..and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for special effects, cinematography, story, acting, dialog. Like those two it is an adventure movie, people who find themselves swept into something beyond their comprehension and like nothing they expected. Like the first two movies its ending is somewhat ambiguous, I still haven't figured out the end to 2001 and 20,000 Leagues ends with Vulcania going up in a mushroom shaped cloud and our heroes in a small boat in the vastness of the Pacific. IMHO the special effects hold up, I note the movie has a film noir feel to it, the blackness of space means so much of the action takes place in darkness or shadows and has a claustrophobic feel to it. Reinhardt is Captain Nemo in space-the two actors even resemble each other. Brilliant gifted men who have gone over the edge, think the rules of human conduct no longer apply to them, and have their obsession. Nemo had "that hated nation", Reinhardt the Black Hole, Nemo has his henchman the Mate, Reinhardt Maxximilian. And like Morbius in Forbidden Planet they have lived away from society so long that while they can still follow the form of civility you get the feeling they deeply resent intrusions into their private realms. The movies contains some of my favorite lines. When Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) is asked "Didn't you meet Dr. Reinhardt he replies "Collided with him is more like it !" And when Booth meets Reinhardt on the Cyngus, far from being awed by him he notes how Reinhardt conned the space agency into spending vast sums on what seemed to be a fiasco and a boondoggle.
Review of The Black Hole
