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From: RembrandtFilms
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  • Slag the dragon? C'mon!

  • The best part of this film: it was made in the era before Tolkien had taken over fantasy. It's really quite interesting to see people willing to totally change names of creatures/how they work without the natural limitations we have now that Tolkien's world is ingrained in our consciousness.

  • Did you come here because of Patrick Rothfuss? ^^

  • There, see! Why spend all that money making the Hobbit TWO films when one can tell the story perfectly well in about 12 minutes! (When I say "perfect" I am of course using the term imperfectly, and when I say "well" I actually mean horribly badly} This is a great example of the kind of unthinking rubbish that pervaded animation during the "Dark Ages" of 1960 to 1988. Even the monster names are wrong. 

  • See, the more I watch this, the more I actually respect it. Seeing as how it was never meant to be screened, and was only an Ashcan film to preserve the rights for future sale - it's actually half decent. Sure, as an all up adaptation it's terrible, but for what it was intended to do, it's not that bad.

  • It may be a questionable take on the book, but damn is that some pretty art!

  • The more I watch this, the more I get the feeling that the writer behind this short just took various fantasy tropes used by Tolkien that they told him about and just mixed them randomly. Besides the name change, the trolls seem to be an amalgam of the actual turned-to-stone trolls from the Hobbit and the ents from LOTR. And Gollum is like a crossover of Gollum and Shelob (why the hell is he bigger than Bilbo and looks so spiderry ?).

  • @ZemplinTemplar now actually, tolkien didnt state how big gollum was in the original version, so early art of the books often depicted him being larger and tolkien later clarified that gollum is supposed to be about as big as a hobbit. no comment on the spider part, though : P

  • I'm not surprised Tolkien was so affraid of letting anyone adapt his works to film. Back when he was still alive, most of the attempted adaptations were utter crap that didn't even try making heads or tails of the basics of his stories. This little movie is a really surreal find, all the more when I realized the animation was done by none other than Adolf Born. :-)) What are the odds of a 60s animated Hobbit made as an American-Czechoslovak production... :-D

  • Narration by British actor Arthur Treacher.

  • Comment removed

  • 7:54. Bumbles bounce

  • 2:28.

    ALL AT ONCE THEY WERE THERE

  • Haha, I had a lot of fun watching this.

  • Thorin was a dwarf not a human and there was no princess, it's Smaug not Slag, where are the other dwarfs?, groans? it was trolls, Gooloom? it's Gollum, where are the goblins?

  • Hey, this was made in 1966. And in Communist country.

    >Explanation to everything.

  • @Martysek23 It was made by Gene Deitch (creator of the Tom&Jerry cartoons)

  • @koshiimarino but drawn by a czech illustrator Adolf Born. cheers.

  • This may seem like an odd thing to focus on in the sea of oddities, but why is Gandalf the Grey wearing blue?

  • Though I kind of like the picture ("animation" just isn't the right word), I never thought I'd see a version of "The Hobbit" that makes the Rankin and Bass version look dignified.

  • This is from the "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" not the The Lord of the Rings. Its a different book. Its basically the story about Bilbo and how he have acquired the Ring of Power. It came out earlier before Fellowship of the Ring (which was the book sequel).

  • 2:45 Bilbo mah boi

  • I gotta admit, this is charming to watch, but wow, somebody did not read the book very carefully when they put this together! They glossed over a lot and refocused the main point to something that was not seen in any other interpretation I'm aware of...

  • What is this?  I don't even....

  • this makes the Rankin Bass Hobbit/Return of the King and the Bakshi Lord of the Rings normal

  • This is like if the Hobbit was real and this was the corrupted legend that was handed down for hundreds of years. Like the legend of King Arthur sort of.

  • like if you got here from the hobbit's facebook page! ha

  • Best Shire Ever

  • I think 09:44 sums it up nicely:

    As i looked at this stupendous scene of both beauty and ugliness, my feelings too were a swirling mix of exhilaration and horror.

  • Does this guys LOTR adaptation feature Sauruuuun, Sallaman the white wizard, 4 thin hobbits Brodo Baggins, Samuel Gamgee, Perry Took, and Happy Brandybuck, and their quest to Whoredor. Their companions are Faragorn, Hamli, Eggolas, and a man who looks like Sean Bean but has a codename: 006............hmm...*cough*

  • @TheBioLover No too many characters. Just Bilbo again, General Thorin, Princess Miko, Gandalf and Stoder versus two Brown Riders, one Slob the Spider, some groblins and Lord Sowrong (who turns out to be a really pissed off Golum bent on revenge)... all done in about 17 minutes. (bigger budget as LOTR is a bigger book).

  • insert douchbag comment regarding plot inaccuracy

  • It would have been a great animation of The Hobbit, but then it took an arrow to the knee!

  • I suppose they could do a "Hobbit in 60 Seconds with Bunnies" shockwave animation that might be more loosely adapted. "Suppose" is the operative word.

  • Holy shit

  • At 1:40 word of power learned! The word is "SUCKS" It staggers your foe with crappy animation.

  • What a shit....

  • Love the 60s feel. So much more inpressive to make a film with still art and one narrator.

  • At least Bilbo gets laid in this version.

  • The fact that this often read story was realized with an apocryphal children's picture book interpretation is what I found entertaining. It was like when Mr. Magoo becomes a part of any classic story.

  • I think this is the worst thing I've ever seen.

  • Slags ruin everything.

  • Releitura interessante; o Gollum esta muito engraçado.

  • Comment removed

  • I thought it was Smaug? O.O

  • I for one hope PJ's Hobbit will be slightly more accurate than this (by 'slightly more' I mean 5000% more)

  • Lol, Slag screams like a chick when it died....it was actually kinda creepy.

  • Wow, first time watching it and I just love it! Thanks for sharing this amazing and wonderful pure art.

  • @AlexandraLovesActing WOW! Great acting, Alexandra!

  • @Haardyvark Why? Did I wrote something wrong? Explain please :)

  • THIS IS HONESTLY AWFUL

  • So bilbo baggins is actually dora the explora

  • @10:13 Legend of Zelda Majoras mask anyone? :D

  • Bizarre.

  • 1:23 "spoken by Erbert Ass.

  • @Cujucuyo spoken out of Erbert's Ass.

  • @StudentInFrance HUAHAUHAUHUAHU LOL MOR

  • That was easily the most grotesque perversion of a classic I've ever had the misfortune of watching. There wasn't even any purpose for the changes. They were pointless and offensive.

  • @SchvennMeister @SchvennMeister I read about this on Cracked.com(thumbs up lolol!). Apparently this was made in the early sixties when no one had heard about a quietly published night time story written for the author's children. The creator of this tried to capitalize on a charming little story and pulled it together quickly. I enjoyed it anyway, but yeah I dont see why they put in a princess and made Thorin a bumbling soldier instead of a leader of 12 other dwarves. but whatever, it exists.

  • @darkmagic42 Yeah, it's like the outline of a Disney-style fairytale adaptation, a film that keeps the tale in the public consciousness even if a lot of it's different. It might have been fun to have had the real full-length animation made to see how all their story changes played out, but nowadays everyone's too attached to the original texts to appreciate a retelling in another style.

  • @SchvennMeister wait, fuck. I've been watching really slowly and I just got to the arrow bit. fuck this video.

  • @darkmagic42 Would you say it's 'arrowing?

  • @SchvennMeister you are a Mullah among Mullahs.

  • This is what would happen if George Lucas mad The Hobbit!

  • I thought it was "smaug"

  • this really happened.

  • Why in hell there is a princess ??

  • hi aqu

  • Smaugs name is SLAG??? loooooool

  • Awesome 3D effect @ 04:34! derp

  • The moment Gollum said "Goo-looom" I stopped watching this.

  • thumbs up if this reminds you of Samurai Jack.

  • @dimitreze 00:31-00:50 Long ago in a distant land, Aku unleashed an unspeakable evil!

  • A 'loose interpretation' would be an understatement.

  • I get Slag, but why "groans" and not trolls? XD also, epylepsia warning...

  • I feel like The Hobbit was summarized for the creator by someone who had read the book once as a child, then from the poor re-telling he made this adaptation. Still awesome, though...

  • I think there is a reason it was "lost".

  • But, there is one they fear. In there tongue, he is Bilbo Baggins..........HOBBITBORN!!!­!

  • >slag

    >groans

    >gooloom

    whatthefuckamihearing.wma

  • Slag? I thought the dragon was named Smaug>?

  • Am I the only person that finds the style sort of creepy?

  • This would have been better if it wasn't The Hobbit. It's like someone else's story with Tolkien's characters' names. Interesting, none the less.

  • 11:14 Wait, so this is the prequel to "Behind the Green Door"? ...Weird....

  • It's not The Hobbit but it's still a beautiful fairy story visually and symbolically (the object of the villain's greed was his downfall).

  • What... the... fuck!

  • This is what happens when you let Americans have their way. What a bag of shite. I trust Pete will do a better job

  • @mikemurphy155 Yeah!

    Except it's by Gene Deitch and Adolf Born, from Czechoslovakia.

  • I love the art and the narrator. But the adaptation... oh my goodness.

  • i like it - Goloom and Slag - ten minutes is all you need, Peter Jackson will no doubt pad it out to 3-4hours!

  • @adambastard He can pad it to 3 or 4 weeks and I would still watch it!

  • The '60s art style and the tenuous connection to the written story reminds me of the ludicrous Ballantine 1965 paperback LOTR covers. Tolkien's criticisms of them in "Letters" are hilarious and sad at the same time. Quick question for UK oldtimers - did "slag" have the same slang meaning in the '60s as it does now?

  • @MajorSeventh What did Tolkien say about the book covers?

  • @doobiesmoke15 It's way too long to quote here with a 500 character limit, but I sent you a link.

  • @MajorSeventh Thanks a lot, those covers sound even worse than this cartoon! Emus and Lions in Middle Earth??????? WTF

  • Almost as  bad as anime.

  • Love the jewfro Bilbo's rocking

  • Amazing, I didn´t know that Adolf Born did something like this.

  • it's almost a shame they kept some of the original names, if this had absolutely nothing to do with The Hobbit (as opposed to having, say, its title and 3 character names right...) it would be perfect on its own.

    Anyway, thumbs up if The Escapist brought you here? :D

  • @srpilha couldn't agree more, it would have been much better as a separate story with a nod & wink to the Hobbit. 

  • @srpilha the escapist did bring me here but i hate thumb whores -1

  • soooo sweet and adorable ... my whole childhood :) aawwwwwwww :) :>

  • The art style is likeable... but otherwise this is awful

  • I think I love this! It has a very special charm. :)

  • I wonder what inspired the story, character changes?

  • The art has a kind of scratchy charm, but aside from that it's terrible.

  • HEH, Slag......

  • awesome

  • How do you pronounce smaug? ....shall we say "s-more-g" or "sm-owe-g"

    ............screw it, we'll call him a slag

  • This video pronounces Gollum's name like it should be, Go-Loom, emphasis "loom", like a swallowing-noise, Not "gollem". Serkis and Peter Jackson fudged that one, having him cough "GOLLEM!" like he had asthma.

  • @arknell agreed

  • 1:39, looks just like the dragon shrines in Skyrim. Wonder if this is where the inspiration came from.

  • Strangely enough the thing that bugs me most is the fact that they acknowledge it as The One Ring and that apparently Bilbo is the true ringbearer?

  • These.. eh.. 'alterations' to the story are pretty much raping my brain. Won't be able to watch this.

  • Here's hoping Peter does better.

  • Slag?

  • @VTAH236 lol

  • 7:00 a cave full of gonzos?

  • Where's the dwarves?

  • Bilbo + Mika Forever!

  • It's slideshow not animation.

  • @LivingZombieJew technicly a slideshow is an animation..1 frame per second rather then 12

  • @LivingZombieJew powerpoint? lol

  • Wait - The Ring's True Bearer?

  • I.. but... the.... Good effort, kudos on making money from it, but as an adaptation of the source material... I could get a stroke from watching this. That said, awesome that he made it that quickly and made that much money from it. It could have sucked a whole lot more.

  • I like the way Gollum is pronounced in this

  • So...Bilbo Baggins is the dragonborn?

    Yes.

  • As Seen On: The Mary Sue.

    Tell me about it. xD

  • Original story is SO much better.

    Don't know why this guy felt he needed to add in all the standard fairy-tale cliches.

  • @EmeraldView Don't know why Peter Jackson is gonna add all the action movie cliches. It just comes full circle.

  • Still better than Twilight.

  • Ehhhhh couldnt hold my attention

  • I was about to comment about the stupidity of adding a female character in the story and how a real adaptation would never make such a horrible mistake, but then I remembered that Peter Jackson is doing precisely this. 

  • @VirDiligo He is?

  • @VirDiligo You mean legolas?

  • it's actually a really cool throwback to those old children's cartoons. Even if, you know, pretty much everything in it is completely wrong.

  • Well...its about as accurate as any modern Hollywood adaptation XD

  • Slag the monster Lizard????Grablins??? Gronns???The man who made this steaming pile of pile of rat dung should be publicly flogged!!!

  • @doobiesmoke15

    You forgot Galoo XD

  • This made me hurt inside.

  • This is amazing. Quite a bit changed from the source, but entertaining all the same.

  • AMAZING!

  • Slag, how could you destroy the Golden City!

  • certain changes are odd, like why Slag instead of Smaug?

  • Absolutely terrible, it resembles nothing from the Hobbit.

  • @zDallasCowboys008z Remember, this was made 50 years ago.

  • Man, for a might lizard monster, Slag sure screams like a little girl 10:57

  • Okay, now there is no excuse to not animate National Lampoon's Bored of the Rings.

    Cartoon Network????

    Robot chicken??????

    C'mon!

  • CANNON! CAAAANNNNNNNNNOOOOOONNNNNN

  • This is kind of like looking through a collection of elaborate psychedelic album cover art while your crazy Auntie tries to tell you a story she read as a child and she is both remembering the details wrong and getting them confused with parts of other stories. And that is why this is AMAZING! Thank you so much for sharing it!

  • I keep expecting the "next image" beep, like those 35mm audiobooks in school...

  • Slag the dragon? C'mon!

  • The best part of this film: it was made in the era before Tolkien had taken over fantasy. It's really quite interesting to see people willing to totally change names of creatures/how they work without the natural limitations we have now that Tolkien's world is ingrained in our consciousness.

  • Did you come here because of Patrick Rothfuss? ^^

  • There, see! Why spend all that money making the Hobbit TWO films when one can tell the story perfectly well in about 12 minutes! (When I say "perfect" I am of course using the term imperfectly, and when I say "well" I actually mean horribly badly} This is a great example of the kind of unthinking rubbish that pervaded animation during the "Dark Ages" of 1960 to 1988. Even the monster names are wrong.

  • See, the more I watch this, the more I actually respect it. Seeing as how it was never meant to be screened, and was only an Ashcan film to preserve the rights for future sale - it's actually half decent. Sure, as an all up adaptation it's terrible, but for what it was intended to do, it's not that bad.

  • It may be a questionable take on the book, but damn is that some pretty art!

  • The more I watch this, the more I get the feeling that the writer behind this short just took various fantasy tropes used by Tolkien that they told him about and just mixed them randomly. Besides the name change, the trolls seem to be an amalgam of the actual turned-to-stone trolls from the Hobbit and the ents from LOTR. And Gollum is like a crossover of Gollum and Shelob (why the hell is he bigger than Bilbo and looks so spiderry ?).

  • @ZemplinTemplar now actually, tolkien didnt state how big gollum was in the original version, so early art of the books often depicted him being larger and tolkien later clarified that gollum is supposed to be about as big as a hobbit. no comment on the spider part, though : P

  • I'm not surprised Tolkien was so affraid of letting anyone adapt his works to film. Back when he was still alive, most of the attempted adaptations were utter crap that didn't even try making heads or tails of the basics of his stories. This little movie is a really surreal find, all the more when I realized the animation was done by none other than Adolf Born. :-)) What are the odds of a 60s animated Hobbit made as an American-Czechoslovak production... :-D

  • Narration by British actor Arthur Treacher.

  • Comment removed

  • 7:54. Bumbles bounce

  • 2:28.

    ALL AT ONCE THEY WERE THERE

  • Haha, I had a lot of fun watching this.

  • Thorin was a dwarf not a human and there was no princess, it's Smaug not Slag, where are the other dwarfs?, groans? it was trolls, Gooloom? it's Gollum, where are the goblins?

  • Hey, this was made in 1966. And in Communist country.

    >Explanation to everything.

  • @Martysek23 It was made by Gene Deitch (creator of the Tom&Jerry cartoons)

  • @koshiimarino but drawn by a czech illustrator Adolf Born. cheers.

  • This may seem like an odd thing to focus on in the sea of oddities, but why is Gandalf the Grey wearing blue?