This entry continues my well-deserved punishment for offering to detail two of the worst animated cat films ever inflicted upon audiences. Last time out, it was Felix the Cat: The Movie. This time, I’ll take the blame for detailing the R-rated 1974 abomination called The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat.
The 1972 film Fritz the Cat, directed by Ralph Bakshi, made dubious history by earning the first X rating for a wide-release animated film. While the movie had many flaws and was obviously the work of a first-time director (Bakshi began with shorts for Terrytoons), it is a masterwork compared to its sequel.
There are only so many ways The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat can be worse than its predecessor, and the movie manages to hit them all. Ralph Bakshi and Steve Krantz, the producer of Fritz, had a falling-out, and Bakshi had nothing to do with the sequel. Robert Crumb, who created the character of Fritz, ignored the film completely and was so disdainful of the first film that he had Fritz murdered in his final comic appearance in 1972.
Krantz hired Robert Taylor (an assistant animator on the first Fritz film and collaborator with Bakshi on The Mighty Heroes TV show) to helm the project. Fred Halliday and Eric Monte assisted on the disjointed screenplay. There is a loose theme of Fritz, a stoned, unemployed, and heckled husband, imagining himself in different life scenarios, each one ending badly for the titular cat.
Before addressing that, the differences between the Bakshi and Taylor films merit some discussion. First, Bakshi’s film is linear, whereas Taylor’s film is hallucinatory and less concerned with narrative cohesion. Bakshi tended to treat racism and class warfare with sharp, sometimes nasty satiric humor. Taylor treats these issues gratuitously and with a clumsy hand, edging close to and often erupting into actual racism.
One example is when Fritz imagines he is sent to deliver a message into “New Africa” (formerly New Jersey), run by stereotypical blacks (again depicted as crows), all of whom seem to embody the worst stereotypes of blacks as violent, switchblade-wielding thugs and prostitutes incapable of governing themselves save through acts of violence and assassinations.
Bakshi’s Fritz film is far more sophisticated in its approach to social commentary, depicting urban life as a decaying corpse of a lost American Dream. Taylor’s film is a copy of Bakshi’s, even using the dirty watercolors, canted angles, and extreme down shots evident in the first film. Taylor’s environment, however, does not convey the same utter hopelessness as Bakshi’s, possibly because the scenarios change too often. Taylor’s landscape is dirty and gritty enough, but Bakshi’s (he did grow up in a gang-ridden slum) is more authentic.
Bakshi’s Fritz is much more economical than Taylor’s. Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat runs for 77 (or 78 minutes, depending on the source), and so does the sequel. However, considerable filler mars the sequel’s narrative: Fritz’s fantasy of high life in the 1930’s consists largely of photographic montages and an endless repeating pattern of lights. A scene representing a mutually destructive war between blacks and whites (a crow and a pig, respectively) is one of the few scenes that makes its point, but the exchange of fire goes on for far too long.
Some other differences: Bakshi and Taylor both depict blacks as crows, but while Bakshi depicted Jews as lions, Taylor uses a Jewish lizard. Adolph Hitler appears to be a scrawny lion (he rather looks like Itchy Brother in the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon, disguised as Hitler). There’s a twist!
Oh, the movie: As we open, Fritz (voiced again by Skip Hinnant) is unemployed, perpetually stoned, married to nagging harridan Gabrielle (shout out to Reva Rose), and is burdened with a masturbating, chain-smoking toddler named Ralphie (a dig from Steve Krantz?). Fritz escapes by sending his incorporeal self out into the street while Gabrille rants on.
From here, we follow Fritz into nine imagined lives (the transitions are not always clear, or whether imagined or not). In Life One, Fritz seduces the sister of his Puerto Rican pal Chita (a camel?) with pot; her hallucinatory high is one of the better scenes in the film. Chita’s father shoots Fritz to death.
Life Two sees Fritz encounter a drunken bum who says he is God. This scene is exceedingly gross and unpleasant, but that’s where Taylor shows his weaknesses. Life Three finds Fritz in Nazi Germany as Hitler’s horny orderly and psychotherapist. Hitler attempts to rape Fritz before having his sole testicle (the major joke in the segment) blown off. American tanks kill Fritz.
Life Four has Fritz trying to sell a used condom to a bartender, whose wife caught gonorrhea from Fritz. Bakshi would never have used this gratuitous scene. Life Five, the flashback to the 1930s referred to above, is nothing but filler. It ends with Fritz broke and despondent.
Are we up to life Six? Fritz trades a toilet to the stereotypical Jewish pawnshop owner, Morris, for a space helmet after the lizard refuses to cash Fritz’s welfare check. We go into Life Seven, where astronaut Fritz bangs a black female reporter in space until the rocket explodes.
In Life Eight, the ghost of Fritz’s buddy from the first film, Duke, leads the cat into the future, where President Kissinger (depicted as a rat) has him deliver a message to President Jackson of New Africa (formerly New Jersey). The dark racism of this segment, discussed above, is barely even satirical. It ends with Fritz framed for Jackson’s assassination and executed.
Now relaxing in the underground sewers of New York, Fritz encounters the characters of his final life, an incomprehensible Indian guru, and an effeminate Lucifer (Lucifer is a faggot!) before we see Fritz at home once more, shortly before Gabriella throws him out into the street. Fritz declares that this current life is the worst of all of them before strutting down the street into the coda.
The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is, overall, a tasteless and unimaginative follow-up to Ralph Bakshi’s take on the character. The movie was universally panned, and Fritz was never seen again. Was anything about this woebegone sequel worthwhile?
Well, there was a great cast of notable animators toiling in vain. Cosmo Anzilloti, Milton Gray, Jim Davis (no, not THAT Jim Davis), John Gentilella, Volus Jones, Martin Taras, and Manny Perez returned from the first Fritz movie and worked with newcomers to approximate the feel of the first film.
Complete voice credits are hard to come by: Certain roles, such as Fritz (Skip Hinnant) and Gabrielle (Reva Rosa), are credited, but only a few of the listed voice artists correspond to characters in the movie. In fairness, this episodic film has many secondary and one-shot characters. We do know that Robert Ridgely, Pat Harrington Jr., and other notables appear (Side note: Skip Hinnant voiced the Easter Bunny for Rankin-Bass and was also a fixture on the kids’ show The Electric Company. He was also the star of the first X-rated AND R-rated animated films produced! It has been said that The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat has now become a “cult classic.” I suppose that’s a matter of taste.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
I was eleven when the original “Fritz the Cat” came out. Back then, any kid who managed to get in to see an R-rated movie, like “The Godfather” or “The Exorcist”, would become an instant celebrity in school; but the strictly-enforced X rating of Bakshi’s debut feature made this path to glory quite impossible. However, one of my friends had an older sister who saw the movie, and I’ll never forget how he held my classmates spellbound with his secondhand account of the film’s dirtiest and most disgusting moments. So when I finally saw “Fritz” in the ’80s (a friend owned it on VHS), my chief reaction was one of disappointment. It was neither as funny, as gross, or as ribald as I had been led to believe back in seventh grade. I’ve long been vaguely aware that it had a sequel, but I’ve never been the least bit tempted to see it. Thanks for sparing me the trouble.
I do remember seeing the name of Jim Davis in the closing credits of “Fritz the Cat” and erroneously thinking that it was indeed THAT Jim Davis. I jumped to the conclusion that his experience as an animator on that movie must have been what gave him his facility at drawing cats. At least I now know better than to mistake “Nine Lives” director Robert Taylor for THAT Robert Taylor, who was already dead by 1974.
Despite the progress of the civil rights movement in the previous decade, the idea that blacks were incapable of self-government still held wide currency among white Americans in the ’70s, an argument typically bolstered by a litany of atrocities committed by the postcolonial African regimes of Mobutu, Bokassa, and Idi Amin, or allegations of corruption against politicians like Detroit’s Mayor Coleman Young. Crumb himself explored this theme in some of his more controversial comics. It still gets debated whether he was illustrating the mindset of white racists, or his own, but I’m inclined to assume the former.
Bakshi’s decision to depict Jews as lions makes sense, as the Yiddish word for lion, Leib, is a component of many Jewish surnames; while the Hebrew word for lion, Ari, is a common masculine given name. But a lizard? Leviticus tells us that any animal that crawls on the ground is unclean.
Thanks for a very interesting review. Do “Once Upon a Girl” next!
You read my mind! It is indeed next!
Oh boy… Not looking forward to that. For some reason, I blame the Parent Code that may have partly caused a chain of events that resulted this film (which I refuse to watch). And please don’t post the trailer for this. I have “weak constitutions”(to borrow a phrase from a certain Warner cartoon).
Aw, give the piece a chance! I had to watch the movie again, after all!
I saw from one review of the dvd that the new Africa segment was referring to the black separatist parties that formed in the 1970s and attempted to make their own country and theorized that it was meant as a response to that though it went too far.
Milton Gray one of the animators was interviewed about his time at Bakshi/Krantz fairly recently and gray brought up how the story of this film was terrible and how he was one of the only animators from the first movie to return to the sequel. It’s at 1:22:22 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=34zenVzK49k&ra=m
George Singer was orginally hired to be the director and a good chunk of footage was already done. Taylor was hired to replace him and rewrote a large chunk of the movie.
Also allegedly Steve Krantz was a big reason why the movie didn’t turn out very good
Here’s the source on the George Singer thing, BTW: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/14/archives/cartoon-vision-and-brownsville-reality-a-kind-of-xrated-disney.html
Learn something new every day!
Oh wow! I knew of the sequel, but I’d never seen it. From what you said here I would not call this a classic by any stretch!
One can only imagine what such an animated feature would be if Robert Crumb himself had any involvement in it. Had he ever shown an interest in creating an animated cartoon around his characters? Knowing his political leanings, I would’ve liked to have seen a R. Crumb-produced animated cartoon. When “Fritz the cat“ was introduced, I wondered what kind of quality the animation would be as well as what the soundtrack might be, knowing the kind of music that Crumb himself likes and has played and has collected. Such a shame we won’t ever know what that might’ve been like.
In the documentary “Crumb,” he is shown on the phone discussing an offer to make a Mr. Natural movie and is not interested at all, saying “There hasn’t been a good animated feature in this country since 1940.” (I’m quoting from memory.)
You were too kind to the film.
On first watch over twenty years ago, I abhorred Nine Lives. It’s since grown on me, although it goes without saying the first film is still superior. It’s best not to look at Nine Lives as a cohesive narrative (because it fails miserably in that regard) but rather as an anthology film. There is some variety in the scenarios because of that, even though two of the “lives” I don’t care for (the Nazi one and New Africa, even though the latter does give us a welcome return of Duke).
One positive you didn’t mention was the soundtrack. Tom Scott & The L.A. Express churned out some funky bangers, particularly “Jump Back”, which makes the super long ’30s montage sequence at least tolerable.
Not that it matters, but Itchy Brother is from King Leonardo, not Linus the Lionhearted. Itchy’s voice is said to be patterned on Slapsy Max Rosenbloom.
Yeah, it does matter. You are correct. I failed to tell my lions apart. Biggie Rat would be so disappointed in me!
The worst cat movie? Wait till you see the Gaturro animated movie which i heard that franchise is really hated in Argentina for several reasons.
Jim Davis must be to the great artist who drew so many Fox and Crow comics.
He also worked on some the Looney Tunes completion specials (such as “Bugs Bunny’s Howl-oween Special” which was directed by the previously talked about David Detiege) a few years after doing this film.
The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is a one of a kind guilty pleasure film for me. It’s one of those so bad, it’s fun kind of movies. I really like Robert Taylor’s animation/design style, it has a loose, fun cartoonist-driven look to it. While the watercolor backgrounds are not as earthy as Bakshi’s first film, it looks really cool and even nicely polished at times. They’ve must’ve spent more money here than the previous Fritz film.
When it comes to the subject matter of race in this film, do you think Eric Monte had something to do with it? He’s an African-American writer who wrote shows like Good Times and The Jeffersons. I don’t know if the satire (regarding racial tension in America) here was done intentionally or not, but it’s pretty questionable to say the least.
Say what you will about the first Fritz film, at least Bakshi was trying to say something regarding what happened in the during 1960s. In this sequel, we don’t get to explore more of what was happening during the 1970s. Why couldn’t Fritz get drafted into the Vietnam War (or something like that) in an alternate life? Instead, we have Fritz getting stoned enough that he imagines himself as Hitler’s psychologist back in WW2 while discussing about “dropping the soap”… how sweet
While I agree with some of this, I don’t think it’s accurate to claim Nine Lives had nothing to say. In the God sequence, for instance, it can be argued that it’s a commentary on declining religious importance during the ’70s, hence why “God” is in a trash can: Society had no use for a God. The space sequence commented on gross commercialism. The New Africa sequence had a point of view as well, racist as it was. And of course the Kissinger caricature was political humor that was relevant in the era.
To Ian L.
You brought up some really good points, actually! Thanks!
Whoops! I want to apologize for the bad grammar (at the last paragraph) I just typed.
Here’s a correction:
“Say what you will about the first Fritz film, at least Bakshi was trying to say something regarding what happened during the 1960s”
Again, my apologies
Taylor, all things considered, is a heavily underrated artist and animator and has a genuinely fascinating story. According to Taylor in an interview with Jason Anders, he was born in 1944 and grew up as an orphan in a home for abused children. He points out a specific memory following a failed adoption interview: finding joy in the form of a 16mm Goofy cartoon being played in the distance.
He got his start in animation in the 60s at Hal Seeger’s studio, followed by a stint at Terrytoons where, as mentioned in the article, he helped develop the Mighty Heroes with Ralph Bakshi. He then moved out west to join DePatie-Freleng by the end of the decade, animating on shorts featuring the Pink Panther, Tijuana Toads, Ant and the Aardvark, and many others. While at DFE, Taylor would meet many of the animators who would work with him on Nine Lives, such as Don Williams and Manny Gould.
After the film, Taylor would be reunited with Bakshi, working on several of his films during the 70s, including Heavy Traffic and Wizards (he animates the iconic ‘They’ve Killed Fritz!’ sequence in the latter). Taylor would then end up at Hanna-Barbera, where he directed Heidi’s Song and the infamous Rock Odyssey project, along with brief jobs at Bill Melendez’s studio. By the 90s, Taylor was at Disney’s TV Animation unit as a supervising director on many of the Disney Afternoon programs, including Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Bonkers, and in a moment of coming full circle, Goof Troop. He also pitched a series based on the Song of the South characters which would’ve been titled Splash Mountain Boys.
Taylor’s next endeavor would be directing the failed Curbside pilot, which was meant to be a revival of the Terrytoons characters for Nickelodeon. The story of said pilot has been told many times on this site, so I won’t repeat it here, but all I will say is that it damaged Taylor’s career. For the remainder of his life, Taylor would only be involved in smaller independent jobs while playing music in his personal life before he passed away in 2014.
I personally have a strong affinity for Taylor’s work, specifically his animation style. You can see it in his work for DFE, Bakshi, and Nine Lives. He draws his characters in a very specific way while maintaining strong poses. I know a friend who was highly influenced by his work and draws almost exactly like him. All in all, Taylor should get more respect for his style and the things he accomplished in his career. He might not be on the same level as Bakshi, but he’s still special.
Thanks for posting, Noah, I learned a lot!
He was also, like Bakshi, refreshingly honest. When asked why he worked on TaleSpin: “Money. I have five kids and two greedy ex-wives.”
The original Fritz should’ve ended with him dying as intended. It would’ve been a perfect satire of the narcissistic boomer counterculture. That movie was ahead of its time. The crow sequence and the synagogue sequence have real bite to them (there’s a gag in the latter that feels like it could’ve been written yesterday except no movie would be allowed to make it)
BTW, on other voice actors: Bob Holt voiced a few characters in the film, notably “God” and the guy in the truck with Fritz during the space sequence. He sounds exactly like Avatar from Wizards a few years later.
I tried to watch this monstrosity but by the time Hitler appears, it was the ONLY time I’ve ever walked out on an animated feature film. I’ve never been able to watch the rest of it.
I was one of those teenagers who managed to sneak into the first “Fritz” flick because I had some older, college-age friends and I went with them, blending easily into the group because I was tall for my age. I bought a ticket without any trouble at all. So much for the efficiency of the 70’s MPAA rating system! I can’t recall ever hearing about a sequel, and it’s apparently just as well that I didn’t.
That said, and not having seen the second film, I want to make a point here about the original works of Robert Crumb. Whatever accusations of gross vulgarity and racism and other nasty things that might show up in screen adaptations, Crumb’s own story material is often deliberately offensive and completely vile.
Want to read a tale of incest, graphically written and drawn? Try Crumb’s “Joe Blow,” which appears in one of the Zap Comix issues, if I remember right.
Also, the “big-lipped darky” stereotype that was so common in early-to-mid 20th century American cartoons and advertising was a regular staple with Crumb, some decades later. Without having seen the drawing, what do you think a character called “Angelfood McSpade” might look like?
Not to go on too long making this point, I’ll make it right now:
Robert Crumb, despite all of his acclaim in recent decades by a devoted cadre of fans, is a deeply misanthropic man. He had a weird and unpleasant childhood, but plenty of people have those without ending up permanently soured on the human race. Crumb’s “humor” seems almost always to be driven by a heavily ingrained (and heavy-handed) negative attitude toward human existence itself.
I met him once, completely by accident, in San Francisco in the early 90’s, just before he moved permanently to France with his wife and children.
In this casual meeting on a near-deserted downtown street early on a Sunday morning, I introduced myself as a longtime fan, but he was really cold and rude to me. I obtained a very limp, dead-fish handshake from him, after which I said, “nice to have met you,” and quickly walked away. Something that he’s apparently never learned is that if you’re a star of any kind— don’t alieniate your audience! Not even one member! Without them, you’re NOTHING.
Oh well, maybe he keeps busy now teaching the French how to be impolite.
He may have disliked and disowned the film adaptations of his work, but he probably had no trouble taking the money.,,