The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron (1985) is Disney's 25th animated feature and you can watch it online on iFILM. Directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich pushed into darker territory than the studio had dared before — there are no comic sidekicks carrying the tension, and the villain means business.

Taran is a young pig-keeper with a head full of warrior fantasies and a very real problem: his magical oracular pig Hen Wen can reveal the hiding place of the Black Cauldron, an ancient artifact the Horned King (voiced by John Hurt) wants to use to raise an unstoppable army of the dead. When Hen Wen is captured, Taran sets off on a rescue mission that pulls in a princess, a would-be bard, and a strange furry creature called Gurgi. The quest grows bigger and more dangerous than anything he imagined.

The film used early computer-generated imagery for certain sequences, placing it at the edge of what animation technology could do in the mid-1980s. Watch The Black Cauldron (1985) online on iFILM in good quality.