Perhaps best known for one of the last films it ever worked on, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the studio eventually dissolved in 1985, only a few years after The Last Unicorn was released, and many of its core members would go on to form Studio Ghibli, alongside Hayao Miyazaki. While Beagle, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, was initially horrified by the idea of using Rankin/Bass to produce the film, noting his dislike of their stop-motion work, the Japanese animation studio hired by Rankin/Bass to animate the film did, in Beagle’s words, ‘lovely design work.’ The animation studio, T op Craft, had worked on previous 2D cell animation for Rankin/Bass. The film was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions, which also produced the animated versions of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbitand Return of the King, as well as classic holiday animations such as the stop-motion films Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, and Santa Claus is Comin' To Town. The unicorn in the film, voiced by Mia Farrow, takes very little interest in the lives of mortals and her blunt, somewhat apathetic, nature is a sharp contrast to the more popular depictions of unicorns seen today.

The film falls into the category of ‘dark fantasy,’ popular at the time and often standing in contrast to the more lighthearted and whimsical tales of other fairy tales in The Last Unicorn, there are no rainbows or sparkles or helpful horned horses to ride into the sunset. While many tote the movie as childhood nightmare fuel, calling to mind gruesome imagery and traumatizing animation, The Last Unicorn has also become a sort of cult-classic, falling into the space where phrases such as ‘when I was a kid, cartoons weren’t afraid to be weird and scary’ are often tossed around. Based on the novel by Peter S Beagle, the film conjured images of dark magic, mortality, and the blurred line between fantasy and reality. 40 years ago, in 1982, The Last Unicornpremiered in theaters across the United States.

The last unicorn original book