The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974) (Avant-Garde Cinema)

The sequel to 1972's FRITZ THE CAT, NINE LIVES catches up with Fritz post-college and married. Director Ralph Bakshi continues to use the animated cat as a vehicle for satire and out and out comedy.

Fritz is unhappily married and smokes marijuana to escape into his imagination about what his other eight lives may have been like. Since FRITZ THE CAT, Fritz has degenerated to the point where his main concerns are collecting a welfare check and constructing overblown sexual scenarios in his head. From incest to political satire to space and religion, his adventures run the gamut of scathing social commentary by Bakshi, often using violence, sex, and debauchery to illustrate Fritz's demise as not only a citizen but as a human being with little interest in life as he knows it.

NINE LIVES continued in the vein of groundbreaking animation Bakshi started with in FRITZ THE CAT, and surely had an influence on successful animated comedies today, such as THE SIMPSONS and SOUTH PARK.