The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!

I’m a big fan of A Quiet Place in the Country from the same director.

Someone recommended this to me all the way back on RT, but it never seems to be on any streaming services.

It seems like decent copies on YouTube come and go. I need to get on that.

Might have been me lol

I think it was.

You know what, I'm pretty sure it was in crumbsroom's game on Corrierino now that I think about it. I think I was inspired to see it thanks to this here forum, with it being someone's one-pointer in the foreign films top 100 list. A worthwhile way to start those lists indeed.

Franco Nero as an artist who loses his sanity? Sold.

"Doctor, he thought he was Space Jesus. Now he thinks he's a ninja!"

Well, we're at the halfway point. I've got a couple more weeks' worth of writeups, and you may have heard or even seen a few of them!

It was.

Promises, promises.

I was just searching my stash of October pics and realized this one probably belongs here instead.

(this is a vintage iron-on design)

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Captain's Log
My Collection

You're a genius. Love it.

The Hobbit

As someone who has read The Hobbit many times, this Rankin/Bass adaptation is thoroughly enjoyable... and far better, in just an hour and seventeen minutes, than all the nonsense and CGI Jackson cobbled together over nearly EIGHT hours for his abomination of a "Hobbit Trilogy" - and even more in an even less necessary Extended Version.
I won't rehash the story here because I think everyone knows it but a wizard and a group of dwarves recruit a quiet-lived, satisfied Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins to join them on an adventure to their homeland where their ancestral mountain is guarded by the terrible dragon, Smaug. Along the way, they will encounter many dangers and will often be saved by the peaceful Hobbit who is learning a courage he never knew he had.
I thought, again as a fan of the Tolkien’s book, that this script was a nice, tight adaptation that somehow conveys most of the plot of the book (with a mall exception in the Battle Of Five Armies) in just the 77-minute run-time while not missing out on the personal growth of Bilbo and the discovery of his personal courage. And even throwing in a subtle commentary on the futility and stupidity of war.
Richard Boone’s Smaug is excellent. Growly and world-weary but also muscular and menacing. While the lone bright spot in Jackson’s second Hobbit film was Cumberbatch’s Smaug, Boone is fantastic and, really Cumberbatch’s take sounds like he’d watched this film and took notes from Boone.
He doesn't look half bad, either.


Very effective.
I also found Orson Bean’s Bilbo to be quite good, John Huston's Gandalf is on-point, and I even liked Otto Preminger (seriously) as the king of the Wood-elves. But the show-stealer may be comedian/actor Brother Theodore’s Gollum, who is absolutely aces.


For this material specifically (not necessarily in LotR) I honestly prefer this to Serkis’ admittedly historic and game-changing performance.
The animation is fine to good (though i am no expert on this), it was done by Topcraft which did Nausicaa and would split and form Studio Ghibli. The music, in general is good, at times actually pretty great and then at others a little cheesy and of-the-time as they seemed to try to merge the sound of 70s folk and whatever Hobbit Life might sound like.
In general, I found all this very enjoyable and worthy of the short run-time for sure. The Battle Of The Five Armies isn't given all that much focus but I think for the pacing of the movie it all works out fairly well. I would refute the reputation this film has as not being any good, I think that's balderdash. It's perfectly enjoyable. And Jackson and his bloat and bad FX can suck it.

The Hobbit is a favorite from childhood and my introduction to Tolkien. (Star Wars and Tolkien in the same year. 1977 was good to lil' Cap.) Within a few years I was reading my dad's copies of the novels and had Hobbit calendars on my wall. And notebooks full of drawings.

When I revisited it years later as an animation buff, I was thrilled to find that it's a gorgeous thing to look at. Who wouldn't want to live here?



And what especially impressed me is the fact that it really doesn't look like anything else. The character designs and backgrounds don't really match the Disney look of the era which pretty much dominated everything. And although the work was done in Asia it doesn't have the standard anime look either. Doesn't even look like The Last Unicorn which was also a Rankin/Bass film.

So I just wanted to call attention to that but yeah, I agree with your review. Good voice work and a nice and tight distillation of the novel, perfect for youngsters like me.

This conversation has reminded me that I don't think I've ever seen Flight of Dragons.
I WAS 11, MOM, WHY DIDN'T I SEE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS?

Anybody seen it?

I was unaware that Bakshi's The Hobbit wasn't considered very good. I could have sworn it was a staple as I was growing up. Granted, based on things I watched growing up, you'd never think The Black Cauldron tanked.

For some reason, it wasn't even until I was a teenager I was aware there was even a Bakshi version of Return of the King (or was it the full Lord of the Rings?). I only ever caught the ending of that one on TV (and was how I found out about it).
I can only speculate as to why, since I never saw the movie and can't attest to its quality (if it was the entire thing in 90 minutes to 2 hours, that would be a problem).

In other fantasy news (or possibly horror news). I've been hearing word that The Northman turned a profit, and may have actually done quite well, thanks to the VOD numbers. I may be well behind the curve on hearing that one.

I have not seen Flight of Dragons.

Hobbit and Return of the King were Rankin/Bass productions. Lord of the Rings (78) was the Bakshi film. Bakshi ran out of money, so was only able to cover the Fellowship/Two Towers with his film. Return of the King was meant to continue the story. Doesn't quite hold together if you watch them back-to-back, but I still have a fondness for all three.

I loved the 1967 Movie Camelot. I took a girl to see that on one of my very first dates. The three principals, Richard Harris (RIP), Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero were perfect in their roles. Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave met during filming and started a long-term relationship -- and still together today. But I just learned today that Franco Nero did not do his own singing -- it was dubbed by Gene Merlino.

It's not Bakshi's Hobbit. It's Rankin/Bass. Bakshi did LotR after this.
Yeah, most of my life people have shit on the animated Hobbit movie, including a close friend of mine last night when I told him I had watched it. I asked him how many years it had been since he'd seen it and he said "at least 30", so I said, "then how do you know?"

See, here's a guy who gets it.

I never had any problem with it. Frankly, it mesmerized me in the theater with the rotoscoped Nazgul, practically scared the hell out of me.

Good call on The Hobbit. I've always been a Tolkien head, but I really was in my early teens, having watched my VHS copy repeatedly. I also think "The Greatest Adventure" is up there with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Pure Imagination" as one of the best movie songs.

I'll just say that my next entry complements this one very well (in fact, someone already mentioned it).