From Bojack Horseman to Big Mouth, modern viewers know animation isn’t just for kids and can be used to explore very adult content.
From portrayals of addiction to talking vaginas, cartoons can take take surreal and shocking directions that just wouldn’t work quite as well with live action shows.
But perhaps the most adult of all adult animations is the notorious Fritz The Cat, an X-rated comedy from 1972 that can now be streamed on Amazon Prime.
A satire of college life in America, the 80 minute movie is raunchier than anything you’ve seen in the American Pie franchise; filled with group sex scenes in bathtubs and anthropomorphic cat boobs.
Based on a comic strip series by cartoonist Robert Crumb, Fritz The Cat reportedly follows ‘a hypocritical swinging college student cat raises hell in a satiric vision of various elements on the 1960s’.
The synopsis given on IMDb explains:
A persiflage on the protest movements of the 60s. Its hero is the bold and sex-obsessed tom-cat Fritz the Cat, as created by the legendary underground artist Robert Crumb. Quitting university, Fritz the Cat wanders through the hash, Black Panther and Hell’s Angels scenes to find to himself.
Fritz The Cat proved highly controversial upon its release, and has often been dubbed the most ‘outrageous’ animated adult film of all time.
According to a 1972 review in The New York Times:
I suspect there is something in Fritz The Cat to offend just about everyone over the age of 17.
Indeed, Fritz the Cat was the very first animated movie to be slapped with an ‘X’ rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a rating which was later surrendered in 2001 for MGM’s home video release.
Producer Steve Krantz tried to appeal the film’s rating, arguing against the misconception that this was a porn movie, however the MPAA refused to hear his appeal.
Speaking about the film’s controversy in 1999, director Ralph Bakshi wrote the following recollections, as per Animation World:
I believe in what I am drawing. What adult animation means to me is not tits and ass, but the right to animate any subject or idea you have and let the ratings fall where they may. All I wanted to do was animate the things I thought about and not the dolls they thought about.
[…] When I first got to Hollywood to do the production of Fritz the Cat in 1970, I 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. I didn’t know who these guys were because I was from New York, so I threw the ad away.
Lewd, crude and very, very rude, Fritz the Cat isn’t for everyone. But if you’re interested in the non-Disney side of animation history, this is certainly a must watch.
You can stream Fritz The Cat on Amazon Prime now.
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.