Dirty cartoons have been around since the dawn of animation (and the dawn of man), but none took the world of cinema by storm, pushed the envelope further, and made a cause célèbre quite like the release of 1972’s Fritz The Cat, the very first animated feature to be slapped with an X-rating.

How did the R. Crumb comic turned Ralph Bakshi feature debut become one of the most talked about, reviled, and condemned works of the last third of the 20th century?

Brooklyn-bred Ralph Bakshi worked his way up the animation ladder, starting with Saturday morning cartoons like Terrytoons’ Deputy Dog before branching out with his own creations, which eventually landed him the gig as head of Paramount’s animation division. Soon after his appointment the division closed. Fed up with the industry and medium’s (read: Disney) endless pandering to children, Bakshi wanted to take animation to another level – social commentaries packaged as entertainment, and give the adults something to watch. Unable to get his own original ideas on the big screen, Bakshi and his producing partner Steve Krantz were able to find a path forward by optioning the “obscene” labeled underground comic strip Fritz The Cat, created by counterculture icon Robert Crumb.

Crumb never really seemed to be on board with the project from the get go. It was his wife, who had his power of attorney, that greenlit the project. Hollywood, too, didn’t seem so on board with the project, as Bakshi and Krantz’s movie pitch was turned down all over town, and “was greeted by a full page ad in Variety from about 50 well known Hollywood animators who told me I was destroying the Disney image and should go home.”

With a tiny budget finally secured from Warner Bros., Bakshi and his band of animators (including, possibly, Jim Davis of Garfield fame) marched forward to create a realistic film (utilizing wild sound recordings of people talking in the streets + using actual photos of New York as background settings) that happened to feature anthropomorphic animals doing very human things – lots of sex, lots of drugs, lots of rock & roll, and everything else the 1960s came to symbolize – experimentation & revolution in vivid living LSD colors. Bakshi used Fritz as a satirical vehicle to sound off on his ideas and issues with society. He wanted Fritz to be a documentary of the wild decade that had just come to a conclusion, but when the suits at Warner took one look at an early completed sequence, they wanted the sex and drugs toned down, and when Bakshi balked, the Bros. “pulled out” from the project. They eventually found a home in distributor Cinemation Industries, who specialized in exploitation and X-rated films. That came in handy when the Motion Picture Association of America awarded Fritz the dreaded X-rating.

For a lot of films, an X-rating was a kiss of financial death. Many theaters wouldn’t screen ‘em, and national newspapers would refuse to run ads or editorial content for any film labeled X. And yet, some X films broke the mold, prevailed and became a part of the national conversation. 1969’s Midnight Cowboy won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the only X-rated film to do so. A mere 37 days prior to Fritz‘ New York premiere, A Clockwork Orange set cinemas ablaze (and went onto receive 4 Academy Award nominations) with its raw depiction of sex and violence, which set the similarly filthy Fritz onto its own path of excessive success. Heck, even the horny hospital ending of Fritz —wherein our “hero” learns nothing from his long adventure and remains the same sick cat he always was— mirrors that of Clockwork‘s final scene!

Distributor Cinemation wore the X-rating as a shiny badge and showed it off for all to see in their advertising campaign, even against Bakshi’s wishes, who himself didn’t deem his film pornographic as everyone else did. Curiosity certainly didn’t kill this cool cat, as the $700,000 budgeted film went on to rake in $90 million at the box office to become the most successful independent animated feature of all-time. Take that, Walt!

So, what of the film itself? On the surface, it remains shamelessly dirty and crude. Seeing a college-aged hepcat kitty fondle, suck, bang, and blotto his way through life to find some sort of consciousness isn’t commonplace, and still feels a bit unnerving watching it now. Crumb hated what became of his character on the big screen so much that he killed him off in the same calendar year, in the work Superstar , even taking jabs at Bakshi and producer Krantz in the process. Sure, today’s society has been desensitized to the point where dirty and crude are now commonplace.or anything else with a foul mouth and biting commentary owes a giant debt of gratitude tofor moving the needle of animation away from Disney and into new directions of endless possibilities.

But Fritz is more than just groovy cats banging (or racist caricatures of black crows smoking dope or neo-Nazi bunnies doing smack or a horse urinating on hippies). Bakshi’s goal was to get a conversation started (and launch his own career in the process), and while the feature is a mess of ideas and animation, the fact that we’re still talking about it has proved its worth and existence. Fritz The Cat is more for study than entertainment, the way that many find Citizen Kane “boring”, but is a staple of Cinema History 101 courses, and in that way, Fritz The Cat is the Citizen Kane of adult cartoons.

Thighmaster is full time master of thighs, and editor-in-CHEF of ThighsWideShut.org, an organization based out of Thighland. In his free time he eats fried chicken, and runs street teams to promote the greatness of David Fincher’s Zodiac, and the greatness of the Zardoz trailer.

Stream Fritz The Cat on Prime Video