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The Last Unicorn (1982)
Two decades into redefining the TV holiday special (stop-motion Frosty, Rudolph, etc.), the animation team of Rankin/Bass got freakier with The Last Unicorn.
Based on the 1968 Peter S. Beagle fantasy novel, the film captures all of the book’s alluring, riddlesome beauty. Upon learning that a giant fiery bull has driven her kind to extinction, a unicorn (voiced by Mia Farrow) journeys to a craggy, seaside kingdom to see if she truly is (you guessed it) the last unicorn.
It would be a slight exaggeration to term this evocative kids’ movie “nightmare fuel” (certainly, the boyish, bumbling Schmendrick the Magician, voiced by Alan Arkin, is meant mostly to entertain children). But the heavy-hoofed red bull and an interlude in which the unicorn is conscripted into a traveling circus alongside a harpy are so visually striking and wordlessly monstrous that they’ll lodge themselves in your gray matter forever.
Meanwhile, it would not be an exaggeration to call the movie’s theme song—written by all-time songsmith Jimmy Webb and performed by America—a certified ren-faire banger. Clinton, April 2.
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