So. The Soviets did a knockoff of the Hobbit in 1985.

You want to be really careful when you watch this. YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT TO BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU WATCH THIS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0l3Yr1B50

Recommendations/Observations:

• Don’t watch more than five seconds of this at any given time.  You WILL lose SAN if you ignore this rule.
• Yes, there is a man in a suit who randomly pops in to provide (presumably) exposition in Russian.  You are not imagining things.
• Yes, those are orcs, and they are doing a ballet while singing.  You are not imagining things.
• Yes, that spider is in fact molesting that dwarf.  If you want to take comfort in insanity at this point I can’t stop you, nor much want to.
• I don’t know what’s freakier about the scene where Thorin meets the people of Esgaroth; the interpretive dance from the latter, the way that they shrunk the film of the actors playing the dwarves* down to one-third size and superimposed it on the film of the regular-sized actors, or the way that the director actually did care enough to try to get the color of the dwarves’ cloaks and hoods right.
• And, lastly…

• That’s the most goram chipper Smaug I’ve ever goram seen.  I keep expecting him to make a deal with the dwarves; 15% of the cut in exchange for guard duty privileges and a new armor upgrade.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh.  Right.  Music video.  Sorry, folks, after that I got nothing.  Besides, you’ve all figured out by now that it’s mostly an excuse to tos up those Amazon.com links, anyway.