5. Fritz The Cat (1972)
Based on the comic strip by genius Robert Crumb, Fritz the Cat is an animated sex comedy which was the first animation to receive an X certificate in the USA. It concerns the exploits of Fritz the cat as he seeks to seduce ladies. He goes all emo with his guitar and soulful demeanour to attract the ladies and he brings them to a wild party at a friend's house. Cue an orgy in the bathtub. The police arrive and Fritz gets stoned. Hiding in a toilet, he bursts out, grabs one of the policeman's guns and shoots the loo causing major flooding. The police pursue Fritz down the street where he takes refuge in a synagogue. Back at his apartment, Fritz sets fire to his books and burns down the building. In downtown Harlem he meets Duke the Crow and they share a drink and a toke. They go to a drug dealer named Bertha whose joints excite Fritz's libido. While having sex with Bertha, Fritz starts to believe he is a revolutionary. With this idea in mind, he goes down town and incites a riot that Duke the Crow is killed in. Hiding in an alley, Fritz's girlfriend finds him and brings him on a road trip to San Francisco. Things turn very dark for Fritz in the desert where he meets up with a heroin addict rabbit and gets into trouble with some fellow revolutionaries. There is a brutal rape scene and Fritz ends up in hospital - apparently staring death in the face until some of his lady friends come along and he revives enough to shag them. Fritz the Cat is a seminal counterculture movie of the 1970s. It is a fantastic portrait of the underground culture at the time - people rebelling, but not sure what against, the emergence of feminism and the sexual revolution. It does feature a perverted cartoon cat having perverted cartoon sex with other perverted cartoon animals. What was shown in the film sex-wise, was very strong compared to what was being shown in other non-cartoon films. Strong movies like Last Tango in Paris and The Devils were starting to be produced around this time. Fritz the Cat, due to its perverted sex and counterculture ideals, raised a lot of curiosity in viewers and was a major international success despite being given a limited release. Viewers had to wait until Gerard "Deep Throat" Damiano released Let My Puppets Come for more sexual non-human hardcore thrills. But Fritz the Cat is a much better film.