06th Oct 2005
Fritz the Cat
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Long ago, when I was a wee lad of 11, Ralph Bakshi unleashed Fritz the Cat into the theatres. If for nothing else, Fritz is notorious for being the first X-rated cartoon. I just saw it for the first time. FtC is dated, racist, somewhat violent, occasionally entertaining, and a sort of postcard from the NYC drug counterculture of the late 60’s. Fritz is into bamboozling the babes for sex, bemoaning the amateur high school punks clogging up Washington Square, trying to get hip in Harlem, and heading out of town for the magic of the open road (after instigating a riot). The film would get an R rating in this day and age. This ain’t for the kids, mind ya. |
For as wild as Fritz gets (”I shot the john!”), there’s some humanity that comes through (when he objects to the beating of the needle-toting girlfriend of the Rabbit Revolutionary). For the most part, Fritz is trippin – off on his journey with no responsibilities to get in the way.
It’s an uneven movie (the Bo-Diddly scene is a detour), but I’m glad to have seen it once – I regard it as an artifact; as something to remind me of how things were 35 years ago for a wide swath of youth. A later Bakshi movie that I really like is Wizards, which is very funny Good vs Evil tale of two brothers.
