Up next on our animation retrospective, is something from a director that I do have many things to talk about—Ralph Bakshi, whose output, varied though it was, could never be described as ‘forgettable’. Bakshi started off as a trainee under Disney, but soon split off to venture into his own trademark brand of animation—his first seminal film being 1972’s Fritz the Cat, which you can consider one of the first major ‘adult’ animated flicks in the west at least. From race relations to police brutality, all through the lens of anthropomorphic animals that also did drugs and drink, all of this came through his own unique perspectives—as a Jew who had grown up in many black neighborhoods during eras of largely segregated America, there often came a cynicism to the establishment in his comparatively rough-looking yet expressive work.
From Heavy Traffic to Wizards to Hey Good Lookin’, I could talk all day about Bakshi’s work alone, but I thought I’d narrow it down to something that stands out within his own filmography—and that was the first major adaptation (also in the west at least) of another seminal work you might have heard of. Over twenty years before Peter Jackson, we had this version of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings…well, part of it at least. And we could talk all day about THE fantasy work to rule them all—with its influence stretching far, Lord of the Rings has found applicability all over the board.
Popular with the hippie movement in the sixties just to start, inspiration for music stretching from folk to metal, also unfortunately picked up by those who Tolkien had scorned…we could also spend essays discussing why this tale of hobbits, dwarves, and men still strikes chords, but either way, it was certainly something that even in ’78 was ripe for adaptation.
And with so much fantastical imagery that would be hard for the effects of the time to replicate, it made sense to do it animation—well, sort of. You’ll see what I mean.
This film was quite the influence on Jackson when he did his own much more famous adaptations, and you can see why straight from the beginning, which has an intro not unlike his Fellowship of the Ring. However, you’ll notice that it’s not so much animation as it is a sort of shadow theater with live actors filmed in silhouette through a red filter—and here is something that gives the film somewhat of a…bizarre atmosphere. You see, some of it really is traditional animation…and some of it is live-action footage shot through filters. And some of it is done in rotoscope—essentially, animators drawing over preliminary live-action. Sometimes it gives things a surprisingly distinct look…and sometimes it just looks weird and cheap.
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| We go from hordes of hell... |
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| ...to, er, the country bear jamboree gone wrong. |
Story-wise, it covers roughly the first two segments of the Lord of the Rings story—it compresses together Fellowship and The Two Towers, essentially. You’ll recognize most of the story beats, except everyone is interpreted a little differently than the Jackson films you might be more used. Perhaps not always for the better—Gandalf, voiced here by William Squire, comes off as slightly deranged, who feels the need to twirl around like a ballerina when giving his famous spiel about the ring itself. Frodo and Sam (Christopher Guard and Michael Scholes) share a lot of dialogue from the source, but it’s all rather truncated, making them feel a little more over the place.
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| Jackson inspiration ho! |
More positively executed is Aragorn, voiced here by none other than John Hurt—who comes off as an older and more weary counterpart to Viggo Mortensen, but no less valid for it. Another standout is Anette Crosbie as elven matriarch Galadriel, who seems much less aloof than how she was done by Cate Blanchette. But then we get to Boromir, whose depiction here as some jackass wearing an inexplicable viking helmet will really make you miss Sean Bean. And let’s not get started on Gollum... or, sigh, the Balrog:
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| "FEAR ME, FOR I AM--stop laughing! Stop hurting my feelings! I can't help it if I was born a discarded Doctor Who monster!" |
But at the same time, what does make this somewhat compelling despite all the strangeness is the highlights of the animation—sometimes going into outright surrealism, as fitting sometimes the mythic nature of the story. Because of the way some of the live-action filtering is done, the orcish armies look outright demonic at times, with a discordant soundtrack occasionally making it feel like an outright fever dream. That is, apart from the occasions when they’re not looking like people in Halloween costumes.
Some of it feels like a prototype for the Jackson films, some of it feels unique in its interpretation, some of it feels shoddy, but there definitely feels like an effort was made despite the limitations of the time—or rather, the limitations of the new techniques Bakshi was earnestly attempting to experiment with. There were deadline issues, perhaps the technology wasn’t fully up to it, but for a story often touted for decades as unfilmable, above all, Bakshi tried with what he had, and did his best to push boundaries of what could be done, even if that ended up overshooting his grasp.
It’s not going to be for everyone, and you’ll have to go into it with the above unevenness in mind—but if you want to see where the roots for some of the major fantasy adaptations of all time started, here’s what helped inspire that. And above all else, it does feel more compelling than whatever nonsense Amazon throws obscene amounts of money at, for visuals less impressive than what New Zealanders did for a fraction of 20 years ago, and for scripts that might as well have been made by word generators. If nothing else, before this happened to a story ironically meant to warn against temptations of greed and power, you might find another perspective here…
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