The Lord of the Rings, 1978. Directed by Ralph Bakshi.

It has become something of a ritual among fans of animation to ridicule this ambitious but colossally botched filming of the first half of J.R.R. Tolkien's Ring trilogy. It features, among its many faults, some of the butt-ugliest uses of rotoscoping in the annals of film, a too grim and serious treatment of a story which is shot through with too much whimsy to be made so glum, and the unfortunate necessity of a sequel (never made) to finish the story. ButŠthis is actually not as bad as all that for a couple of reasons. First, this is a welcome departure from Bakshi's hip, ethnic street-smart, underground-comix-on-film wannabes (eg. Wizards, Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic) which are, for the most part, unwatchable. Second, rotoscoping aside, some of the main character animation is excellent and the thing takes some interesting risks as cinema (as opposed to animation) which actually pay off. Third, and most important, Bakshi's film kept (and continues to keep) The Lord of the Rings out of Disney's hands. I mean, really, can you imagine this in the hands of The Magic Kingdom? Can you imagine how cloyingly cute this would be if they gave Frodo and Sam anthropomorphic traveling companions and filled it with Disney-esque "reworkings" of Tolkien's made-up ballads as show-stopping musical numbers? Think about it! Bakshi's film isn't much fun to sit through, but the alternative is much, much worse. While fans of fantasy literature and of animation alike may long for a "good version" of the complete thing, it is a pipe dream, like El Dorado and The Holy Grail. No one is ever likely to get such a thing. Meanwhile, Bakshi's film sits at the gates of Mordor, keeping watch, preventing the forces of Sauron (or Michael Eisner, which is probably the same thing) from overrunning Middle Earth. Take it where you can get it fanboy.