HEAVY METAL (1981)

 One of the all-time greats when it comes to animation that's not made for little kids. There's nekkidness, decapitations, general sleaze, comedy, drug abuse and lots of assorted violence. Sadly there's not much in the way of any actual heavy metal tunes aside from a Black Sabbath but that doesn't really detract much from the sheer joy I get from watching this 80's midnight movie favorite. Other music that stands out includes Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar and Devo(who even get an animated band, that doesn't really look like Devo very much, to portray them). The anthology genre, held together by the presence of a killer glowing green orb in all the stories, works great for this and works in reminding me of reading an issue oh HEAVY METAL magazine(which this was based on).
 There was a sequel to this in the cinematically dreadful year 2000, appropriately titled HEAVY METAL 2000, which I did view once and then quickly erased it from my mind as not to tarnish the original volume.

HEY GOOD LOOKIN' (1982)

 This is a Ralph Bakshi directed and animated film that I knew nothing about until finding it the other day on an old VHS tape. Being a big fan of Baski's 70s output I had some high expectations going in. Sadly they weren't all met. Not to say that this is terrible, the animation, as usual, is top-notch and quite trippy and the idea of the film is cool. The main problem for me was the music used. Even though the film is set in the 50s everytime some tune from the soundtrack played the audience is abruptly reminded that the film was made in the 80s and that's a bit jarring. Also the story is kind of a mess with some pretty appealing characters that are hard to latch onto. Even our cool Fonzie-like hero turns out to be a cowardly wuss by the end. While this may be some deep comment on the nature of humanity it doesn't exactly make for a compelling viewing experience. I suppose this one is for Bakshi-completists only or people that don;t mind their fake 50s cartoons being extra fake.
 The history of the making of this film seems more interesting than the final product. Apparently it was started way back in 1974 as a mix of live-action and animation. That version, which allegedly included some footage of The New York Dolls performing, was completed in the late 70s but Warner Bros. didn't care for it and made Bakshi go back and animate all the live-action parts which took him up to '82 to finish. The original live-action mix doesn't seem to exist anymore which is a shame since it seems like it would at least have been interesting to check out as some kinda proto-WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? but made for adults.


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CAPTAIN OF COSMOS (1983)

                                     "How can you bite a lady's rear-end like that?"

 This Korean animated(and pretty badly animated at that!) feature came out originally in 1979 but the dubbed version wasn't released until the 80s. Most of the film is fairly typical stuff with a hero battling some evil alien-types(including a huge green-skinned robot that looks like a Frankenstein monster). The one thing that did stand out to me is our hero's sidekick who is a little boy robot who bites ladies on the ass if they refer to him as a mechanical being and not a real boy. Sadly this only happens once and the rest is rather dull space battles and people getting zapped with disintegration rays. There is some really odd dubbing in the English version which is good for a few laughs if nothing else.
 There are supposed to be references to the MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM show where various characters are just recycled but I've never seen that program so it's all new to me. There were a few bad guys that looked like various SPIDER-MAN or DAREDEVIL villains from the 70s comic books to give this thing a real international rip-off flair. AKA JOHNNY DESTINY: SPACE RANGER and JOHNNY DESTINY: SPACE NINJA(The producer of this, Joseph Lai, was also responsible for a gazillion of those cheap-ass retitled composite ninja VHS movies throughout the 80s like GOLDEN NINJA WARRIOR , NINJA THUNDERBOLT etc.)




                                                                 Ass-biter!:

The Southern California Motion Picture Council must've had a bad year: 

COONSKIN (1975)

 Director/animator Ralph Bakshi followed up his classic FRITZ THE CAT and HEAVY TRAFFIC cartoon flicks with this mostly animated, but also some live-action, version of a blaxploitation movie. It starts out with the unforgettable tune "Nigger Man" sung by the great Scatman Crothers, from there we get Scat and a younger buddy attempting a prison break and while this goes on he tells(and we get to see in cartoon form) the old story of Brer Rabbit but updated to a very urban environment with some crazy violence and sex thrown in. The whole film is a statement on being race in America. It is a film that was made in an era when being offensive was not seen as the ultimate sin as it is in these sad days. While it may seem most offensive to black folks on the surface due to the characterization and stereotypes on display it does not give very positive depictions to the white police or the Italian mafioso-types either. In fact I'm pretty sure the design and intent of this film is to offend everyone watching and therefore at least make some people think after viewing. Of course this would be wasted on today's audience which will never lay eyes upon anything that makes them in the least bit uncomfortable.
 A couple of stars beside Scatman include Barry White and his smooth deep voice and Philip Michael Thomas(aka that black dude from MIAMI VICE). Give it a watch if you're not an overly-sensitive, politically-correct piece of human-garbage(aka almost everyone still alive in 2017) or you just dig weird psychedelic cartoons. AKA STREET FIGHT and re-released as BUSTIN' OUT


                                                         
                                                          Scat!!:


                                                 

                                                  The less offensive title:

WIZARDS (1977)

 Ralph Bakshi is probably best known for his X-Rated film version of R. Crumb's FRITZ THE CAT but he did a whole bunch of sorta-similar but different animated films over the years. This one has some of the same voices from FRITZ and also some of the same goofiness but it's way less porno-like(only rated PG- sorry pervs!) and more of a melding of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS/LORD OF THE RINGS and post-apocalyptic Saturday Morning kiddie cartoon. The tone of this varies wildly from totally nihilistic downer to light-fantasy romp with the blink of an eye. I would definitely recommend this to animation fans of any type and especially if you dig stuff like HEAVY METAL which I was actually lucky enough to catch this on a double-feature with yesterday afternoon. It's probably also a real delightful trip if you do a lot of acid.
 If you have seen this movie before then you know that Bakshi throws a bunch of World War II footage of Nazis and Adolph Hitler into his movie to reinforce how very very bad his main evil wizard character is. While I found this an interesting juxtaposition with bumbling cartoon fairies and elves a couple of Hasidic Jews attending this screening apparently didn't find it quite as intriguing and quickly split at the first sight of blitzkrieg. I guess you can't please everyone.


Crazy-ass Nazi-wizards!:

FRITZ THE CAT (1972)

 The first X-rated cartoon feature! Also it's a look back at the radical 60's, race-relations, sexual freedom and general craziness. Of course it's all done through the filter of 1972 so it's all as equally downbeat as it is groovy. Apparently Fritz's original creator R. Crumb was not a fan but he's a pretty strange fellow so that's not very surprising. I first saw this movie on The Playboy Channel as a kid and it blew my little mind(although I was probably pissed that they were showing toons instead of porns!). I last saw it in a theater at midnight on 35mm film the way god intended and it's still a great trip! If you're gonna watch any cartoon movies and you don't suck I'm thinking this is your best bet. I think my favorite character, watching it this time, was the biker/junkie rabbit who beats up his horsey-girlfriend when not violently trying to bring down the establishment or shooting up. I mean how many cartoons do you get revolutionary nazi dope-addicted rabbits in anyway?
 There was a sequel made two years later that was pretty good also but if I recall correctly this one tops it.

WATERSHIP DOWN (1978)

 I originally saw this movie in grade school at a pretty young age. I don't remember much about it except that it had some slightly upsetting imagery which might explain my later love of splatter and gore movies. This is an animated kid's movie, but it's a kid's movie from 1978 so this entails scenes of cute little bunnies meeting their demise by getting their little fuzzy necks ripped out, being eaten by various predatory animals and being buried alive by those evil old human-beings. Also they fight amongst themselves against Nazi-like fascistic rabbits. The one reminder that we are actually watching a movie made for children is the presence of a comic-relief bird ridiculously voiced by Zero Mostel. This bird does at one point tell a bunny to "piss-off" so that's a bit redeeming. Overall it's pretty amazing to think that at one time something like this could have gotten produced and shown without overly sensitive moronic people having heart-attacks and protesting it over it's rougher bits. Maybe because this was made in England and all the characters have delightful British accents it gets a pass. I'm sure there's a bunch of deeper subtext in this one including metaphors for the evils of government and an obvious warning about dictatorships but I think it works as entertaining art even without thinking too hard about politics. The one negative thing is a terrible song by Art Garfunkel but besides that it's a good watch.
 I got the chance to see this in a theater full of surprisingly well-behaved little kids and from what I saw none of them seemed very traumatised by it. Then again kids these days have the internet so I imagine they're a lot tougher to make cry.
 This was remade as a series in 1999 but from what little bit I've seen of that it looks a little bit too Disney-fied to me.

DRACULA SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED (1980)

 This is a Japanese animated version of the 1970's Marvel comic book TOMB OF DRACULA. Now being a 70's kid I knew of TOD but I was more of a WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and superhero comics fan at the time. What little I do know of the Dracula comic though makes me think that this isn't a very faithful adaption of that character. In this film Drac comes to Boston, grabs himself a wife(who has super-powers for some reason), has a kid(who gets killed but then comes back as a superhero also) and fights against some vampire-hunters and Satan. Apparently Satan doesn't like relationships. As far as anime goes this is pretty standard-looking stuff but it's cool to see zombies and ghouls and vampires battling it out. AKA TOMB OF DRACULA and DRACULA. There was also a Frankenstein anime made around the same time based on Marvel's MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN comic that I haven't heard anything good about but I've yet to see it.

FANTASTIC PLANET (1973)

 Sci-fi meets art film in a French cartoon. Clearly influenced by the psychedelic experimentation of the 60's this is an amazing visual film that I first saw back in the 80's on USA network's Night Flight program along with stuff like REEFER MADNESS and THREE STOOGES shorts back when I'm assuming television was programmed by human beings. The plot involves little tiny humans(or Oms as they're called here) who are kept as pets by these large blue alien types who enjoy meditating and practicing genocide on any humans that aren't domesticated. There's messages about slavery, the importance of knowledge, rebellion and inter-species cooperation. There's also probably a lot more you get out of it if you drop some acid before viewing which I'm guessing was a popular method of ingesting this entertainment when it was originally screened. You should check it out if you're a stoned hippie, an art-fag and or just an Alejandro Jodorowsky fan who wants to see what one of his movies might look like if it was animated.


                                                                         Japan:

France: 

AACHI AND SSIPAK (2006)

Until I watched this I don't think I had seen a good Japanese anime for a really long time. This one isn't Japanese though it's Korean and if I go by this one maybe that's where I should start looking for interesting animated stuff. Crammed pack full of action, comedy, weirdness and a bit of grossness for good luck. Kinda seems to me to be a mix of the movie HEAVY METAL and the show AEON FLUX mixed with that Japanime sensibility and absurdity. The whole thing is based on a society that runs out of energy sources and uses shit for energy. Great concept. Little blue mutants form an army and fight an android. If you like anime in the slightest you should check this out. The whole thing pops up on YouTube from time to time.

QUEER DUCK: THE MOVIE (2006)

Is this the bastard son of FRITZ THE CAT and Daffy Duck? Is this where the legacy of Ralph Bakshi has gotten us? I don't know, maybe. Probably works better as shorts, which is what QD originally was. Still a better idiotic comedy than most Hollywood crap I've seen recently. Might be even more funnier if you actually are a homosexual, which I'm not. Will be offensive to small-minded imbeciles like, for example, most Christians/religious ass-wipes and/or overly macho types(who most likely are just upset about their own gay feelings that they try so hard to hide, that they have to automatically hate anything like this). In other words check it out you fag.

Shang-a-lang:

DOGGY POO (2003)

Wow, this Korean stop-motion kiddie movie, starring a cute piece of dog crap, is pretty amazing. It's kind of the Asian equivalent to DAVEY & GOLIATH but way more depressing and instead of being about a boy and his dog it's about a piece of dog shit. Existentialist, depressing, absurd and probably pretty mind-warping for a kid to watch this in any country. I think if I was 5 years old and slightly more impressionable it might make me afraid to flush my own shit down the toilet. Definitely something to experience. Can't imagine there's gonna be an American trend where all the little kids are into poopie but who knows. Perhaps 7-11 will have a grand tie-in and we can all get shit cups to put our shitty coffee in.