A Ralph Bakshi Film Fest!

I've spent the holiday enjoying some movies by Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi is a notorious maverick in the animation industry, a garrolous New Yorker with a charming personality and a contentious turn who produced some fascinating cartoons during the 60's, 70's and 80's.

I first learned of Bakshi with his movie Wizards which I saw in the theater in that notorious summer just days before Star Wars transformed the science fiction and fantasy landscape forever. Wizards is a fun frolic of a movie that I enjoy a bit each time I see it. It's clever, witty, with just enough smarm to make it work but not become cloying. It's philosophy is thin, but works well enough for practical purposes. Two brothers, wizards both, embody the battle between nature and technology with technology being associated with war and death and misery while nature is all about fairies and goodness. The animation features some great work by Mike Ploog, some details by Jim Starlin and lots of sturdy animation from the Bakshi studio. It's a lovely movie with charm and a hint of wit.



It was followed up by Lord of the Rings the first and infamous adaptation of the Tolkien classic. Bakshi's LotR is a pretty good movie for about an hour and a half, right about the time they encounter the Balrog in Moria. Then slowly the move seems to lose its pedigree a bit as a successful blend of animation and live action. I don't find the techniques used in LotR to be offensive, they work quite well early on in the cartoon. But apparently money wasn't there to animate the last half as effectively and sadly it shows. The story ends abruptly and the whole thing was overall disappointing. Though before the Peter Jackson epics, the only attempt ever made to translate the work to film, however limited the success.



Lastly I watched Fire and Ice, Bakshi's turn at bringing a Frank Frazetta comic book to the screen. This uses the same techiniques of rotoscoping experimented with effectively in Wizards and used to less effect in Lord of the Rings and offers up a complete translation. This movie written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway does what it advertises, bringing Frazetta images to life. It's a pretty straight ahead story about a sorcerer who wants to conquer the world by pushing his ice kingdom across the landscape and he's opposed by folks who live atop a volcano. A hero chases about after a kidnapped princess and is helped by a mysterious masked fellow who seems to know a lot about the backgrounds of everyone involved. There's not a lot of complexity to it, but it's good enough for adventure purposes. It's a decent enough story and offers some fun visuals. It's not as charming as Wizards but more complete than LotR.

Overall I find the Bakshi stuff highly enjoyable, smart and punchy in a way a lot of animation just isn't alas. Now I need to get myself a copy of Fritz the Cat the seminal Bakshi film I've never seen all the way through.

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