25 of the creepiest Disney movies ever made

The Black Hole (Image via Walt Disney Productions)

22. The Black Hole

Disney went through a truly strange time in the 1970s. The 1979 live-action film, The Black Hole, is perhaps the epitome of that utter weirdness. Disney would have to wrangle with the effects of their 1970s era for nearly a decade until the success of The Little Mermaid in 1989.

The Black Hole opens with the crew of the spaceship USS Palomino returning to Earth after a long deep space mission. They happen upon the USS Cygnus, a ship long thought to be lost, hovering improbably near a black hole. The Cygnus, under the command of Dr. Hans Reinhardt, is in some sort of gravity field. The Palomino crew investigates. Their ship is damaged by the intense gravity of the black hole, and so they are effectively stranded with Dr. Reinhardt.

Reinhardt is apparently the only human on board; he claims to have lived alone there for years. However, he is accompanied by ultra-creepy robot androids, clad in black robes and with featureless faceplates. At one point, crewmembers see a robot funeral. Eventually, it’s revealed that the “robots” are actually previous crewmembers, who were lobotomized by Dr. Reinhardt when they refuse to follow him through the black hole.

Believe it or not, that’s not even the strangest part of The Black Hole. After some frantic escape attempts, both Reinhardt and the remaining Palomino crew are pulled through the black hole. Instead of being crushed into insignificance, however, they are subjected to a deeply trippy sequence. First, they travel through a hellish landscape – where there might be a robot devil – and then follow an angelic figure through a crystal tunnel. The remaining crew members emerge from a “white hole” and are last seen flying towards an unknown planet.