"Hey Good Lookin' "(1982) d/ Ralph Bakshi

Following the success of Heavy Traffic the previous year, Ralph Bakshi began work on tonight's review, a feature that would incorporate animated main characters who would interact with a live-action supporting cast, initially completing the film in 1975 for Warner Brothers, who repeatedly postponed and pushed the project back for various reasons, until it was finally granted a limited release seven years later as a much different film than the one it began as. I remember excitedly snagging a VHS copy off the shelves at Wyoming Valley Video, a favorite hole-in-the-wall shop of mine at the end of an avenue strip mall in the eighties, only to walk away feeling mostly indifferent about the entire experience in the end. I really hadn't watched it in thirty years or so, but since we're on a Bakshi kick here of late at the Wop, and my recalcitrant Libran values demanded a revisit before casting a final judgmental stone, here we are...


Oblivious to Mr. Kotter's pleas, Barbarino prepped for the big rumble with Boom Boom.
We see a garbage can and some trash having an existential debate before the trash hears an epiphany or an approaching garbage truck, and hops on, shouting "Fuck this city!". What an opening. In 1980's Brooklyn a shadowy figure rendezvous with a washed-up-on-the-beach (Eyyy-yo, Slade!) dame under a streetlamp, throwing her a chunk of biker leather, which she sobs over as he takes us back to the fifties, and the coat's origins. Vinnie (Richard Romanus) is the leader of a gang called The Stompers, his best friend is a Joker-esque cat called "Crazy" Shapiro (David Proval) whose homicidal father is a badge named Solly (Angelo Grisanti). When Vinnie's attempted coitus with a local kosher dish named Roz (Tina Bowman- later Romanus) is interrupted by her smothering papa (he chains her to her bed), the guys score some hookers and crash on the beach, waking up in the middle of a mafiosi beach party that Crazy eventually beats to death in a bloody brawl. On the run, Vinnie bumps into none other than Boogaloo Jones (Philip Michael Thomas), the head of the Chaplains, on the black side of the beach, leading to an inevitable rumble.


"When Milton Berle Ran with Street Gangs" will return after these messages...
After Crazy ices a couple of Chaplains while on a double date with Vinnie, Roz, and Eva, his father investigates the murders and is pointed towards the Stompers by Boogaloo. Roz tells Crazy that his best pal is ditching town, making him the new head of the gang, entitled to her goodies as such, and he breaks himself off a warehouse piece upon hearing the news. Solly makes the scene and beats his son like a rutabaga until he sells Vinnie down the river over the double moidahs. As Vinnie's about to break the eff out like the measles, he unwittingly bumps into his old crew as they're about to rumble with the Chaplains. Crazy lives up to his nickname and busts wild shots from a nearby rooftop just as his old man is about to arrest Vinnie, and in a surreal swirl of psychedelia, swan dives on top of the detective, killing them both. As a heartbroken Roz makes a song request for her lost love, Vinnie leaves the city. Back in the eighties, the overweight has-been reveals herself as Roz and fingers the shadowy stranger as Vinnie, who decides to stick around this time, bringing the story to a happy ending of sorts...


I think you know which side of the beach towel I'd be on.
There are a lot of good ideas and nice visuals here, but they seem disjointed by time, and further hindered by an unflattering, mismatched score that wears a synth-soaked eighties stamp even when recalling sounds from three decades earlier. Bakshi probably should have paid the licensing fees for the original tunes he wanted on the soundtrack, for better results. I would have liked to see the live action sequences with Yaphet Kotto and the New York Dolls that were ultimately cut from the film, too. When talking about this one, I find myself saying "I would have liked" more often than any of the other Bakshi films, and that ought to tell you something. On the scale, Good Lookin' earns a pair of Wops; not entirely unattractive, by anyone's standards, but far from gorgeous.


"Somebody dosed Kid Creole's drink! Get the Coconuts, he's freaking out!"

"Coonskin" (1974) d/ Ralph Bakshi

Nobody ever asks me who's the guy responsible for my favorite animated features of all-time, but if anyone ever did, I'd tell 'em it's obviously Ralph Bakshi, once I'd gotten over the initial shock of someone actually having asked me an interesting question. Tonight's review, Bakshi's third such feature, and second to mix his highly stylized animation with live-action sequences, is an urban update of Uncle Remus' beloved children's stories starring a pre-Miami Vice Philip Michael Thomas, Scat Man Crothers, and even Barry "Can't-get-enough-of-yo'-looove-baaaybuh" White, that drew mixed reviews upon a limited initial theatrical release due to it's satire-heavy portrayal of the frustration of life in the inner city. Bakshi lays waste to racial stereotypes of all sorts here by giving them center stage, in all their absurdity (the main characters' looks are based on the black faced make up of the travelling minstrels of yesteryear), for the audience to interpret as they will, though it should be noted that any mafiosi in attendance will surely feel the sting of the piss-take herein. Just don't take it personally, Sollozzo, and may your first child be a masculine one. Here we go...


You never see brunettes in this kinda predicament. Just sayin'...
Somewhere down south, we see Randy (Thomas) and Pappy (Crothers) in the midst of a daring midnight prison escape, and while camped out against a high wall out of the line of sight of any guards and waiting fo' the getaway whip, Pappy tells the funky story of three cats who remind him a lot of Randy and his ambitious homeboys: Brother Rabbit (Thomas), Brother Bear (White), and Preacher Fox (Gordone), who relocate north to Harlem, home to every Black man, when the bank forecloses on their southern digs, effectively turning it into a whorehouse ( you know, the kind that a racist sheriff's daughter would get caught turning comical interracial tricks at ). Upon arrival, they meet up with Black Jesus' cousin, Simple Savior, a black separatist who shoots up images of Elvis, Nixon, and John Wayne while hoisted atop a light-up cross on stage in the nude, ferchrissakes. Needless to say, Rabbit and Bear pull his card, making Rabbit the new boss of all of Harlem's underworld action, but he soon finds that with notoriety comes with a high price tag...


Don King or Al Sharpton? You be's the judge, baybuh.
Rabbit goes head to head with Madigan (Frank DeKova), a badge-wearing palooka that's on the mafia payroll, who gets his drink dosed, gets duped into a homosexual interlude, and ultimately gets taken down by his fellow officers while on a black-faced shooting spree while coming down off acid. Meanwhile, the Godfather (Al "Grandpa" Lewis) puts a hit on Rabbit from the underbelly of the sewers, but when his only straight son, Sonny (Richard Paul), shows up to ice the hare at his nightclub, decked out in blackface, he's pumped full of lead then abruptly blown to smithereens, before his ashes are sent home to his bawlin' mama. Bear visits Fox, who's been running a brothel for the mob, is hastily married to one of the tricks, and talked into boxing professionally for the crime family. Rabbit builds an explosive-laden tar facsimile of himself and plants it at one of Bear's prizefights, where the remaining mafiosi unwittingly all get stuck while trying to off the bunny. Our heroes escape in the nick of time as the venue blows up with their cartoon enemies inside, as we switch back to the daring live-action bullet-riddled, broad daylight escape of Randy and Pappy, who are equally successful in the end. Credits...


"C'mon, take the noose off, I promise I won't do any more James Taylor covers..."
Despite multiple title changes (Harlem Nights, Coonskin no more..., Street Fight, Bustin' Out, etc.), an undeserved demise at the box office, and much controversy along the way, you're bound to be entertained here. If you're the rare type of individual that equates racism with names like Ted Nugent or Steven Colbert, there's a good chance you'll be too highly offended by the exaggerated ethnic stereotypes on display here to ever pick up on the social commentary within. Those of us who live in the real world, on the other hand, will find a lot to love about Coonskin, a visually dazzling time capsule of the tumultuous and turbulent seventies, as edgy as it is funny. On the scale, it earns an impressive three Wop score, and comes highly recommended.


"You mobsters feelin' some type of way up in that tar right about now."