Willy McBean and His Magic Machine (1965)
May 12, 2004Children's Time Travel Film
Likeable puppet animated film about a time-travelling boy and his monkey companion
Arthur Rankin Jr
Mad Monster Party? (1967)
Aug 5, 2000Famous Monster Bash/Stop-Motion Animation
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
King Kong Escapes (1967)
Mar 4, 2001Giant Ape/Japanese Monster Movie
Toho Films obtained the rights to King Kong to pit him against Godzilla in King Kong Vs Godzilla and then made this entertainingly silly sequel where Kong fights a robot copy of himself
The Hobbit (1977)
Sep 3, 2005Epic Fantasy Adventure/Animation
Generally overlooked animated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book made for tv by Rankin-Bass. This keeps to the text very faithfully - more so than Peter Jackson - and is only let down by some limited animation
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
Jul 11, 2017Prehistoric Lost World
A team of explorers find a humid world at the Arctic where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The men in rubber suit effects are adequate, although the film itself is on the slow side
The Return of the King (1980)
Oct 11, 2022J.R.R. Tolkien Adaptation/Animation/Epic Fantasy
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Mar 7, 2004Unicorn's Quest/Animation
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
The Flight of Dragons (1982)
May 29, 2012Animation/Epic Fantasy
One of Rankin-Bass's animated films, this has an ambitious epic fantasy plot with original themes about the line between science and magic, although this is undone by Rankin-Bass's limited animation
The King and I (1999)
Feb 28, 1999Animation
Don Bluth conducts animated remake of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical memorably incarnated with Yul Brynner. Now the story comes with the addition of fantasy elements