Three Is Company: a 1970 film based on Tolkiens Fellowship of the Ring

The first Tolkien film In 1970, I was 17 years old and a huge Tolkien Fan. I recruited my high school friends as actors (none of them had read Tolkien yet except me), made all the props, costumes, and makeup, and made this Super8 film based on the chapter Three Is Company from Tolkien s Fellowship of the Ring. I chose this chapter because it had a minimum of characters, props, and locations, from the time the hobbits leave the Shire to their nearencounter with the Black Rider. This film was shown at the First Mythcon Conference in California in 1970 (organizer Glen GoodKnight of the Mythopoeic Society) and at the Second Conference On Middle Earth by the Tolkien Society held in Cleveland in 1970 (organizer Jan Howard Finder). With the hindsight of a halfcentury, this film is painfully laughable and amateurish (especially after seeing the fantastic Peter Jackson films), but we couldn t have been any prouder at the time And made with a love and reverence of Tolkien.