I think Bakshi really began to "lose it" when he did "Cool World". That film was gross and violent for the simple reason that he could do it and get a way with it. This film reminds me of that previous one.

To be fair, Cool World was twisted far beyond what his original idea was. Probably the worst case of studio mangling and Executive Meddling in Hollywood history.

However, this isn't to say that his original idea wasn't even more grotesque - a horror movie about a 'toon breaching the wall between Cool World and the Real World in order to murder her creator.

Actually, I thought that was an interesting idea if done as a true horror film. Better than say, "Evil Toons" was ( a low grade horror film involving cartoon characters. Don't bother to ask. It stank)

Oh, I think the idea of an animated horror movie's actually a good one. It was superbly done with Coraline and ParaNorman, both very old-school horror movies with a whole lot of heart behind them. But the idea of a Ralph Bakshi animated horror movie is a bit much - take a good look at this trailer for what that might have turned out as.

I remember 'Cool World'. I've no idea about the rest, but the ending was so obviously focus grouped and out of character to the rest of the film that it was obvious it had been meddled with.

Bakshi "lost it" after the infamous Mighty Mouse fiasco. The last I've seen of him was when he was a character on that horrible "Ren & Stimpy Adult Party" on Spike TV, complaining about his loneliness and constipation. (I also think that was when John K. "lost it" too.)

What exactly happened in the Mighty Mouse fiasco?

The really, really short story is this: Sometimes, the scent of a flower is just the scent of a flower; NOT a metaphor for cocaine, like what some overly prudish teacher/parental 80's groups thought. It's one of the most inafmous events in the history of TV animation.

Very.... Intensely.... "I don't get it."

You liked Fritz the Cat?? I think you're the only one. I love Fritz - as created by R. Crumb - but hated the movie. Can't say I'm a fan of Bakshi's work, and this trailer does nothing to sway me. I'd say your inquiry of who it appeals to is a key point. :3

Crumb hated the movie too, Hated it so much he killed Fritz. Drove an ice pick through the back of the cat's skill and out an eye socket.

I guess that kinda keeps Bakshi from doin' a sequel ...

There was one, but neither Bakshi nor Crumb had anything to do with it. Haven't seen it personally, but it exists - "Nine Cats Of Fritz the Cat".

I saw "Nine Lives Of Fritz the Cat". It was trash. Fritz was already a pretty unappealing character but in the sequel I just wanted him dead. I wanted everyone in that movie dead. It was a really unpleasant experience overall.

Good lord, I thought I was the only one who remembered Rocket Robin Hood. I used to catch that on some local channel when I was a little woozle.

The story about him escaping Canada was pretty cool. Thanks for sharing that.

And the animated short was pretty good, too.

Bakshi's a mixed bag, but he's done some good stuff. I just hated Fritz largely because I can't stand the character. And maybe that's the way that Crumb wrote him in the first place. I don't know.

The guy is a legend. And even if he's done some things that I don't like, that doesn't take away from his legend. And doing old school animation and dealing with the studios and all the personalities he's had to, there's no disputing that he's worked his ass off in ways that most people couldn't imagine.

This is one of those obscure cartoons that I forgot for years until reminded of it. Liddsville, though not a cartoon, was the same way. I had managed to purge it from my memory until I turned on the TV one Sunday morning last year and LIDDSVILLE WAS ON. RRH I don't think has been on TV around here since the 70s.

The thing is, in Nine Lives, Fritz deserved to be shanked in the skull with an icepick by his fat wife. He was a shiftless, unemployed, junkie who could barely be bothered to go cash their welfare check. It was bad enough in the original where he was a hypocritical leftist who acted the part of a bleeding heart so he could get laid and dropped out of college to go live life only to leave people broken or dead in his wake. At least that gave him something of a sinister personality trait so you could properly hate the guy. In the sequel he'd just given up on living beyond getting high. There was no reason to want to follow his hallucinatory adventures.

I didn't know about the ties to Tale Spin. I'm glad that he had gone on to do something that was good. I loved Tale Spin.

But yeah...if I were Robert Crumb, I'd have hunted both him and Bakshi down and chewed off their faces.

I didn't LURV Fritz the Cat, but the animation and art was at least decent, and it looks like Disney's Pinocchio compared to this!

As a teenager I got a collected version of the Crumb Fritz and I loved it, but Crumb is/was so rabidly anti-establishment he probably would've hated any movie made of it, regardless of quality.

Yeah, Crumb is an interesting guy (to put it mildly). I have no idea the history behind the movie, and wonder if he was coerced into it. Oh well, I can always go back and re-read Fritz being eaten by a giant communist chicken when I need a Fritz fix. :3

Fritz was notable for being the first animated adult work that I`m aware of. But the plot was weak,the movie is very dated and set in that time. I`d give it a straight C rating or 2 out of 4 stars.

I enjoyed "Fritz", "Wizards" and Bakshi's "LOTR".
From the trailer, there's nothing about "Coney Island" that I find appealing.

Just watched the kickstarter trailer.

Yuppers, it sucks.

Sigh.

Bunners

I feel like I've seen this kind of animation before and done way way better.

I stopped watching after 53 seconds. As you said, very grotesque. I watched this as an antidote:

https://vimeo.com/110478181

I always found that animation a little too 'frantic,' like it was being played at 2x speed. But yeah, at least the characters don't look like they were dragged out of a sewer.

Love the video, but I detest the song.
I actually played this video while listening to "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and it was great.
Since then, that song has been overplayed, but they seemed to go really well together at the time.

That has to be work print, right? Everything looks so rough. And the character designs are so hideous.

I've honestly never been much of a fan of his work. It's noteworthy and influential work, no doubt, but there's always been a pervasive sort of ugliness throughout everything that he's done. Ugly character designs, barely coherent stories, an overreliance on rotoscoping....but this latest work looks like he's really let himself go by even those standards. It's like something that would be on the television playing in the background of a slightly better but still grim cartoon.

good lord....

V.

I didn't even bother watching that. The artstyle on the "freezeframe" squashed all curiosity.

god that looked like a huge pile of utter shit! I dont see who that was supposed to appeal to. Also whats with all the live action mixed in with the minimal animation that did appear? complete and utter garbage.I wouldnt watch it for free.

"Who exactly is this film supposed to appeal to?"

I thought about it, and the closest thing to a non-cynical answer I could come up with is "Pretentious blockheads who like to pretend they understand art." You know, the same people who think Waking Life is a good movie.

At this point, Ralph Bakshi is like the M. Night Shyamalan of animation. IE: The guy who made one good movie and has since used his name recognition for that one good movie to continue to trick investors into throwing money at him no matter how horrible the rest of his filmography gets.

And this? This will be his Lady in the Water. This thing looks like it was designed to be horrible -- like Bakshi is trying to replicate the con from The Producers and this is the guaranteed flop he needs to get away with it.

Only thing I liked about it is the paper clippings used as backgrounds, that's it. However, the actual animation, characters, and lot of other things in the film is very ugly, unfinished, rough, hideous looking. It really does look like student digital film, and I have seen superior student films that is better than this.

I'm very impressed this is like worst looking thing I have ever seen to come from Ralph Bakshi himself so far. He should have done better than that. I know he's cheapskate filmmaker and using cheap animation tricks, but this film really does goes lower than that. I would stay away from this film.

I wouldn't be surprised. I did recalled one seriously old retired illustrator guy, said that the real reason why he's retired from being as a illustrator for the illustration market. Is that all of his contracts to the people who help him get illustration jobs, are all dead now. Not even one is still alive. Right now he's kind of semi-retired and paints commissions for his own fans and followers who tracked him down. I doubt he's still alive or not right now, he's like super seriously old. He really does paints awesomely pulp magazine style.

Yeah, I'm sure lacking better older crew that Ralph once had ages ago. Really did affected the new film he's working on with new one that is with lesser talent. Director's job, it is his job to the get the most talented crew of people he can get. But trailer show that he really did failed harder himself as a director.

I'm sure that's the way it will be for the furry fandom. Furs from the 80's and 90's furry fandom might start dropping out, not because of death (such as Jim of the Skunkworks fame). Only more because of the fact they will start doing something else that is not furry anymore. However, they're still furry by heart and only willing to move on.

Yeah sucks for Ralph, it would have been nice if he realized he should have stopped making films. Hopefully new film will help him realized it's time to stop and let the time pass over him. He does have seen better days without right kind of people he once had. Only his old superior films will help people discover his works in better light. But this new film of his does looks like the worst way to know him and his works. LoL.

I did have many baffled young furries asking me why my arts never got the support that it should have. I said, well it's too different and doesn't feel modern furry enough. They could have worked better in the furry 80's, but time have changed and moved on now. I still do enjoyed creating "retro" arts that many young furries are not looking for. I bet I will be in nursing home by the time I go over few hundred watchers on FA years later. Stuck with less than 100 here.

Think we can file this one under "Aht fags from Uranus" Roz?

An old reference, but appropriate under the circumstances I think.



-Badger-

Here's the impression I walked away with from that preview. A) It's art for the sake of being art. And, unlike so much of what appears on these FA works, art is famously interpretive. And B) This film appears to be the babbling memories of someone whom toured a sleazy area around the New York area while high on some really hard liquor or harsh drugs. It feels like a consistently noisy environment with people whom just don't give a (censored).

Then again, whom was Fritz the Cat suppose to appear to in it's day and age?

It appears that I meant to say appeal and didn't catch the error in time for editing.

I would assume young people (18-25) It gave off a hippie topical vibe .And being sexual would be considered very new and different and provacative compared to Disney and cartoons being only for kids. Too bad it wasnt very well done.

But, I also walked away with that being the whole intent. What fully the artist is trying to say, I'm not completely sure. But, as stated before, I came away with the feeling that this was meant to be some kind of re-enactment of the artist's perception...while really high on something. Be it an ugly, hazy, incomplete set of memories.

Simply put, I'm not planning on paying the $3.99 rental price or even watching it from a freely smuggled copy on YouTube. Got a feeling this one is best viewed while sharing whatever the artist was high on.

I was talking about Fritz though. I reiterate i have no idea who this latest train wreck is supposed to appeal to. Your theory seems to make sense.But anything giving the view point of someone wasted out of their mind can easily descend into incomprehensible garbage as this seems to look like.The complete sketchiness and total hideous design choices doesnt help either.

Oh...Fritz.

Honestly, that's one that I have only heard about via third party chit-chat. Not sure the flick is for me.

Funny everyone is talking about Fritz and nothing else of his.
Aside from Wizards my favorite work of his was The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse.
That had in my opinion some of the funnest work he's ever done. That Mike Kazala worked on it made it all the better. But also considering this is going direct to vid and you can rent it or rather PRErent it on VIMO NOW for 3 or so dollars says all you need to know about it.

Well Fritz is kind of furry porn.Itd make sense it got talked about then most of his works But the new adventures of mighty mouse as far as I understand had a lot to do with John K`s involvement in it .

As far as I know Mighty Mouse was just as much John K. as it was Bakshi, and a lot of people complained that Wizards was a rip from Vaughn Bode (which it was, but it was still cool.) And I don't think anyone has mentioned American Pop and Fire & Ice, either.

Like Don Bluth, Bakshi seems good at raising money from investors, not so good at producing something that appeals to a wide audience.

Now I learned something new. I had no idea John Kricfalusi was involved in Mighty Mouse. That...actually explains quite a lot about that series.

other than Kent Butterworth, it sounds like Roz's classmates from Cal Arts from the mid 80's.

fixed the last link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgsup5sCh50
Have all those favorites on a scratchy old VHS Tape. Yes, please a couple more that weren't included on your list such as "Fun with Father", "Operator" (Frankel's magnum Opus), or "The Nutcracker" (which Robot chicken re-did, to a much more inferior degree to the original. That was one hell of a Producers show that year (1986), and the high water mark for the amount of Talent coming out of Cal arts at the time.

I'll admit to liking Wizards. It's weirdly bleak sort of movie and actually has an interesting art style to it. That would be the Vaughn Bode part of it, I suppose.

His take on Lord of the Rings has a nostalgic appeal to me since I saw that in the theater with my parents when it came out and it scared the crap out of me. Especially the Black Riders. Creepy. The Balrog left a real impression in my memories that grew into something a lot more ferocious than what it turned out to be when I watched it again in recent years. Looks a little silly now. There's a gag dub of that done by Walking Tacos that you can find on YouTube that makes me laugh a bit too much for its level of stoner humor.

I'd nearly forgotten that he was responsible for Fire & Ice. I actually like that one for how batshit crazy it is. Lots of wild overacting all around. And, seriously, if a sorceress names her kid Nekron, what kind of person does she think he'll turn out being? The Batman dude with the axe there is pretty epic.

Wizards also features some the last work of comics veteran Wally Wood.

That was horrid. It's like he's trying to make it as bad as he can, for some reason.

I found this baffling, not to mention hideously ugly.

I think Bakshi's slipping. But that's not news! :P

I'm guessing this is Ralph Bakshi's take on Meet the Feebles.

Rather opposite direction directorally then Peter Jackson, though. He directed Meet the Feebles as an art house grotesquery then went on to direct some of the biggest blockbusters that ever were, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Bakshi did Lord of the Rings early, then descended straight backward into grotesquery. :P

To be frank I never thought that much of Bakshi's work. Not very innovative technically, and usually poorly written and honestly boring. He always seems to be one of those guys who manages to get work not because he deserves it but rather because he name is easy to remember when somebody it thinking about bank rolling some bizarre animation.

It's awful.

I am disappoint.

I saw Wizards when I was 7. The movie came out in 77, I was born in 78.
I think the reason I "like" most of his films is due to the deeper message in all of it, the in your face and background symbolism liter his works to be perceived as the individual would. Heavy traffic, coon skin, American pop, hey good looking and to some extent Fritz the cat are just his interpretations of the world he lived in, all characterizations of the attatudes of the streets. Then you have his fantasy stuff, Fire and Ice, Lord of the Rings, Wizards (even that had so much symbolism involved, even threw the jab with a scene where a soilder is yelling "he killed Fritz!" In protest of the killing of the character by its creator)

The thing is, most of the stuff he did were "shorts" made to be polarizing and controversial but made you kind of look at how twisted reality actually is.
And after watching the trailer, it said to me "now he is making a point to show how violent today is, how everyone is "open" to both sexualization and violence.
All ya gotta do is turn the tv on or walk in a mall and. It's all around you.

I'd say not to condemn it until you see the whole thing if you do. But just think about how his style is vs what we see on TV, youtube and movies now a days...it's the same stuff, just different styles.

I'd say not to condemn it until you see the whole thing if you do. But just think about how his style is vs what we see on TV, youtube and movies now a days...it's the same stuff, just different styles.

I honestly don't think I could handle sitting through a whole film done in that style, although if friends see it and say it's good, I would consider it. For what it's worth, I don't care for the deliberately crude or grotesque style a lot of current TV cartoons are done in either.

I can give him props for following his dream with this project and doing what he wants to do, rather than what 'the suits' make him do. It's just too bad that his dream project is so far removed from what anyone else wants to see.

Egads that's horrendous.. ;/ Even the music attempts to be off-putting...
Perhaps they are trying to capitalize on the perception of the nouveau-grotesque-random cartoon network shtick..

Nothing's I've seen of Bakshi's has never not made me feel really uncomfortable at some point. I can't look at Wizards and not think of vaughn bode, fritz was similarly derived, his stuff always seems to piggyback on someone else's fantastic idea and wind up with unfinished, crude imitations out of a loser fanboy mentality.
This does at least look like it could work on its own, depending on the writing, but if it's the same 'ugly animation + awkward editing' there's no way I'd subject myself to it.

I'll watch it eventually.

Of all the long lost figures that could be returning to the animated film industry...we got Bakshi? We could've had Don Bluth, and we got Bakshi. Screw you, world.

As for the trailer, the only reason I watched 45 seconds of it instead of noping off to hell-no-ville at the first sight of the freeze frame is because I could not believe such grotesque figures could actually be in motion.

I should've went with my initial inclination.

I'm a big fan of American Pop, and if this had that kind of style and was a coherent look at the vanishing of that mid-century Coney Island and the characters who populated it, it would potentially be very interesting. It's possible that I just don't get it, but this just looks like a mess to me. Too bad.

I think Bakshi is a very talented gent, and I enjoy most of his films. But his big problem is that he's stuck in this little groove he established for himself, and doesn't get that time and art and peoples' tastes have passed him by. Even if this pitch had the technical quality of Heavy Traffic or Wizards, the ideas and atmosphere are so firmly lodged in Bakshi's own personal nostalgic and stylistic headspace, that it really wouldn't appeal to very big audience regardless. He was a great fit for Fritz, but that was quite a ways back now. I'm not sure he's even entirely aware how much has changed...

I think that hit the nail on the head-- that's he's very much stuck back in the 'old days' Brooklyn and New York, which means a lot to him, but little to anyone else. Sometimes a brilliant artist or director can take their personal obsession and make something that everyone will enjoy, but more often than not it ends up very niche-oriented and self-indulgent. But if this is his dream project, maybe he doesn't care whether anyone else likes it or not, except those few that share his obsession and enjoy his style.

One will not look at Nathan's Hot Dogs the same way again...

Vimeo lags like a glacier on my computer, so I went and looked up the promos on Da Toob.
Yep. That's Bakshi all right.

The trailer told me nothing useful about the movie, except that it's intentionally lousy 5 FPS animation over a background made of cut up magazines. It appears they went a step or few too far trying to be edgy and primitive and went all the way to genuinely awful.

I should note I actually liked 'Fritz the Cat' way back when, though it appeals to me a bit less now, and liked most of 'Cool World' aside from the obviously butchered ending. Man, I haven't seen 'Cool World' in a decade. Time to find a copy and give it a looking at.

Yeah, that is some ugly stuff, and it doesn't even have the virtue of being particularly innovative. It's so conventionally unconventional, the avant-garde equivalent of clown paintings, without their technical merits.

It's like if Bakshi directed Dirty Duck...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g979zRcHkg If you don't know what that is.

From what I gathered about him Ralph thinks of animation as being best when it's lowbrow, ugly, and depicting the dirtiest parts of humanity. Or he thinks of animation as being lowbrow and ugly, kinda hard to tell because eighty-year-old NYC-born alcoholic stoners aren't that great at being coherent.