From the Vault :: The Lord of the Rings (1978)

Forget that it only encompasses the first two books, forget that I said “it was all we had back then” on the radio, and forget how lame the Balrog looked, Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of JRR Tolkein’s incomparable fantasy trilogy was innovative, spooky and pretty trippy too. Since adding this to the roster I’ve been saying the word rotoscoping several times a day, as Bakshi’s technique of animating over top of pictures of dudes wearing weird hats and masks is what gives the orcs their creepy appearance.

Made in a creepy time when studios didn’t think people would go see a movie with the words “Part 1″ in the title, there really had been an intention to tell the rest of the story in a second film, the plans were halted after critics slammed the production. At the very least it rekindled interest in Tolkein’s work and sparked the production of the entire trilogy on BBC radio, something I’ll have to listen to one of these days when I’m recovering from eye surgery or something.

My one real issue with this movie is the same one I had with the books: The Pool of Galadriel. Seriously, why does Galadriel refer to her reflection pool as The Pool of Galadriel. That’s like me calling my backpack “The Satchel of Steve”. It’s like twice as strange as refering to yourself in the third person, Steve thinks that’s so weird when people do that. Since they do the same thing in the book, at least they’re staying faithful to the source material.

Something to look out for: There are some shots in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings that are culled directly from Bakshi’s version. One that comes to mind immediately is the “Proudfeet!” line at Bilbo’s birthday party.