The most distinguished element of this medium-rated Disney animation, from a Tolkien-like series by Lloyd Alexander, is the solemn intonation of narrator John Huston. Otherwise, it's standard stuff about likeable teenagers (of course!) trying to stop the Horned King and co from using a magic cauldron to raise an Army of the Dead. As sword and sorcery goes, it's potboiling stuff.

Taran is an assistant pigkeeper with boyish dreams of becoming a great warrior. However, he has to put the daydreaming aside when his charge, an oracular pig named Hen Wen, is kidnapped by an evil lord known as the Horned King. The villain hopes Hen will show him the way to The Black Cauldron, which has the power to create a giant army of unstoppable soldiers.