"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Frank Frazetta’

Fire and Ice

Wednesday, August 30th, 2023

August 26, 1983

In my opinion the most unusual and most accomplished of the summer of ’83 fantasy movies – which admittedly just means it’s better than KRULL, PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE, YOR – THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE and HERCULES – is Ralph Bakshi’s FIRE AND ICE. An animator for Terrytoons in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Bakshi had knocked the animated feature game off its axis with the independent, adults-only movies FRITZ THE CAT (1972), HEAVY TRAFFIC (1973), and COONSKIN (1975) before pivoting to fantasy specialist with WIZARDS (1977) and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978). He had even been attached to direct Oliver Stone’s script for CONAN THE BARBARIAN, the movie that (directed by John Milius) made these sorts of sword and sorcery movies big business for a while.

Bakshi says he lost the gig by telling Arnold Schwarzenegger he’d have to lose weight, so I believe he was expecting to do it in live action, not animation. But his films from this period kind of split the difference between mediums – LORD OF THE RINGS and then AMERICAN POP (1981) made heavy use of rotoscoping, basically filming a version of the movie with actors for the animators to draw over frame by frame. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Gauntlet

Monday, January 4th, 2021

“I just do what I’m told.”
“Yeah, well, so does an imbecile.”

THE GAUNTLET (1977) is some creep’s idea of a triumph-of-the-underdog buddy action comedy romance – the story of a grouchy alcoholic loser cop who finally does a good job at something when he has to transport a prostitute from Las Vegas to Phoenix while every single cop and mobster in multiple states is trying to bump her off. Along the way they insult and assault each other and fall in love. It’s all very scummy and I didn’t used to like it very much, but these days it rings truer than it used to. (read the rest of this shit…)