Product: The Hobbit [VHS] (1977)
Rating: 2.0
Good film. Poor DVD.
The Hobbit was a nice little television special made by Rankin and Bass that helped push Tolkien's book to new found popularity in the 70's. The show was made for children so the violence was toned down and a few songs were tossed in to keep things cute (you can thank Disney for that mentality). All in all it's a good effort considering what they were trying to accomplish.Now for this DVD. It sucks. For some reason about half of the atmosphereic sounds and audio effects are gone. It's like some scenes have just about all of the audio taken out completely. No more are the "death" noises Rankin and Bass used in place of... well... death scenes. No more do you hear Smaug's fiery breath. Basically lots of audio cues that really flesh out the visuals are gone. It's incredibly annoying.I remember watching this special when I was a kid and I remember a LOT more sounds and background noises. I have no idea why they aren't on this DVD. If it wasn't for the extremely poor audio transfer I would easily recommend this DVD. As it is I can only recommend this DVD to people already familiar with this special. For the rest of you it's a hard call. I want to say check it out, but be warned about the audio issues.