# Ralph Bashki appreciation thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 18, 2001, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050 "2001-11-18T07:47:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_Mick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/838e76/32.png) [@The\_Mick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mick)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/1 "2001-11-18T07:47:55Z")
Anyone else seen this guy’s work? He makes animated films, some of them innovative, if not a little sick. I rented _Streetfight_ from Blockbuster today and looked up the rest of his works in my handy-dandy copy of The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoon, and he also made the Lord of the Rings animated films and a Harry Potter film back in the late 70’s, believe it or not. What interest me most is his more mature films like Fritz The Cat. I reccomend his work to anyone that want to see something interesting. Anyone know where I can locate a copy of Fritz The Cat and its’ sequel? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/2 "2001-11-18T15:34:03Z")
The Mick writes: \> . . . and he also made the Lord of the Rings animated \> films and a Harry Potter film back in the late 70’s, \> believe it or not. Since the Harry Potter books weren’t written till the '90’s, it’s clearly impossible for him to have made a film of them in the '70’s. I guess you’re referring to the film _Wizards_, which had nothing to do with Harry Potter other than using the word “wizard.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/3 "2001-11-18T16:03:15Z")
_Wizards_ seemed to be a rip-off of Vaughn Bode’s (“BO-dee”) _Junkwaffle_ comics. IIRC, Bode was seriously pissed off at Bakshi, but I don’t remember how it was resolved. (Bode, IIRC, died of autoerotic asphyxiation, but I think the polite term is that he died during a “metaphysical experiment”.) I liked _Wizards_ when I saw it back in the '80s. I saw it again several years ago and found it a bit dated. Still, “Fritz! Omygod! FRITZ! They got Fritz! Yellow atrocity filled vermin!” pops into my brain from time to time. And I liked the Good Wizard’s line at the end. I won’t spoil it, but it started, “There’s one more trick that mom taught me…” For its time, _Wizards_ was a good story and an innovative piece of animation. _Fritz the Cat_ came out in the early(?)-'70s. I didn’t see it until the '80s. I found the dialog to be _extremely_ dated, and the attitudes toward women to be atrocious. But it was also pretty funny, and at the time it was made the language and attitudes were contemporary. _Lord of the Rings_ was very good… as far as it went. I saw this one in the cinema, and I was “into” Tolkein at the time. Bakshi’s use of rotoscoped live actors was something I had never seen before. (LotR was the first Bakshi film I had seen.) Modern viewers who grew up with anime would probably not be at all impressed, but it was certainly better than Rankin-Bass’s _The Hobbit_. (Perhaps I’m being unfair. I never saw _The Hobbit_ because I’d seen the Rankin-Bass animation in the trailers and in stills, and it looked dreadful. I assumed the rest of the film had the same bad look.) The most glaring flaw with Bakshi’s _Lord of the Rings_ is that it only goes half-way through the books. I guess Bakshi intended to do a sequel that covered the latter half of the _Rings_ trilogy, but it was never made. (Incidentally, a live-action LotR was going to be made in the '70s. They came up with a full-sized head of one of the statues guarding the pass in the river after Frodo leaves the troupe, but ran out of money. The head turned up as a ship in _Zardoz_.) I really liked _American Pop_. It received mixed reviews at IMDB, and it’s not a film that is often seen. I did catch it once on a cable channel, and it was horribly chopped. Like _Fritz_ and _Wizards_, it seems a bit dated today, but when it was new it was great. Those are the Bakshi films I’ve seen. Never got around to seeing _Cool World_. A search at IMDB for [Bakshi](http://us.imdb.com/Name?Bakshi,+Ralph) turned up a lot of films by him. I didn’t know he was so prolific. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/4 "2001-11-18T16:58:28Z")
Just don’t ask writer David Brin. One of the most seriously vitriolic trashings I’ve ever seen is a piece he put out urging people NOT to see LotR when it came out. “Ripoff artist”, “hack” and “crass commercial opportunist” would number among the nicer terms he used, if he used them. He certainly used terms LIKE them, and worse. He impugned not only LotR, but Bakshi’s other stuff to that point, and Bakshi’s own integrity and motivations. Still, I liked “Fritz the Cat”, when it stayed close to the R. Crumb comics it was derived from. R. Crumb did NOT bless the project, apparently, or did, and later regretted it. Bakshi seems to have a history of bad relations with other artists like Bode and Crumb. I was never wild about Bakshi’s rotoscoped stuff. Always seemed like a cheapjack shortcut to me. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/5 "2001-11-18T18:50:42Z")
> [@](#): > > I was never wild about Bakshi’s rotoscoped stuff. Always seemed like a cheapjack shortcut to me. [nitpick] Rotoscoping is _not_ cheap, in fact, its more expensive than just shooting the film live action or having animators draw the whole thing.[/nitpick] I’ve liked the films of Bakshi’s that I’ve seen for the most part, though I was disappointed with _Cool World_, and I’ve never gotten why people hated his LotR films. Okay, so maybe they weren’t the greatest, but how many times has Hollywood totally screwed up a film adaptation so bad as to make the movie unwatchable? (_Battlefield Earth_ comes to mind.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/6 "2001-11-18T20:44:27Z")
We just watched “American Pop” on DVD a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised by how much I liked it. I rented on one of those “I should watch this since I’ve heard about it for so long” impulse rentals, expecting it to be a bad movie with some interesting animation techniques and a good soundtrack. It was much more than that. ---
**Author:** ![DPWhite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DPWhite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPWhite)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/7 "2001-11-18T20:59:26Z")
I was a kid in the 70s and really into the Lord of the Rings. I liked the first half of Bakshi’s movie, but I thought the second half sucked. ---
**Author:** ![Bossk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@Bossk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bossk)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/8 "2001-11-18T23:38:16Z")
I’ve seen most of the films mentioned here, along with \*Hey Good Lookin’, Fire and Ice, \* and _Heavy Traffic_. I think _Streetfight_ is the only one I would really recommend. His LOTR movie is so boring, it’s painful. Not exactly the best ending I’ve ever seen, either. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2001, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/9 "2001-11-18T23:55:38Z")
I reviewed **Wizards** for our college newspaper when it frst came out. It was cleared ac “tryout” for LOTR. I hated it. The “good” wizard has a Peter Falk voice and seems generally good and honorable. Then he blows away the bad-guy wizard with a gun. The advertising for this movie was schizophrenic. At fist they wanted a Heavy-Metal-type presence (well before that magazine came out), but then hey got the idea that it as too heavy, so they changed the ad line to a hiipyesque “A Fantasy of Peace and Love”, even putting a “Love” lgo on the cyborg’s saddle. I’ve liked a lot of his stuff before and since. **American Pop** was pretty cute. **Heavy Traffic** and \*\* Steetfight\*\* were interesting, but offensive. How offensive? The original title of **Streetfight** was **Coonskin**! R. Crumb was reportedly dissatisfied with **Fritz the Cat** , and stuck characters parodying Bakshi into his comc strip. Bakshi did _not_ do the sequel, **The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat**. Bakshi went on to do the new TV version of **Mighty Mouse** in the late eighties/early nineties. It was, from what I saw, pretty good. On the other hand, I didn’t like the “Roger-Rabbit”-like film with Gabriel Byrne. I’m ambivalnt about his version of **Lord of the Rings**. When he’s doing original animation, the film _shines_ – scenes like the Flying Nazgul, or Fangorn ith Merry and Pippin, or any of a number of others. But when he rotoscopes, it’s the pits. Some scenes are rotoscopd so close you wonder why he _didn’t_ simply film them. And my greatest disppointment was the Balrog. All that effort to produce a rotoscoped guy n a Balrog suit!!! ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/10 "2001-11-19T00:56:35Z")
BTW, its **Bakshi** not Bashki. I saw Wizards at the drive-in. I remember liking it, mainly because I was a kid and an R-rated cartoon with violence and swearing seemed cool. Neat ending too. Saw the Fritz sequel on cable a few months ago. Um, very seventies, but mostly just tedious after awhile. And I simply could not get over having Fritz voiced by **Fargo North, decoder** from PBS’ The Electric Company! Saw American Pop in the theater too. Not bad. Not great either. There was The Hobbit made for TV cartoon which I guess he didn’t do, and there was The Lord of the Rings animated film which he did. But there was also a Return of the King made for TV cartoon which I thought Bakshi did do. Had Roddy McDowell voicing Frodo. If you haven’t seen Cool World don’t bother. Its just bad. Even with Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt. Bakshi’s influence on animation cannot be understated. Ren & Stimpy’s creator, John Kricfalusi, started out under Bakshi. And that style of animation is everywhere now. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Fool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Green\_Fool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Fool)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/11 "2001-11-19T01:40:29Z")
Wizards was one of my favorite movie when I was a kid (literally a kid of like 8 or 9 years old)and I still love it. The good Wizard is good but he’s not an upstanding or honarble guy he’s a crass horny dwarf. And the pay off at the end with the Luger is great. LOTR sucks beyond compare. The Rankin-Bass Hobbit and Return of the King are beautiful. And they ARE musicals to boot. American Pop is a really nice meandering movie. I really like rotoscoping due to its Completely unnatural Naturalness. It just amazes me. ---
**Author:** ![Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f0a364/32.png) [@Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rube_E.Tewesday)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2001, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ralph-bashki-appreciation-thread/94050/12 "2001-11-19T02:37:06Z")
I’ve heard that Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons is a parody of Bakshi. He seems to make enemies in the animation world.