Underplayed Gems

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974)

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat poster
Directed by
Robert Taylor
Genre
satire, comedy film, adult animated film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 19m
Rated
R
Rating
5.1 of 10 from 88 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

Fritz the Cat is a lazy and dishonest womanizer married to a nagging wife. While she yells at him, he escapes into cannabis-fueled fantasies where he lives out different lives like a Nazi stormtrooper or a space explorer.

satiricalabsurdwhimsicaldarkly comicnon-lineardrug-hazeddisjointedbiting

What happens

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is a 1974 American adult animated anthology black comedy film directed by Robert Taylor as a sequel to Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat (1972), adapted from the comic strip by Robert Crumb, neither of whom had any involvement in the making of the film. The only two people involved in the first film to work on the sequel were voice actor Skip Hinnant, and producer Steve Krantz. The film's score was composed by musician Tom Scott, and performed by Scott and his band The L.A. Express. Like the first film, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat focuses on Fritz (voiced by Hinnant), a fraudulent womanizer and leftist, who is shown in this film to have married an ill-tempered woman named Gabrielle, with whom he shares an apartment room with their infant son. Unlike the first film, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat adopts a non-linear narrative and is presented as an anthology of loosely connected short stories, connected as cannabis-induced fantasies which occur as she berates Fritz. The stories depict him as a Nazi stormtrooper, a rich playboy, an astronaut heading to Mars, and in an alternate reality in which New Jersey has seceded from the United States as an entirely African American state. Except for the wraparound segment, none of the film's storylines are based on Robert Crumb's comics, and he was not credited on this film. The film was written by Taylor, in collaboration with Fred Halliday and Eric Monte. The voice cast also featured Bob Holt, Peter Leeds, Louisa Moritz, Robert Ridgely, Joan Gerber, Jay Lawrence, Stanley Adams, Pat Harrington Jr., Peter Hobbs, Ralph James, Eric Monte, Glynn Turman, Gloria Jones, Renny Roker, John Hancock, Chris Graham and Felton Perry. In contrast to the first film receiving an X rating, the sequel got an R rating, being the first American animated film to do so, and cementing the Fritz films as the holders of the first animated films to receive both ratings. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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