Expert difficulty: Unsolved for years.

[old man jenkins]

I would truly appreciate if someone could dig deep and solve this. I have posted this on a few different nostalgia forums over at least a 5 year period, and I've had no luck.

I think it was an animated feature film.
I believe it had sort of an epic feel to it.. maybe a hero/quest movie. From what I remember there was a serious tone to the plot. I know that is all starting to sound like lord of the rings already, but I have watched all of those since, and I don't remember ever seeing the scene in question.

It must have been aired on tv in the 80s, because I had it recorded on vhs.



Here is the only scene I remember, and I know it's pretty accurate:

If you're a true 80s fan you remember how they had always did those dramatic commercial break cuts. My only memory stars with the movie coming back from a break... It was night. There was a campfire burning in a clearing of the woods. There were these things... I'm pretty sure it wasn't humans, and whatever it was, I don't think they were the good guys. They were sitting around the campfire. They were eating something. Whatever they were eating I remember it looking like some sort of gray short fat stick. And I even think they had them on the end of sticks putting them in the fire (maybe). But I distinctly remember, they had bowls carved out of gray stone and they were grinding these stick-looking food things around in the bowl, I think because there was sauce in the bowls. And then they would eat it.


Unfortunately, that's all I've got. I really wish I could watch this again. Please help.

[Straydog]

Well the Rankin/Bass tv specials often had a
dramatic sting proceeding the commercial breaks
and another once the show returned from commercial

I remember you've already ruled out the troll scene in
The Hobbit so maybe it's one of the other Rankin/Bass
fantasy based specials.

[old man jenkins]

That was my first guess when I was trying to remember this, and I did love those movies as a kid. A few years ago I rented them thinking I would see what I was looking for.

Maybe I missed it. I'll try to look into that again. In the mean time, if anybody has any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

[thebeak]

I'm probably too new to this forum to answer questions, and this thread might be too old to bother with, but I might know this one...

The campfire you described is reminiscent of a scene in The Last Unicorn (produced, predictably, by Rankin/Bass), in which the main characters stumble upon a group of bandits (human, but pretty grotesque) gathered around a fire, complaining about the quality of the food. The scene also comes shortly after the rather-horrific death of a minor character -- which is to say, a good place to stick a commercial.

I know it's a pretty well-known movie, so I apologize in advance if you've already ruled it out. Honestly, I only remember about 4 scenes from the whole thing, and this happened to be one of them.