You probably remember the Turkish Delight. Most kids who grew up in the eighties or nineties have this specific, grainy memory of a pale queen in a sled offering a boy some steaming, magical candy. It wasn't the big-budget Disney version. It wasn't the BBC version with the clunky mechanical suits. It was the 1979 lion the witch and the wardrobe animated special. Honestly, it’s one of the weirdest pieces of C.S. Lewis media ever made, and if you haven't seen it in a decade, you’ve likely forgotten how genuinely unsettling it was.
Bill Melendez directed it. Yes, the same guy responsible for the Peanuts specials. You’d think that would mean a soft, Charlie Brown-esque vibe, right? Wrong. This was a co-production between the US and the UK, and it feels like two different moods fighting for dominance the entire time. It won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, which is wild when you consider how many kids it probably traumatized with its depiction of the Stone Table.
Why this specific version feels so different
Modern animation is smooth. It’s polished. This 1979 version? It’s scratchy. The character designs for the Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—are almost distractingly plain, but the villains are where the art department went off the rails in the best way possible. The White Witch doesn't look like a regal ice queen. She looks like a jagged, terrifying phantom.
Budgetary constraints actually helped the atmosphere. Because they couldn't animate every single blade of grass or snowflake, the backgrounds are often these moody, static paintings that feel incredibly lonely. When Lucy first walks through the wardrobe and hits the snow, there’s no triumphant music. It’s just cold. It’s quiet.
The voice acting is another rabbit hole. Depending on where you grew up, you might have heard a completely different movie. There are two distinct soundtracks. The American version features voices like Stephen Thorne as Aslan, while the British version used different actors to suit the local ears. It’s one of the few times a cartoon has been "localized" between two English-speaking countries to that extent.
The nightmare fuel of the Stone Table
We have to talk about the sacrifice scene. In the 2005 live-action movie, it’s sad and cinematic. In the 1979 lion the witch and the wardrobe animated film, it’s a fever dream. The creatures serving the Witch aren't just "monsters"—they are chaotic, abstract shapes that look like they crawled out of a medieval painting of hell.
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There’s a specific shot of the Witch’s creatures binding Aslan. The animation gets frantic. The colors shift. It captures the "Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time" in a way that feels ancient and heavy, rather than just a plot point in a fantasy story. Lewis wrote Narnia as a "supposal"—suppose Christ came to a world of talking beasts—and this animated version leans into the sacrificial weight of that imagery more than any other adaptation.
The technical weirdness of Children's Television Workshop
This wasn't a theatrical release. It was a TV event, sponsored by Kraft (you can still find old tapes with the macaroni commercials intact). It was the first feature-length animated film made for television, which is a massive milestone in animation history that usually gets overshadowed by Disney’s theatrical run.
The production was a beast. Melendez's studio worked with the Children's Television Workshop—the Sesame Street people. Think about that for a second. The people who gave us Big Bird helped produce a movie where a lion is ritually executed by a gaggle of demons. That contrast is basically the 1970s in a nutshell.
Animation historians often point to the "limited animation" style used here. It’s not "cheap" exactly, but it’s efficient. They used rotoscoping in certain sections to get movement right, but kept the character faces simple. This creates a "uncanny valley" effect. You’ve got these simple faces on bodies that move with a strange, fluid realism. It’s sorta gross. It’s also brilliant.
What people get wrong about the 1979 version
A lot of folks think this was a BBC production. It wasn't. While the BBC did a famous live-action/puppet version in 1988, this 1979 animated special was a primetime Emmy winner on CBS.
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Another misconception? That it’s "just for kids." C.S. Lewis himself was famously picky about how his books were adapted. He actually didn't want a live-action version because he thought a human in a lion suit would look ridiculous. He felt animation or "pictorial" representation was the only way to do the talking animals justice. If he’d lived to see the '79 version, he might have actually preferred it over the CGI spectacle we got later, simply because it feels more like an illustration come to life.
The voice of Aslan
Stephen Thorne's performance as Aslan is arguably the definitive one. Liam Neeson was great, but Thorne has this rasp. It sounds like a lion that has lived for ten thousand years and is tired of everyone's nonsense. When he roars, the audio actually distorts slightly. It feels dangerous.
Finding the movie today
Tracking down the 1979 lion the witch and the wardrobe animated film is a bit of a chore. It’s not on Disney+. It’s not on Netflix. Because the rights are tangled between the C.S. Lewis estate, the Melendez estate, and various distributors, it exists in a sort of legal Narnia—locked away in a wardrobe.
You can usually find it on DVD if you look for the "Remastered Deluxe Edition," but honestly, the grainy VHS rips on YouTube are the best way to watch it. The low quality adds to the vibe. The muffled sound and the slightly washed-out colors make the White Witch feel more like a ghost and less like a drawing.
Why it still matters in 2026
We are currently in an era of hyper-realistic CGI. Everything is perfect. Every hair on a lion's mane is rendered by a supercomputer. But there's no soul in perfection. The 1979 version is full of mistakes. There are ink bleeds. There are background errors. And yet, it feels more "real" as a piece of art. It’s a reminder that animation doesn't have to be pretty to be effective. Sometimes, it just needs to be evocative.
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It’s a foundational text for fantasy fans. It proved that Narnia could work on screen, long before we had the technology to do it "right." It showed that you could take high-concept Christian allegory and put it on CBS at 8:00 PM and people would actually watch it.
How to experience the 1979 Narnia properly
If you’re going back to watch this, don’t expect a Pixar movie. Expect a stage play that happens to be drawn on paper.
- Watch the British dub if you can find it. The acting feels a bit more "Narnian" and less "Saturday morning cartoon."
- Pay attention to the music. Michael J. Lewis (no relation to C.S.) wrote the score. It’s heavy on the harpsichord and woodwinds, giving it a Renaissance-fair-on-acid feel.
- Look at the creatures at the Stone Table. Specifically the "Hags" and the "Ghouls." They are genuine nightmare designs that wouldn't be allowed in a G-rated movie today.
The Turkish Delight in this version looks like glowing cubes of jelly. It’s the most delicious-looking thing ever put to film, which makes Edmund’s betrayal totally understandable. You'd sell your siblings out for that too.
To really appreciate what Melendez did, you have to look at the landscape of 1970s animation. We were stuck between the declining "Golden Age" of Disney and the rise of cheap, toy-driven cartoons of the 80s like He-Man. This Narnia special was an outlier. It was prestige television. It treated the source material with a level of grim respect that we rarely see in "family" programming anymore.
If you’re a collector, look for the original Warner Home Video clamshell cases. They have the best cover art. If you're just a fan, find a copy and watch it with the lights off. It captures the "Winter" of Narnia better than any $200 million blockbuster ever could. The isolation is the point. The fear is the point. And Aslan’s return actually feels like the sun coming out after a long, terrifying night.
Next steps for Narnia fans:
Locate the 1979 version on physical media (DVD or VHS) to ensure you are seeing the original aspect ratio and not a cropped streaming version. Once you've watched it, compare the character designs of the "Secret Police" (the wolves) to the descriptions in the original book; you'll find the animated version stayed surprisingly close to the "Maugrim" that Lewis originally envisioned. Afterward, look for the 1979 Emmy acceptance speech archives to see how the industry reacted to this dark horse winner at the time.