Just wondered if there are any owners here of Lord of the Rings, The (1978) [SF098-5061] - or even the Japanese VHD Lord of the Rings, The (1978) [ODG-1020~1] or American CED Lord of the Rings, The (1978) [02009]?

There's a bit of a debate going on on YouTube about the voiceover at the end of the film.

This was re-recorded for the DVD release.

The VHS had "...here ends the first part of the history of the War of the Ring" (0:54 on the attached video)
The DVD had "The forces of darkness were driven forever from the face of Middle Earth, by the valiant friends of Frodo. As their gallant battle ended, so too ends the first great tale of The Lord of the Rings" (1:20 on the attached video)

There is some thought though that the VHS did not have the full version of the original narration as heard at the cinema (it certainly seems to have been fiddled with, fading up as though some earlier speech had been removed).

It's a long shot, but I'm wondering if any of the three disc releases might have a different version again?

The comment on the LD release seems to confirm it's identical to the VHS:



Julien

But my thought is that the original theatrical version had something like "The forces of darkness were driven forever from the face of Middle Earth, by the valiant friends of Frodo. And so here ends the first part of the history of the War of the Ring" - and the comment on the LDDB entry would still only mention the 'end of part one' aspect of all of that, even had the whole thing been present.

I saw the film at the cinema a lot of times in early 80s, and when the VHS came out I knew there was something different about that closing voiceover... it does sound more like an error than anything else.

But I suppose it's likely that even the Japanese discs would have been from the same, (probably) flawed, master as the US and UK VHS editions...

My VHS when I was a kid said "The forces of darkness" etc., but that would be about the same time as the DVD came out, so it was probably a simultaneous VHS release of the same cut.

My understanding was that the clip in the video you posted is the theatrical version, and I think it would make sense for it to feel rushed compared to the newer narration. It sounds like something they would add at the last minute for theaters to compensate for the fact that nowhere else in the movie do they indicate that this is just part one, while the more full narration sounds like something they would redo absent time constraints and with the knowledge that there would be no part two. I'm also not sure that the shorter narration "fades in" at the beginning - to me sounds like it's just drowned out by the loud final note, bad mixing either way. Watching the un-narrated climax also just gives me the feeling that the scene was originally scored and animated to be wordless.

That said, if you saw this in theaters multiple times and you're confident that the theatrical narration was different than the early video releases, I could see how the new narration might lead many to think that the early video releases matched what was in theaters. This might be lost media by now, but I for one would be interested in audio taken straight from the film reels for comparison. Either way, seeing as this was over forty years ago and even the new narration was over 20 years ago, I wouldn't feel bad if your memory is just playing tricks on you. Some folks swear up and down they remember the line "My God, it's full of stars!" being in the movie 2001, when all evidence indicates it was only ever in the novel and in the sequel movie 2010.