Dark Crystal (1982)

The first thing that you notice when watching Dark Crystal is the fact that the entire cast are animatronic puppets, created and brought to life by Jim Henson's Creature Works.  In fact, the story was co-written by Jim Henson himself.

Critical reception for the film was mixed, with the fantastical world created by visual designer Brian Froud being criticised as "busy" and a "visual muddle" by New York Times film critic Vincent Canby.  In particular, the forests, populated by a variety of fantastical plants and creatures, were criticised for distracting the viewer from the action. 

However, these backgrounds are masterpieces of scenery design; complete artificial ecosystems populated by everything from tiny insects to massive, long-legged "striders".
From a technical point of view, the film is a masterpiece of puppetry and animatronics, with every character, creature and even some of the plants brought to life by the team from Henson's Creature Works.  These puppets represent the cutting edge of animatronic technology, and can be extremely convincing.  The film takes full advantage of the technical possibilities afforded by the use of puppets, especially the death scene of the evil Skeksis emperor in which he literally turns to dust and crumbles in front of the camera.

Although the backgrounds of the film are a masterpiece of set design, the story revolves around the cast of fantastical characters that inhabit them, particularly the vulture-like Skeksis and the elfin Gelflings.  In addition to these groups, there are several unique characters, particularly the wisened old oracle Aughra with her lone removable eye and skreeching voice.  In fact, the Variety film review says  "The outstanding character is the Aughra, an ancient one-eyed harridan of an oracle who somehow reminds one of a truly blowsy Shelley Winters."

Overall, the film is technically highly polished, and at times manages to look absolutely real (one particular scene in which the "striders" march across a plain against a background of sunrise looks totally convincing), it is hard for an audience raised on "the muppet show" and similar to suspend their disbelief for long enough to become immersed in the story.  This is a shame, as the film is actually a fairly sophisticated allegory for the battle between innocence and wickedness, and the story is at least as good as more famous fantasy films.  As the Urban Cinefile film review notes, "(the film is an)...adventure made the more fantastic by being neither animation nor live human action ... but live puppet action."