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Ralph Bakshi was a low-budget B-movie producer who specialized in animated works made for, shall we say, a different demographic than your average cartoon (I saw "was" because he hasn't been heard from in a while; I assume he's still alive somewhere). A lot of his movies from the 60's and 70's are basically social commentary on the plight of the disenfranchised urban youth; lots of drug use, nudity, and violence. Personally I think they're terrible, but there's some irresistible quality about them. A lot of the animation is actually quite well-done for such low-budget work, especially if you're into psychedelics. One of his favorite techniques is to use live-action footage as a background; he also did a lot of "roto-scoping", which is where you film real people acting out the scene then draw the animated characters overtop of them.
As an aside, he also produced the film adaptation of "Watership Down", which far exceeds everything else he's done put together.
Anyway, in 1978, Bakshi was contracted to make an animated version of Lord of the Rings. The budget was basically limited to whatever coins happened to be in his pockets at any given time; not normally a problem for Ralph Bakshi, but this was a bigger project than he was used to.
The end result is, in my opinion, one of the worst movies ever made. The animation was half-finished, the characters and dialogue where pathetic, and worst of all (and this caused quite a scandal at the time, because the producers didn't tell anyone about it before the movie opened), it only covers the first half of the story. After the battle at Helm's Deep, it says "So ends Part One", and roll credits. Needless to say, Part Two was never made.
I haven't seen this movie since I was too young to appreciate just how bad it is, so I definitely plan on watching it tonight.
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