Ever since I got onto the web about 10 years ago, I've been surprised at the amount of derision that still gets heaped on this movie. It's a measure of how little has really changed, that over 30 years after its release, 'Fritz the Cat' still gets discussed in terms of whether an R-rated cartoon is fundamentally offensive, rather than whether it's a good film or not. Do we still have discussions like this about 'Midnight Cowboy' , 'Taxi Driver', or Cheech and Chong's 'Up in Smoke'?

Frankly, though it seems unfashionable to say so, 'Fritz the Cat' is a good film. Though certainly not Bakshi's best, it came at the start of his best period. It certainly has its faults, which include its road-movie type plot, which meanders rather aimlessly (though nowhere near as aimlessly as 'The Jungle Book', for instance), and an understandable but unfortunate tendency to shock just for the hell of it.

I'd argue though that this tendency is nowhere near as pronounced as some people would have you believe, and that it mostly boils down to a case of "We can actually DO this in an animated feature", rather than "Let's freak out the straights"

Regardless of what you might think of the movie itself, 'Fritz the Cat' is an important film. In the 1970's Ralph Bakshi instigated an almost single-handed assault on the concept that animated films could only be for children. In the process he produced several remarkable movies, but it seemed he had no other co-revolutionaries. The few adult cartoons that followed in the late 70's and early 80's (things like 'The Missing Link', Shame of the Jungle', and Heavy Metal') were inferior, mostly puerile and embarrassing films with little wit or artistry. However Bakshi planted a seed with this film which perhaps only germinated much later. Even if the majority of adult-oriented cartoons are coming from Europe or Japan, perhaps Bakshi helped weaken the barriers which stood between a western audience and the acceptance of such movies.

'Fritz the Cat' is Bakshi's vision of Robert Crumb's late 60's underground cartoon character. At the start of the movie Fritz is a naive, hedonistic New York university student who is much more interested in girls and his own romantic idea of himself as some sort of revolutionary, James Dean/ Jack Keruoac character. This leads him to get involved in the black rights movement (mainly because it's cool, not because he understands it), leading to him inciting a race riot and eventually becoming an outlaw. He hits rock bottom when he gets sucked into the clutches of a Manson-family type bunch of drug-addled terrorists, though importantly it's around this time that his 'humanity' starts to show through via his concern for the mistreatment of one of the gang member's girlfriends. He finally comes to his senses when asked to undertake a bombing mission. Well, sort of. He goes back to just being interested in sex, which, when you think about it is a moral improvement on going along with hate and violence.

Those who detest rotoscoping will at least be pleased that there is none at all in this Bakshi movie. Aside from that it is more technically inventive than accomplished. The animation isn't bad, but it's more the directorial flourishes that make it memorable. As ever, with the early Bakshi films, the dialog is brilliant, often recorded live on the streets of New York or on location with a portable tape recorder. It injects a tremendous sense of naturalness into the movie.

Crumb was apparently so annoyed with what Bakshi was doing that he killed Fritz off in his cartoon strips. Which in turn led to the famous "They've killed Fritz!" scene in Bakshi's later film 'Wizards' ('Fritz' in 'Wizards' was voiced by Bakshi himself. In 'Fritz the Cat' Bakshi voices the cop who feels guilty hunting Fritz down in a synagogue (any incidental characters in early Bakshi films who sound comically dimwitted are likely to be Bakshi hamming it up with his 'stupid voice', which he does do pretty well))

'Fritz the Cat' isn't just a giggling, undergraduate piece of porn. It may not be a masterpiece, but it has real heart, wit, irony, anger and even warmth. I remember back in the 70's there was a show on Australian TV called 'The Flicks', which was where I saw my first glimpses of 'Fritz the Cat'. Frankly it blew me away, though I couldn't have been more than about 10 at the time. I distinctly remember Fritz inviting his girlfriend to climb into a garbage can with him, with the line "C'mon, it's cosy as a bitch in here", and most of all, Mickey Mouse jumping up and down on the roof of a skyscraper, cheering and waving a flag as the airforce fire-bombed a race-riot. I remember being absolutely electrified and thinking "Yes!!" I'm sure a 10 year-old shouldn't think like that. I don't know what was wrong with me, but I'll bet there were plenty of 20 year-olds who had the same reaction when they saw the thing in the cinema. Someone daring to give Disney (and all that connotes) the finger. A bit pathetic that Dreamworks should draw scorn 30 years later for immensely watered down and less complex jibes in the same direction, when such gestures had really become irrelevant anyway.

'Fritz' does still have the power to offend and shock today. There are one or two scenes that I would even call in bad taste. But its virtues outweigh its shortcomings. As a snapshot of the seedy underbelly of late 60's America, and as a landmark in the development of American animation itself, Fritz deserves a lot more respect than it generally gets. And, for my money, Bakshi hadn't quite peaked yet. He did that with his next three. Then just seemed to lose it.