Spicy City

After Ralph Bakshi was screwed over by Frank Mancuso Jr. altering his film Cool World to the point where it no longer resembled his original pitch, it's nice the HBO was willing to give this short lived animated sci-fi anthology project a chance. While the results aren't perfect, there is so really good animation and art direction. Unfortunately what's missing is Bakshi's usual presence of biting satire from seen in Fritz the Cat and Coonskin or the awe and wonder seen in his fantasy films like Wizards or Fire and Ice. This is a case of style over substance as the stories aren't usually all that interesting or memorable with the exception of one story involving a bongo player's hands getting chopped off and going through various misadventures around the titular city. A second season was ordered but creative disagreements between HBO and Bakshi lead to the order being rescinded and the series was effectively cancelled. It's unfortunate the series wasn't allowed to continue because with a little more polish this probably would've been considered an influential show that could've paved the way for more serious attempts at prime time animation(as opposed to the South Park, Simpsons and Family Guy clones which can't seem to evolve past their influences). As it stands Spicy City is a curiosity for both sci-fi fans and animation fans. At the time of this writing there's no official home media release of this series and there doesn't appear to be much interest from the rights holders. Hopefully that'll change in the future because even if you don't like this show, it still deserves to be seen and analyzed so it can be given its place in TV history.

Ralph Bakshi, who boldly went no animator had gone before in the 1970's, settled into a long slump after the excellent 'Wizards' (1977), which included the awful 'Lord of the Rings', and his last feature in almost a decade, the equally awful 'Fire and Ice' (1983). After that, apart from doing what I'm told is some excellent TV work (particularly 'Mighty Mouse'), he wasn't heard from again by wider audiences until 'Cool World', which turned out to be an improvement, but still basically a dud. Then another hiatus, until these videos pop up with episodes of the Bakshi TV series 'Spicy City'. Well, I must say that although this is nowhere near in the same league as his best 70's stuff, it's undoubtedly the best stuff I've seen from him since then. It's all set in a sleazy Bladerunner meets Cyberpunk sort of future world, and whereas a lot of it is not particularly clever or funny, there are enough flashes of inspiration to make it worth watching, and make one hope that the guy maybe is still capable of delivering on the promise of his groundbreaking early work. You kind of doubt it, and doubt that he even would really want to, but this is the first think I've seen from him in 20 years that takes a step back from the mainstream/family market and dares to be a bit cheeky again.

Not great, but good to see there's still a spark there.

I suppose I can see how it might remind some people of 'Heavy Metal', but it never struck me that way (incidentally I thought 'Heavy Metal' was awful, even when I was 22 and wasted.)

I can see why recommendations for spicy city has Heavy Metal included. As I watched some of the episodes of this particularly "Mano's Hands", I felt like I was watching something based on Heavy Metal comics (It wouldn't surprise me if any of the episodes have appeared in comic form in Heavy Metal.) I think the reason it reminded me of Heavy Metal was because of the sort of twisted sci-fi look it had and the fact that there was a sex tone to about every story. Almost every episode had nudity either just because someone was just walking around without a top, or because it was put it to excite people. Granted like Heavy Metal the stories in this where usually twisted. Some having humor other just plain messed up I didn't enjoy this show as much as the Heavy Metal movie, but I still found it a good show to watch if you have nothing better to do at the time it's on.