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And...nobody questions this.

Meanwhile, Reinhardt spends his time speaking in grand, sweeping proclamations filled with out of context bible quotes and nonsensical, made-up techno-jargon. Obviously, something is very wrong aboard the Cygnus. But because they are also characters in this movie, nobody else has the presence of mind to start asking hard questions when it becomes clear that Reinhardt is batshit insane. In fact, our heroes never do anything heroic until it's nearly too late to act, after it was clear they should have made the opposite decision to begin with. Once it becomes clear they should probably leave, they do so with all the urgency of someone who’s put off by the color of the carpet, instead of people who are terrified by human tragedy.

It's hard to root for people who continue to place themselves in obvious danger simply because the people who wrote the story couldn't think of a more believable way to create tension. This is the film’s greatest flaw.

Despite the obvious danger, the good guys blather in stilted, fake sounding sentences meant to sound brilliant, but instead are closer to the way I assume stupid people THINK brilliant people speak. When they discover the black hole, our science geniuses stand there gaping at it, spouting painfully forced banalities about quantum science and medieval literature. It’s like a nerd pissing contest to see who paid the most attention in class today. By the time they come across the Cygnus, McCrae is babbling something about the ship's mission to “discover habitable life.”

Wait, what? Did she really say that? Yes, she did, and this is the point you first begin to consider the possibility that The Black Hole is, in fact, going to be a bad film.

Borgnine's character is supposed to be an embedded reporter (newspapers apparently still exist in the 22nd century) who never actually reports on anything. He just sort of hangs around in the background, complaining and making stupid suggestions, while contributing nothing to the expedition. This is because The Black Hole is the kind of story that requires someone to make a very specifically stupid decision at a critical point late in the film, artificially extending the runtime another 15 minutes. Tough guy Robert Forster cuts a dashing figure as commander of the Palomino, but he looks like he knows he should be in a different movie, throwing haymakers at Paul Newman on top of a water tower or something.

Anthony Perkins was much more talented than he’s often given credit for, but you’d never know it here. He looks half an hour out of major dental surgery, slack jawed and completely unable to emote, even as his character develops a major man-crush on Reinhardt. Yvette Mimieux is as pretty as her name, but is without question the weak link in the cast, from an acting standpoint. And as the only woman in a science fiction film, her only real purpose is to be The Psychic, always pestering everyone with her whiny psychic observations. This ability also inexplicably allows her to communicate telepathically with Vincent because shut up, it just does. And the saddest thing about that is that it's clearly just a lazy plot contrivance to get everyone out of trouble whenever the radio goes out.

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