he evil Horned King wants to rule the world, and there's only one way to accomplish this goal: harness the spirit of the Black Cauldron and make it his own. "Whosoever uses the Black Cauldron will be all-powerful," says the curse, but he has to find it first. To that end, he searches for any magic that can help him discover the cauldron's hiding place -- magic like the "oracular pig" Hen Wen. He'll go to any lengths to find first the pig, then the cauldron. He doesn't care what kind of death and destruction he wreaks; the world is his to do with as he wishes. And he wishes to own it. His role as the evil Horned King was not John Hurt's first foray into animation. The well-known British actor also provided voices for the 1978 feature "Watership Down" and its 1982 follow-up, "The Plague Dogs." The character of the Horned King is actually a relatively minor one in "The Chronicles of Prydain," the books on which the film is based. Joe Hale (producer) once explained the Horned King's promotion to the main villain in "The Black Cauldron": "We thought he would make a good animation character mainly because he had horns sticking out of his head."