Starring:  Christopher Guard, William Squire, Michael Scholes, John Hurt, Simon Chandler, Dominic Guard, Norman Bird, Michael Graham Cox, Anthony Daniels

Twenty years before a certain fuzzy Kiwi claimed Middle Earth for his own, an animation genius from Brooklyn, Ralph Bakshi, was first to bring Tolkien’s fantasy epic to life. To create his Middle Earth, Bakshi used an animation technique called Rotoscoping, which combines live action and illustration. The result is something like a panel van painting sprung to life, a bizarrely fluid fantasy realm made up of impossible landscapes, saturated color and grotesque creatures. The story’s condensed and incomplete, only making about 2/3rds of the way through the books before petering to an end, but Bakshi’s work remains a marvel and was a huge influence on Peter Jackson when the time came to finish the trip to Mordor.