Adobe Premier is definitely the best program out there for editing video thats under $1000 bucks, and wasn't used to editar Lord Of The Rings (Apple's Light and Magic editing software) but even Adobe will set you back $800 dollars.
Unfortunately the cheapest most "user friendly" editing software is probably already installed on your computer. If you have a PC 'Windows Movie Maker' is pre-installed on most Windows XP-Vista systems, but brace yourself for alot of pain and frustration using it since it freezes, crashes, quits unexpectedly, and looses your data on a regular basis.
If you have a Mac than iMovie comes pre-installed (which I use and love) its simple to use, stable and comes with some very cool effects. However, this program is only available for Mac products and cannot be used on PC'S.