Wizards (1977)

When thinking of animated films, many people will automatically think of Disney. That is no surprise, considering the Empire of the Mouse is responsible for a vast flow of animated films, many of which have become classics. Don Bluth is another name that has a little less of a massive following, who balanced the line between films that were mostly for children, albeit with more dark and adult themes. Yet there was always someone lurking in the wings, with animated films that were definitely not intended for children, and that legend is Ralph Bakshi.

A Bakshi-film is easily recognizable, because his work very often uses a very distinct style. You need this if you want your stuff to stand apart from everything else. No sweet and nice little images and wholesome family-friendly fun: this goes for the jugular pretty quickly. You may know of 'Fritz the Cat' or the fantasy epic 'Fire & Ice', but you should really know this one, because it is one of his most distinct works, for various reasons.

'Wizards' takes place in a world after the human race ravaged everything in a massive nuclear war. The remainder of the human race has evolved into hideous mutants while elves, fairies and the like have reclaimed the planet as their own. Thrown into all this are two wizards, one good, one evil. The evil one wants to take over the lush lands, but his armies are always easily scattered and defeated. Until he finds nazi-propaganda, that is. Only then do his soldiers conquer and defeat the elves and it is up to the good wizard to try and stop his evil brother once and for all.

Even though the story seems batshit insane, it is mostly about the double edged sword of technology and that is often is used for evil intent. It's the rest of the film that is batshit insane. The animation is all over the place, sometimes very intricate and downright gorgeous to look at, and sometimes a little off. The backgrounds are either traditional ones, stylistically totally different ones from the front animation (check the castles at Scortch, for example) or wafty videofootage of mist and clouds. Charactermodels sometimes go from goodlooking to weird (especially the fairyprincess Eleonore suffers from this).

A staple in Bakshi's work is rotoscoping, and it is used here to great effect. Rotoscoping means that you use existing footage and animate over it. So here you get medieval knights, Zulu warriors and German soldiers with added horns and colours. It is quite a sight to see, be it in a distressing fashion, which is probably what they went for. Trust me, it looks awesome and otherworldy. At certain points, there are just stills drawn by the legendary Mike Ploog, overlaid with narration.

As you can tell, 'Wizards' is a bit of a hodgepodge, but in the end it does work, even with the soundtrack that sometimes sounds a little too funky. It's bizarre and different, yet it all meshes together in that weird but unmistakably charming way.

You don't watch this for the beauty of the animation or the story, you watch this because this is a Bakshi and it will fascinate you from beginning to end. That is, if you can deal with this quilt-type of work. If not, then you will most definitely not like it. But if you are looking for something wholly different, unique and highly individual, this is the ticket.