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I first saw Return of the King completely by luck, having just finished the book at the tender age of eight. It was a Thanksgiving weekend or some such thing, and my brother contemptuously threw the current TV Guide my way. "Looks like your fairy story is on tonight," he sniffed dismissively (though in later years he would become somewhat of a fan). I clutched the Guide in desperate hands, raced downstairs and surruptitiously slipped the only VCR tape I was allowed to own into the machine. Unable to wait any longer, I ran back upstairs, elbowed my brother away from the Bears game currently playing, and sat entranced for the hour and a half of Middle Earth, orcs and Bad Guys Rankin and Bass produced in the wake of Ralph Bashki's 1979 Lord of the Rings.
Within two days, after numerous viewings, I had the movie committed to heart, and the sad part was, for a while, when I went back to the original text, it was nearly impossible for me to watch Samwise Gamgee warn: "Mr. Frodo! Look out! He'll spring again!" without hearing Roddy McDowall's voice accompany the words. Likewise I couldn't watch the end scene (which I will not give away, in the interests of those following the current Peter Jackson rendition of Lord of the Rings) without hearing Glenn Yarborough's merry vocal accompaniment. It took a while, but I finally got the movie out of my system.
I happened across a copy of Return of the King at the video store one Christmas break and, even though I still have the damned thing committed to memory (that's right, envy me--this is my life), I watched it over again. It's the same story that I remember: Samwise and Frodo of the Shire have a ring they need to dump into the Cracks of Doom, right smack in the heart of Sauron the Enemy's domain, surrounded by Orcs and Trolls and all sorts of slippery creatures waiting to get the drop on them. Meanwhile, the city of Gondor is beseiged by the forces of Sauron; the Lord of the City has killed himself in the face of a disturbing vision of the future; and the real king is coming, but perhaps too late. As I watched, I wasn't reexperiencing the story so much as the rendition of it. Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin (who previously made The Hobbit for TV in 1978) are incredibly faithful to Tolkien's vision, sometimes lifting the author's very own illustrations and incorporating them into their watercolored backgrounds. The animation itself is noteworthy--the landscapes are dark, dreary and evil-looking; the characters, while sometimes a bit too static by today's standards, still resemble more or less what Tolkien probably had in mind.
The performances are, mostly, above the usual standard of animated movies typically designed for children (and how anyone is supposed to view a story taking place in "hellish Mordor" as "for children" is beyond me). John Huston (Chinatown, Wise Blood) plays Gandalf, evincing just the right blend of sagacity and power necessary for his illustration. Orson Bean plays both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and Roddy McDowall, while given some ridiculously emotional lines, does a pretty good job of playing Sam Gamgee, Frodo's faithful servant (and arguably the real hero of the story). William Conrad is downright creepy as the insane Lord Denethor, but Sonny Melendrez (Pippin) doesn't perform his lines, but reads them, which ruins some of the pacing at the battle scenes. Brother Theodore, on the other hand, is delightfully evil as the creature Gollum, and at times, when I listened to his rantings and ravings, I actually found myself a bit unsettled.
Of course, watching this movie at the tender age of twenty-six instead of eight wasn't quite the same. I found myself cringing openly at the soundtrack: we see a bunch of orcs marching to the tune of "Where There's a Whip There's a Way," delivered in full 70's motif with guitar strumming and all. Every time someone says something deep, Yarborough (of Limeliters fame) has to break into a song with that very utterance making up the central refrain. It was enchanting before, but these days, it makes it hard to keep my popcorn down:
Frodo: But we've still such a long way to go.You almost expect Sauron himself to jump out of the Dark Tower singing "I'm a mean mad mutha from Middle Earth...and I'm bad!"
Sam: That's tomorrow, Mr. Frodo. Tomorrow.
Minstrel (Yarborough): (singing) Leave tomorrow till it comes...with your problems and your cries...Later...
Frodo: Still, Samwise, we have got to try.
Minstrel: (singing) It's so easy not to try...Let the world go drifting by...Hypothetically...
Frodo: I think I'll have to give up, Sam, I can't do it.
Sam: Well make up your mind, you damned fairy.
Minstrel: Don't be a fairy...get through the part that's scary...Sam punches him
Such dated conventions aside, this really is a stellar piece of storytelling. Even now I still can't tell where its enjoyment is dependent on Tolkien's book or the animators' rendition, and that, to me, is the signature of a successful book-to-animation transition. I'm quite sure Jackson's version will blow this one away, and I'm still disgruntled about the soundtrack's intrusion into the movie's pacing, but Return of the King definitely deserves Honorable Mention in the annals of animated classics.
--Long
Copyright 2002 Tso Long Productions ©