if this was the version of them and their relationship
we were given. Because - Taran is only 14 and Eilonwy is only 12 - their relationship
as friends, let alone love interests,  being one that is immature and awkward and one that
seemingly makes very little progress by the end of the film  is...believable. It feels genuine.
I am overwhelmingly more inclined to trust that adolescents would very quickly erupt
into a fight and then just as quickly resolve it or spend very little time trying
to foster a romantic relationship despite their obviously mutual affection
because they are kids. More than just believable, it's  consistent.
The 4 protagonists of the film - Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewddur, and Gurgi -
are each introduced to us as a distinctly childish and innocent person in an
otherwise fairly serious and perilous world. Taran daydreams of being a great warrior,
spending most of the first 10 minutes of the film pining for the day he becomes the greatest
hero in all of Prydain.  When Eilonwy finds Taran in his cell, she immediately asks
in a very playful tone whether he's a lord or a warrior - as if they're playing a game -
and it's never made clear either by her own elaboration or by her behavior whether she's
actually  a princess or just pretending to be. When we're introduced to Fflewddur,
soon after,  it's immediately made clear  to us that he is playing pretend,
his magical harp breaking one of its string with each of Fflewddur's lies about his
renown and talent as a bard. The few occasions throughout the film that do  necessitate him
to act like an adult, being ones that he initially fumbles and stutters in response to -
and when he finally does  find his footing - the delivery of his lines along with his body language
feel very much like a child that has worked up the courage to say what they think an adult would say.
The one time in the film he successfully taps into and stays in his adulthood being
when he quotes the only other adult characters he's met in the film  as a rebuke to them.
And finally, Gurgi - who spends the entirety of the film mishandling his excitement
and affection for a new friend - misinterpreting and internalizing Taran's brief flashes
of anger and - misunderstanding the worth of his possessions beyond his own limited scope -
even trying to exchange an apple core for an ancient, all-powerful weapon of death.
Neither Gurgi, or Fflewddur, or Eilonway, or Taran truly occupy a previously established trope
within the Disney canon, and - instead - exist as youths in revolt against not just  the The Horned King's
tyrannical grasp over Prydain, but against the generational expectations placed upon their young
shoulders - as well. The Black Cauldron's characters and the under-development of
them and  their relationships are as defiant to the ideas of "legacy" and "expectation"
as youth is to antiquity, or, as a fire is...to the cold.
And now, for my favorite part - where I come back to the start and tell you why The Black
Cauldron isn't just a Halloween movie, but why it's the best  Halloween movie I've ever seen.
Watch this.
(segment card: Full Circle)
Halloween is a festival of death, contrived as a bulwark against the creeping march
of Winter and the forces of decay that it brings. But, to stay Winter's tireless stride,
the Gaels knew what a lot of people - especially many of the executives and critics of the 1980's that
The Black Cauldron premiered to - seemed to have forgotten. The only way to truly triumph against
the unrelenting tides of decrepitude, is to invoke their most resolute and uncompromising adversary.
Youth.
Their immense bonfires, and flame-adorned hearths, as well as the candles
carried by the young to light their paths - were thought of as wards and harbors
of protection against the encroaching, frigid waves - of Winter.
Paragons of the sun's powers and the properties of them;
Warmth, and brilliance, and growth. And, in this respect, I struggle to think of
a greater exemplar of what Halloween truly represents  than The Black Cauldron.
Just as the Gaels knew that the  only means of defense against atrophy and the hastened
approach of death was not just to pay reverence to their past but to meet the
advancing forces of ruin head-on with a clamorous cavalry of warmth and youth, so  too
did Joe Hale and the countless budding, bright-eyed artists that he stood at the helm of.
Every pencil stroke, every paint brush, every word, and every note of The Black Cauldron, in
its original form, and even moreso in the maimed echo of it that we were given, embody -
without a single instance of hesitation - not only the thematic properties of Halloween but
the spirit  - behind it. And it is with great ease that it meets all 5 of our criteria, or
anyone else's that I was able to find, to be admitted into the holiday's celebratory cinematic canon.
Its juxtaposition between the brilliant light and warmth of Prydain's forests, with their glowing
landscapes of lush greens, argent yellows, and glistening oranges, accompanied by their scintillating
sound-scapes and gentle flutes, against the suppressive darkness and the biting cold of The
Horned King's Keep and Morva, with their lurid purples, their fathomless blues, and their stygian blacks -
as well as their toxic greens and their tormenting reds, underlined by an unwary and at times screeching
assortment of thundering horns, crashing symbols, and whaling strings, perfectly reflect the transition
from Autumn...to Winter. And the endless conflict that these two seasons have always been entrenched within.
The Black Cauldron's characters, in all of their childish stumbling, foolish bravery, and emotional regression,
exist as gleaming reflections of the warmth and liveliness and youth that the Gaels so long ago knew to be
the only true defense against the cold and decay of antiquity. And - they're complimented all the more
by the film's own production struggles - not just in that the cut development of their personalities actually
accentuates their childlike audaciousness and lack of emotional refinement, but in that The Black Cauldron itself's
conception and unyielding struggle against both Disney's newly appointed leadership and timeless identity,
  directly mirrors  Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewddur, and Gurgi's youthful defiance to the decay and ruination of the antiquated
forces that had pushed their world to the precipice of its doom. For a Kingdom that was once the crowned jewel
of the world of animation, an institution synonymous with not only joy but innovation, The Black Cauldron
was a resounding charge against the decades of stagnation and cold and decay that had begun to suffocate the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - and drive its people from its lands.
Most people like to say that The Black Cauldron was the film that almost  killed Disney - and I  used  to be one of them  
(clip from TP vid where I say dat)
But - now I know...that I was wrong.
In fact, I think it is precisely  this heavy, and dark, and sinister, and rebellious, and soft, and loutish,
and boisterous, and dream-filled production that saved  Disney...from its own Winter - and ushered in a dawn brighter
than anything that Walt and Roy, or the Nine Old Men, or Bluth, or even the critics that so fiercely besieged it, could have
ever imagined. The Black Cauldron was the genesis of a Renaissance and, although its chances of finding any box office
success were crippled by the management above it and even though it was kept from home video until 13 years after
its release following Katzenberg's departure from the company, I think that...The Black Cauldron unmitigatedly
succeeded in what it set out to do. Taran and the film's supporting characters refused to conform to the formulaic,
romance-obsessed films of Disney's past and the tired, coming-of-age abandonment of their  fantasies that
coming of age films were  so insistent upon - electing, rather, to brazenly embrace their dreams and, wielding their childish
adoration of magical artifacts and the images of courageous warriors and exhilarant princesses and celebrated entertainers
as a divining rod, manage not only to navigate through a perilous world of undying soldiers and grizzly dragons
and demonic kings,  but they manage to become  the very things they dreamt of or deluded themselves into
thinking they would be - as well. The Black Cauldron was  its generation's Sleeping Beauty - because its creators
believed that it would be. It is a film that reminds us that our fantasies and our aspirations are things that
do not have  to be outgrown. We are not beholden to the structures or institutions of the past beyond whatever reverence we have for them, and nothing  - whether it be the magical forces of an ancient artifact or decades of expectations bearing down upon us, can ever make us give up  what we wish to become. And I can't think of a better holiday for it to represent, than
one that is celebrated by children and adults alike to - for one night - become who we see ourselves as when we
glimpse into the scrying glass or gaze into a pool of oracular water. Nor can I think of a feature more re-affirming
of the fact that our reflections are never really  that far from what we dreamt of when we were young.
Because, when I was young,
("when I was young-" cuts - all except 3)
(full "I wanted to be" x3)
I wanted to be a storyteller.
And, for the past couple of years, I've kind of been one - thanks to you.
Happy Halloween.
(segment card: Outro)
Hey! Thanks for watching.
Big big big thank you to my Patrons for making this video possible, uh,
especially these guys, and a very special thank you to;