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Back in the 80's, one of my aunt's used to record a bunch of cartoons off of TV onto VCR tapes for my cousins watch over and over. When they would get bored of them, they would give me the tapes.

One of the cartoons I ended up with was a feature length film about a little unicorn. I don't remember much about it, except that at the end the antagonist was like somehow (I assume magically) turning all of the other unicorns into blocks in some big wall or structure or something. And somehow our hero unicorn was trying to stop him... Honestly, I'm not even sure that it had a happy ending, or at least maybe it was a bittersweet one. It was in English in the US.

This would've been '85 to '90 range when I watched it. It would have been recorded sometime within a year or two before. I know this is obscure, but I've thought about that cartoon a few times over the years and could never figure out what it was.

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  • Pretty sure you're looking for the Unico movie in this old question, so marked it as duplicate. If this isn't it, please let me know.
    – Walt
    Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 14:47
  • Man @Walt you're batting 100 here. I had such vague recollections of it there were a couple of things I left out. Like I was thinking there may have been more than one of these films, and in my faded memories it seemed like it could've been anime, but at the time I didn't know what anime was. But you nailed it. It was Unico. Thanks again!
    – jwatts1980
    Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 14:51
  • What is it about these creepy cartoons that got stuck in my mind... as a kid this movie - "Unico in the Island of Magic" - freaked me out.
    – jwatts1980
    Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 14:54
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    Whatyagonnado - sometimes these things go a little over the top and boggle our impressionable young minds with zombie building blocks and creepy cars with human heads. At least it builds reslienence. ;)
    – Walt
    Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 15:07
  • @Walt Revisiting this 4 year later, turns out there was an article published around the time we had this conversation about how much nightmare fuel this movie induced: io9.gizmodo.com/…
    – jwatts1980
    Commented Jul 1, 2019 at 16:20

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As confirmed by the OP in comments, this is Unico in the Island of Magic, part of the Unico anime/manga franchise. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

In this film, Unico meets a kind-hearted young girl named Cheri (also spelled "Cherry", voiced by Sumi Shimamoto). Cheri's older brother, Toby (in Japanese, "Torubi", voiced by Shuichi Ikeda), is working for the evil Lord Kuruku (in Japanese, "Kukuruku"), who plans to turn all living creatures, animals and people alike, into unusual zombie-like beings called "Living Puppets" to be his slaves; Toby's job is to change people into Living Puppets and then lure the Living Puppets to Kuruku's island castle in exchange for learning more of Kuruku's magic. His plan is to obey and serve until he learns enough to be the master, but fails to protect Cheri twice. Toby also takes on Melvin the Magnificat ("Yamaneko" in Japanese) - who hates Unico because Unico "intruded" in "his" forest (the forest in which the West Wind left Unico) - as his assistant. After Cheri's parents and neighbors all get turned into Living Puppets, she and Unico team up to stop Kuruku.

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