Column 80s Fantasy Film Club The Last Unicorn: A Fantasy Classic Whose Beauty Never Fades Beyond simple nostalgia, this movie was a foundational part of so many childhoods… By Tyler Dean | Published on April 1, 2026 Credit: Rankin/Bass Productions Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: Rankin/Bass Productions In this column, we’re looking back at the 1980s as their own particular age of fantasy movies—a legacy that largely disappeared in the ’90s only to resurface in the 2000s, though in many ways, the fantasy films of the Eighties are far weirder and less polished than what we got in the aughts. In each of these articles, we’ll explore a canonical fantasy movie released between 1980 and 1989 and discuss whatever enduring legacy the film has maintained in the decades since. For a more in-depth introduction to this series of articles, you can find the first installment here, focusing on 1981’s Dragonslayer. Last time we looked at Rankin/Bass’ chimeric cult classic of magic and science, The Flight of Dragons; this time we are looking at another (far more sublime) clash between the ancient and modern, The Last Unicorn. Like most millennials, I saw The Last Unicorn on a rented VHS sometime in my early childhood. I wouldn’t read Peter Beagle’s original novel until college when it was recommended to me by my then-girlfriend, who adored it. By the time I was reading Beagle’s exquisite prose on a train headed from Parma to Ravenna, the cartoon was settled lore, a thing so deep in my DNA that I could not look at it quite right. It felt like a deep and foundational seam of my personality. And, judging by the responses to this film over the last forty years, it got into the bones of a whole generation. So, let’s discuss… Based on Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel, the 1982 film follows the same plot, more or less. The titular Unicorn, upon learning that she is the last of her kind, sets out to find her missing kin. Along the way, she finds allies in Schmendrick the Magician and the medieval equivalent of an aging gun moll, Molly Grue; eventually they arrive in the lands of King Haggard, who has trapped the other unicorns in the sea, where they are guarded by the menacing Red Bull. To protect her from the Red Bull, Schmendrick turns the Unicorn into a human woman. Disguised as the Lady Amalthea, the last Unicorn begins to forget that she was ever an immortal being and falls in love with Haggard’s ward, Prince Lír. Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea search for the location of the Red Bull and discover that it has driven all the other unicorns into the sea so that the melancholy Haggard can look upon them every day—they are the only thing that has ever made him happy, so he has hunted and hoarded them. Amalthea becomes a unicorn again and finally defeats the Bull in a desperate battle. The Unicorns are freed, Haggard and his castle tumble into the waves, and Lír bids a heartfelt farewell to the woman he loved. Molly Grue and Schmendrick ride off together into the sunset and the Unicorn returns to her woods, no longer the last of her kind, and having experienced love and regret during her time in a mortal body. The film was released in a small number of theatres, made a modest but disappointing profit and then went on to do what most Rankin/Bass productions did: finding a devoted audience on VHS and laserdisc.  So…is The Last Unicorn any good? Does its hallowed reputation live up to the hype conjured by our collective childhood nostalgia? Yes, for the most part! It’s far from a perfect film but it has more than enough charm, pathos, humor, and style to make up for its minor shortcomings.  Let’s talk about the bad first. The film does drag in the second half. For every incredible ten-minute vignette, there are long stretches where very little happens. There are several songs performed by the British-American rock band America that are fantastic—the soundtrack was composed and arranged by songwriting legend Jimmy Webb, and the eponymous title track is an absolute folk rock classic. There are another two songs, however—one sung by Katie Irving (performing for Mia Farrow), and a duet sung by Irving and Jeff Bridges—that are pretty terrible. Irving in particular sounds off-key, which is surprising given that she was ostensibly hired because Farrow herself could not sing. But honestly, that’s about the sum total of the movie’s shortcomings, and its high points far outweigh its weaknesses.  A lot of credit is due to Beagle’s writing. He adapted the screenplay from his novel and is surprisingly not precious about his own work. The original novel feels deeply postmodern, constantly self-analyzing and deconstructing its own fantasy tropes. His film adaptation is played straight, to its vast credit—trusting in the power of its own mythos and preserving enough of Beagle’s purposely anachronistic humor to entertain without ever veering into self-parody. So many of Rankin and Bass’ screenplays were written by the far less talented Romeo Muller (who scripted both The Flight of Dragons and The Return of the King), and the difference in quality is painfully apparent when compared with Beagle’s work. The cast is also phenomenal. Surprisingly stacked for a small release, it features Mia Farrow as the Unicorn, Alan Arkin as Schmendrick, Christopher Lee as Haggard, Jeff Bridgesas Lír, and Angela Lansbury as Mommy Fortuna. The real power player, however, is Tammy Grimes, who imbues Molly Grue with an energy both jaggedly tragic and pragmatically resigned. She is the emotional heart of the film and manages to be a standout even among an incredibly talented cast. Incidentally, Asa West’s incredible essay on the character (right here on Reactor!) says more about Molly Grue than I have space to in this essay and is well worth your time. Through a combination of Beagle’s writing and stellar performances from Grimes, Farrow, and Lee, the film never flinches away from being about eschatological grief and the impossibility of reclaiming a lost golden age. There is an elegiac sadness in Molly Grue and Haggard both that makes the characters feel uncomfortably close to one another, despite the fact that they choose entirely different strategies for coping with their grief. The film’s sorrowful bona fides are deeply felt, even if children drawn to the story might not fully comprehend those aspects until they’re a bit older. It’s also a beautiful film. While the animation itself is occasionally a bit clunky, the designs are gorgeous. Lester Abrams, who also was the lead character designer on Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit (1977) and Return of the King (1983), gives his characters a charming, quirky strangeness reminiscent of Brian Froud and clearly inspired, at least in part, by Norwegian NyForm troll figurines. The landscapes have a stylish Mary Blair quality that feels both modern and classically fantastical. Some of its most breathtaking artistry comes at the very beginning, during the opening sequence in which animated versions of the Unicorn Tapestries appear over America’s haunting, hopeful theme song, setting a very high bar for the rest of the movie. Perhaps the movie’s best quality (for me personally at least): it’s genuinely scary. Though it only lasts about ten minutes, relatively early in the film, the sequence in which the Unicorn is a prisoner of Mommy Fortuna’s traveling carnival, put on display before disbelieving peasants, is a masterclass in acting. From the design of Celaeno the Harpy, equal parts monstrous and obscene, to Mommy Fortuna gleeful embracing her own death (having fulfilled her life’s purpose by trapping the immortal beast), the entire sequence is frightening effective in inspiring both abject fear of an immortal monster and good old fashioned existential dread. So, given how marvelous The Last Unicorn is, what are its lasting impacts? It obviously influenced a generation of fantasy fans and, like all the best entries in this column, helped to pave the way for the explosion of high fantasy content that we’d see in the 2000s. On some more specific notes, it seems absurd to assume that it did not contribute, in part, to the creation of the previously covered Legend (1985) and its unicorn-centric fairytale plot. Even the design of Tim Curry’s iconic look—huge and devilish in red makeup and prosthetics, sporting gigantic horns—feels like it may have taken some unconscious inspiration from the Red Bull.  Speaking of the Red Bull, while the Thai trucker elixir that became the internationally popular energy drink was called Krating Daeng (which translates, roughly to “Red Bull”), I personally refuse to believe that the choice to go with that direct translation didn’t have at least something to do with the fiery antagonist of this film (even if Haggard’s creature didn’t have wings). On a less specious note, the look of Haggard’s lonely, crumbling castle by the sea—hewn out of dark stone which sometimes takes on the appearance of tormented faces trapped in the rock—feels like it must have partly inspired George R.R. Martin’s descriptions of Dragonstone, a similarly lonely seaside castle covered in monstrous stone visages (the HBO shows radically changed the look of Dragonstone into something, in my opinion, far less interesting).  As we’ve discussed before, Topcraft, the studio that had animated The Hobbit, The Return of the King, The Flight of Dragons and other Rankin/Bass productions, would eventually be reborn as Studio Ghibli after a bankruptcy in 1985. You can absolutely see some of that iconic studio’s stylistic roots as they’re taking shape in The Last Unicorn. And some of those design sensibilities also feel like they were reflected back by popular culture over the next few years. The Unicorn’s smooth, doelike visage feels like a precursor to the distinctly unhorselike beasts of late ’80s megahit My Little Pony (based on an American toyline, but animated by Japanese and Korean studios). And there is something in her long-limbed grace (and beast-to-human transformation) that feels like it is paving the way for young audiences to adore Magical Girl anime series like Sailor Moon which hit American airwaves in the decade following.  But what do you think? Is The Last Unicorn as important a staple of your childhood as it was in mine? Do you have a lifelong fear of fortune tellers or a penchant for sexy trees as a result? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to join us next time as we pivot from a towering work of children’s animation to an iconic live-action film that contains at least one element that is decidedly not for children: 1986’s Labyrinth![end-mark] The post <i>The Last Unicorn</i>: A Fantasy Classic Whose Beauty Never Fades appeared first on Reactor.