Fritz the Cat

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

In the hands of writer and director Ralph Bakshi, a popular underground comics character was the inspiration for the first X-rated animated feature in Hollywood history, over the strenuous objections of its creator, cartoonist Robert Crumb. Fritz is a feline college student of New York City in the '60s, using hippie buzzwords and fashion to score easy sex and drugs. After smoking some strong marijuana in Harlem, Fritz hallucinates and ignites a shooting incident with the police, resulting in the death of his friend Duke. Fritz flees across country in a Volkswagen Bug with a girlfriend and encounters a heroin addict biker rabbit and bomb-making terrorist radicals, obvious references to the Hell's Angels and the Black Panthers, respectively. A trippy journey through its anti-establishment times, Fritz the Cat (1972) was viewed as a must-see novelty, a radical departure from the juvenile, saccharine type of animation with which America was familiar. Nevertheless, the film was opposed by Crumb, who felt that his work had been bastardized. The film was followed by a sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English, Spanish, French
• Features:
  • • Original theatrical trailer
    • English: mono
    • French: mono
    • English, French & Spanish language subtitles

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Ralph Bakshi

• Producer:

  Steve Krantz

• Screenwriter:

  Ralph Bakshi

• Cinematographer:

  Ted C. Bemiller, Gene Borghi

• Composer (Music Score):

  Ed Bogas

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Ed Bogas

• Composer (Music Score):

  Ray Shanklin

• Editor:

  Renn Reynolds

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Glen Glenn

• Animator:

  Norm McCabe, Virgil Ross, John Gentilella, Manuel Perez, Lawrence Riley, Rod Scribner, Ted Bonnicksen, John Walker

REVIEW:

• Irreverent, psychedelic and adventurous, Fritz the Cat was the first X-rated cartoon feature. Created by the infamous animator Ralph Bakshi and based on a character by famed underground artist R. Crumb, Fritz was a surprising cult hit on the midnight movie circuit and at drive-ins. Though it may seem dated after the explosion of Japanese animation in the 1980s, the film successfully captured the early 1970s disillusionment with the free-love era. It also happened to hit the screens in the midst of the brief "porno-chic" movement, when X-rated movies such as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones made "dirty" moviegoing experiences socially acceptable. Crumb objected to Fritz the Cat being made into a movie, but Bakshi and schlock producer Steve Krantz got permission from Crumb's wife without his knowledge. Bakshi, who was best known for working on TV cartoons like Deputy Dawg and Hekyll and Jekyll, went on to make a number of less well-received animated features. Fritz the Cat was followed by an almost impossibly bad sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi