**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
written and directed by Ralph Bakshi
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I like Ralph Bakshi movies. I wish I didn’t, because they’re shrill and vulgar and slightly immature, and not even examples of brilliant cartooning. But they’ve got a working-class desperation to them that most American movies are too posh and moneyed to accurately capture. Hollywood filmmakers typically see poverty as an occasion for condescension from above; Bakshi sees it at ground level–consider the generations of failure that littered American Pop, or the chaotic skid-row scramble that defined Heavy Traffic. Thus I find myself in the unenviable position of guardedly praising his 1977 Wizards, which in the hands of any other director would have been merely a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff. This is not to say that it isn’t a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff, but it’s one with moments that resonate beyond simplistic sex and violence and wipe the goofy grin off of the normally flighty and gossamer-draped genre.
To be sure, Wizards is not a film that wins awards for subtlety. The defiantly Manichean plot takes place on an Earth ruined by nuclear war: fairies, elves, and other benign users of magic have taken up one part of the planet while mutants roam radioactive wastelands on the other. Deep within the latter camp lies Blackwolf (voiced by Steve Gravers), an evil wizard plotting to use technology against the peaceful magic-lovers–he has at last found the instrument that will rouse the mutants to war: stock footage of Hitler. I swear. In any event, gnarled hordes start decimating the faerie folk, prompting Blackwolf’s wizard brother Avatar (Bob Holt) to collect a band (elfin warrior Weehawk (Richard Romanus), half-clad fairy-in-training Elinore (Jesse Welles), reprogrammed robot assassin Peace (David Proval)) to penetrate the sorcerer’s lair and smash his Hitler-footage-screening device.
To take the movie at narrative face-value would be insane, as it’s so sketchily written and haphazardly thought-out that it practically falls apart in your hands. Nobody ever went to a Bakshi movie looking for big ideas, and here we have what feels like another in a long line of ridiculous good-vs.-evil dust-ups (what did mutants ever do to deserve this rap?), this one characterized by junior-high sexual humour surrounding the hot-cha-cha fairy chick and highly contradictory theorizing on the evils of machinery (apparently, rotoscoping qualifies as magic). One is practically bound to roll one’s eyes at the inelegant cavalcade of clichés and half-formed ideas that make up Bakshi’s cri de coeur about how everybody ought to be nice to each other.
Yet if Bakshi is too taken by the trappings of gentle fantasy, his presentation is a cut above the usual fuzzy elf. Violence is central to his vision the way it would be in a Sam Fuller movie: it’s not recruiting you to do battle, it’s rubbing your face in the nastiness. Bullets fly, blood flows, but there’s no revelling in the bloodshed as one does in depressing military fantasies like the same year’s Star Wars–the film makes a big to-do out of the shattered human body and, in one startling exchange between mother and son, the cost of violence as the advancing mutants displace the denizens of fairyland. In the end, Wizards is a cold slap in the face to those who dream of leading the charge against orcs and empires, offering an attempt to smash the war machine itself instead of stealing it for one’s own power. It’s a small but real victory for a director who identifies with those crushed underfoot instead of the boot that stands atop them.
THE DVD
Fox’s Wizards disc is adequate enough. Although the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen image is a little soft, there isn’t enough fine detail for this to present a problem; the colours are nicely saturated to compensate. The Dolby 2.0 stereo remix is uncomplicated but sufficiently potent. (Purists should appreciate that the original mono track is also on board.) Extras begin with “Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation”, a 32-minute interview featurette that ranks as one of the best I’ve ever seen. Bakshi turns out to be such a lively talker that you don’t really mind him inflating his picture’s merits. Beginning with his early days at Terrytoons (where he inadvertently shattered the apprenticeship system) and moving into the machinations behind the making and release of Wizards, he fills in so many gaps in the general knowledge of animation and movie-business practice (and is so vivid in recalling his co-conspirators) that the featurette is a must for animation and movie buffs of all stripes.
Almost as good is Bakshi’s feature-length yakker, wherein he generously points out the contributions of the various members of his staff and elucidates the (somewhat thin) thematic motives behind some of his artistic choices–this goes well beyond the “it was cold that day” school of commentary. The DVD also includes a fairly thorough gallery of production sketches and promotional materials, two trailers for Wizards, and a TV spot.
80 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Stereo), English DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox
