Ralph Bakshi makes an epic swing for the fences as February 1981 continues
Plus we get a quasi-classic slasher title tied to the season
Today’s the biggest batch of titles for the month, and it’s wild to see what got released in one giant overstuffed weekend. It’s a strange collection of titles, and I think it speaks to just how confused distributors were about what to release in this particular slot at this point in the decade.
Let’s jump right in with a movie I was desperate to see in 1981 even if I couldn’t really explain why to my parents…
FEBRUARY 13
American Pop
Ron Thompson, Mews Small, Jerry Holland, Lisa Jane Persky, Jeffrey Lippa, Roz Kelly, Frank DeKova, Rick Singer, Elsa Raven, Ben Frommer, Amy Levitt, Leonard Stone, Eric Taslitz, Gene Borkan, Richard Moll, Beatrice Colen, Vincent Schiavelli, Hilary Beane, Lynda Weismeier, Philip Simms, Marcello Krakoff, Ken Johnson, Barney Pell, Robert Strom, Gene Woodbury, Mark Levine, Ty Grimes, Peter Glindeman, Auburn Burrell, Aleshia Brevard, Elya Baskin, M.B. West, Joey Camen, Umberto Autore Jr., Tony Autore, Johnny Brogna, Dawn Agrella, Cari Anne Warder, Don Carlson, Vance Colvig Jr., Robert Beecher, Tony Fasce, Frank Ciaravino, Gene Krischer, D.A. Young, Lee Ving, Spit Stix, Derf Scratch, Philo Cramer, Chester Hayes, Chuck Mitchell, Ralph Bakshi
music by Lee Holdridge
screenplay by Ronni Kern
produced by Ralph Bakshi and Martin Ransohoff
directed by Ralph Bakshi
Rated R
1 hr 36 mins
The history of the American immigrant is told using one family’s experience against the backdrop of the development of popular music.
When they eventually write the full history of American animation, the most chaotic and colorful chapter in that book will be the chapter dedicated to the rowdy, rambunctious filmography of Ralph Bakshi, and in that chapter, perhaps the highest praise should be reserved for his most ambitious and unusual movie.
From the moment he made and released Fritz the Cat, it became clear that he had a completely different idea of what American animation could do than the vast majority of working filmmakers. If Walt Disney had not chosen to aim his work at a family market, I’m curious to see what might have happened with animation as an art form. Unfortunately, Disney became the default and any independent animation efforts seemed to be focused on competing in that exact same space. Not Bakshi. He was determined to use animation in totally different ways, making movies for adults, pushing all sorts of boundaries in terms of drugs and language and sexuality.
Bakshi’s work trades heavily in stereotype, but it always feels to me like he’s using stereotype as a sort of shared American language, a shorthand that is as much a reflection of the moment he’s trying to capture as it is an expression of anything he actually feels. American Pop is almost experimental in terms of storytelling and editing, and while I don’t think it works completely, this feels like the closest Bakshi ever got to a proof of concept, a movie that could only work as animation but that doesn’t lean into any of the conventional ideas about what an animated film should be.
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