Buy The Black Cauldron: 25th Anniversary DVD from Amazon.com DVD Details
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French, Spanish)
Subtitles: English for Hearing Impaired, French, Spanish
Closed Captioned; Extras Subtitled and Captioned
Release Date: September 14, 2010
Single-sided, dual-layered disc (DVD-9)
Suggested Retail Price: $19.99
Black Keepcase Mickey And Friends Happy Halloween Decorative Flag
VIDEO and AUDIO
One of Disney's few very wide features, The Black Cauldron appears exclusively in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16:9 displays as it should have been but wasn't its first time on DVD. Picture quality is pretty terrific. The colors are rich and vibrant. The element is clean and stable. The film's backgrounds are especially impressive, so much so that at times the characters look a bit flat and disconnected from their spectacular surroundings. The transfer here is far superior to that of the 2000 Gold Collection DVD. There is little doubt that the movie looks as good as it could and should on DVD.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is also a delight. You can tell that Disney was putting more thought into multi-channel sound design by 1985, for the track has depth and directionality that the studio's earlier features either lacked or received by later remix. The closest thing to a drawback here is that character dialogue feels a little quiet in comparison to its environment. It remains crisp and intelligible, but its volume could be a little higher. One of the nicest features of the soundtrack is its presentation of Elmer Bernstein's top-notch score, which reminds me quite a bit of the music he wrote for Ghostbusters around the same time. The haunting sound, employing Bernstein's beloved French instrument the ondes Martenot, is befitting of the material, and easily distinguishes it from other Disney works.
King Eidilleg is none too hospitable in this deleted alternate version of the gang's introduction to The Fairfolk. Tim Burton received no credit on this film (his last at Disney until "The Nightmare Before Christmas") but his creepy concept art is preserved in the gallery. I'm not sure that producer Joe Hale and directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich watching the movie along with their characters qualifies as a true "Behind the Scenes" image, but it's cool all the same.
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http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/196/full/1285602760_6.jpg - 25th
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BONUS FEATURES, MENUS and PACKAGING
The Black Cauldron may be celebrating a milestone with this new DVD, but its light bonus features slate clearly puts it in the same class as Disney's second-tier works like Robin Hood, The Aristocats, and The Great Mouse Detective. At least we get a couple of new extras added to the handful preserved from the movie's Gold Collection DVD.
First and most significant is the new deleted scene "The Fairfolk" (9:49), which is more like an extended alternate sequence. This largely stays true to the part in the film itself, only utilizing pencil animation (with a touch of storyboards) and what sounds like original recordings.
The elongations contain exposition and depict Fflewddur Fflam's reluctance. Meanwhile, King Eidilleg is less helpful and more confrontational and focal here. This is cool to see, but fans of Black Cauldron know that the film has other dark deleted scenes, cut shortly before release by now-DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg. I guess we can't be surprised that they're not included here.
A fast and easy to navigate Still Frame Gallery offers the usual smattering of imagery: Visual Development (33 stills), Character Development (31 stills), Behind the Scenes (7 stills), Voice Talent (
, Layouts and Backgrounds (9), Tokyo Disneyland (8 stills illustrating the film's climactic role in the park's exclusive Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour), and Promotion (
. There's some interesting stuff here, including far-out concept art and Tim Burton designs.
In your "Quest for The Black Cauldron", you've got to answer some trivia questions to get there before The Horned King. Da da da da DA DA! Charge! No, "The Witches' Challenge" doesn't ask you to convert old Welsh doghouses into Targets, just find the objects of their coy riddles.
Two games are offered. Carried over from the original DVD is "Quest for The Black Cauldron", which offers trivia about the movie's plot. Whether you choose the East Path or the West Path, play proceeds in a similar, clunky fashion, with you answering simple 3-choice questions. Get them right, and you're treated to amusingly random celebratory noises (cat calls, church bells, baseball stadium organ "Charge!"). Four wrong, though, and the Horned King catches you and you've got to start all over. Reach your destination and your prize is the Donald Duck short film Trick or Treat, which otherwise can be accessed from the menu. Hmm.
The second game is the all-new "The Witches' Challenge", which has you looking in four places for the items that answer the Witches of Morva's riddles. Three wrong answers and you lose. It's quite a bit tougher than your typical set-top activity (the counterintuitive navigation doesn't help), but I can't imagine most of the movie's fans being interested by this. There is no reward for beating it.
In the bonus 1952 animated Disney short "Trick or Treat", Witch Hazel teams with Huey, Dewey, and Louie to get back at their prankster uncle Donald Duck. With a smiling Gurgi in a bright forest, you might say that the 25th Anniversary DVD's happy main menu misrepresents the dark film it holds.
Last but not least is the aforementioned 1952 animated short Trick or Treat (8:14), in which real witch Hazel teams up with Huey, Dewey, and Louie to scare their Uncle Donald into giving them treats, not tricks. It's a fine short whose inclusion lends weight to Disney's customary classifying of this movie as a Halloween title.
The second page extras are nothing more than the Sprouse brothers' Blu-ray pitch and your one-minute guide to digital copies, neither of which bears any relevance to this release.
The FastPlay-enhanced disc loads with promos for Disney Blu-ray, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue, Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition, and a movie Disney has no idea how to market (which you might recognize as Tangled).
No longer individually accessible but playing after these via the menu listing, the second batch of "Sneak Peeks" promote Disney Movie Rewards, Genuine Disney Treasure, Oceans and The Crimson Wing, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, A Christmas Carol, and D23.
Despite the inclusion of all these trailers for other things, Black Cauldron's own theatrical preview, included on its first DVD, has been disappointingly dropped.
About as a cheery and childish as it could be, the DVD's animated main menu features Gurgi, Doli, and colorful birds popping up while some of Elmer Bernstein's score plays. If FastPlay is activated, the cycle repeats if you watch the menu for more than a minute.
As if to distinguish The Black Cauldron as a second-rate title among second-rate classics, Disney skips the obligatory cardboard slipcover for the first time in a long time. The black uncut Eco-Box keepcase holds a Disney Movie Rewards code and an ad promoting Blu-ray. The back of the case loudly identifies the DVD as "1-Disc", as if that is a selling point.
Fflewddur Fflam, Taran, and Eilonwy are delighted to meet the flying, glow-in-the-dark Fairfolk on the other side of the whirlpool.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The underrated The Black Cauldron offers a different kind of Disney fantasy. It's not perfect, but it's a compelling achievement all the same. The 25th Anniversary DVD delivers some much-needed improvement in the film's presentation, providing practically impeccable picture and sound. The bonus features aren't much (and a wag of the finger for dropping the trailer), but the price is low enough to justify an overdue first-time purchase or an upgrade for anyone interested.