The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is a 1974 American animated comedy film directed by Robert Taylor and the sequel to Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat (1972), continuing the adventures of Robert Crumb's comic-book feline through drug-induced fantasies set against the Vietnam era, racial riots, and Watergate.¹ It was produced by Steve Krantz, written by Fred Halliday, Eric Monte, and Robert Taylor, and rated R rather than X.²

Production

A 30 January 1974 Daily Variety article reported the film was budgeted at $1.5 million and being made as an R-rated picture rather than an X, as Bakshi's original had been, because of a shift in demand for X-rated material. Producer Steve Krantz was quoted saying the X rating was "dying a slow death," partly due to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, presumably the 1973 case Miller v. California, which gave individual states power to regulate obscene material.²

Watergate rewrites. The script changed frequently during production to depict recent news, particularly developments in the Watergate scandal. A 27 February 1974 Hollywood Reporter article stated that Taylor rewrote forty to fifty percent of the film, saying "I came in on this picture when it was more than one third done, and I threw all that away." One addition was the character "Rosemary Woodstock," based on President Richard Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, drawn with four extra arms to depict her ability to deal with "runaway tape," a reference to the 18-minute erasure on a White House tape for which Woods took partial blame.²

Production ran from 1 June 1973 to early May 1974, and the film was copyrighted by American International Pictures on 26 June 1974.² The sequel was entrusted to Robert Taylor, one of Bakshi's chief animators, who took part in writing the screenplay drawing on the comic story Fritz the No-Good as a starting point.³

Release and reception

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 1974 and was, according to a 16 April 1974 Hollywood Reporter news item, the first animated motion picture screened in official competition there. It opened in Los Angeles and New York on 26 June 1974 to largely negative reviews.²

Critics compared it unfavorably with Bakshi's original. In the October 1974 issue of Playboy, a critic wrote that the sequel lacked Bakshi's "mad genius" and that Krantz and Taylor preferred "toilet humor." Nora Sayre, in a 28 June 1974 New York Times review, wrote that the filmmakers possessed "neither [Bakshi's] talent for graphics nor an ounce of his brutal humor" and that a "real loathing of women" was conveyed. Margaret Hinxman of the Sunday Telegraph wrote on 28 July 1974, "Of the animated obscenity The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, I'd really rather not comment at all."² Variety, by contrast, described the sequel as ripe with "pure silliness [and a] hip story-telling style."¹

Publicity documents held in the AMPAS library indicate that within its first week of theatrical run, the film earned $379,367 from drive-in venues; as of 30 June 2012, no additional gross figures had been located.² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 30% Tomatometer from 10 reviews and a 40% audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.⁴ Later critics have been similarly cool: Dick Lochte of the Los Angeles Free Press called it "an animated travesty so tasteless and dull that only masochistic cinema addicts need apply," and Kathy Fennessy of the Seattle Film Blog wrote in 2023 that the sexism is "simply more pernicious this time around."⁴

Relationship to the original

The film followed Bakshi's Fritz the Cat (1972), which had been a commercial success and was rated X.⁶ Bakshi did not return for the sequel; the Spanish-language press account of the franchise describes Las nueve vidas de Fritz el gato as the unsuccessful second part, made without Bakshi at the helm.⁷ Robert Crumb, the character's creator, was so disgusted by the 1972 film and its 1974 sequel that he demanded his name be removed from the credits of the first film.⁸ A retrospective essay at Cartoon Research calls the sequel an "R-rated 1974 abomination" and notes that considerable filler mars the narrative, with Fritz's 1930s high-life fantasy consisting largely of photographic montages and an endless repeating pattern of lights.⁹

The film is available on home video and streaming; it was released on streaming on 7 September 2018 and can be rented or bought on Prime Video and Apple TV.⁴

References

1. The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Kino Lorber Theatrical
2. The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
3. Les Neuf Vies de Fritz le Chat, Planète Jeunesse
4. The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Rotten Tomatoes
5. The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat – Full Cast & Crew, TV Guide
6. Fritz the Cat, American Film Institute
7. Un gato nihilista que fumaba marihuana y buscaba sexo: 'Fritz', la primera película de dibujos clasificada X, El País
8. Revista Internacional de Educación y Análisis Social Crítico
9. Nine (Lives) Is Enough: The Dreadful Sequel To "Fritz The Cat", Cartoon Research
10. From anecdote to legend

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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