3. The Barrow Wight
From: The Fellowship of the Ring
In the movie: As previously stated, Frodo and his buddies face no issues getting to Bree.
In the book: In another one of the omitted chapters before their arrival in Bree, Frodo and his friends set off from Tom Bombadils house to continue on their jounrey. They immediately get into trouble again, this time in a foggy, dreadful place called the Barrow Downs. After venturing into the fog, Frodo soon finds that his friends have disappeared. He comes across them moments later, but they are trapped in the lair of a loathsome Barrow Wight. As Tolkien wrote: "Trembling he looked up, in time to see a tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars. It leaned over him. He thought there were two eyes, very cold though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance." Tom Bombadil comes, sings, and saves their asses AGAIN. (Kind of makes you wonder why he didnt just sing them safely all the way to Mt. Doom, doesnt it?) He then gives them daggers and tells them of the absolute safest way to Bree.
Why It Would Have Been Awesome: The monsters and baddies of the The Lord of the Rings films were always bordering on the line of creepy enough to kind of scare people but not scary enough to ACTUALLY scare people. We cant be mad at the scriptwriters for cutting out these pre-Bree scenes (because the movie had to get going), but we can bemoan the loss of this dark creature. Alas, we can only imagine what Peej and his Weta team of designers would have come up.