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Ranking Ralph Bakshi Films

Ralph Bakshi has produced nine feature films throughout his career and one short movie. I do not rank shorts with features as I deem that unfair to all the parties, but if I would put ‘Last Days on Coney Island’ here, it would be seventh. This director is famous for gritty, realistic, dark crime films and some epic fantasy features. For the most part, I do not care for his filmography, but there are some solid films in his resume. So here is my ranking of all his features.

9. Cool World

Yes, this unanimously proclaimed worst movie of his deserves that reputation. Cool World was unfortunately the last feature he made and it was so bad with the exception of great animation. The characters are bad, the acting is absolutely atrocious and the story is entirely unoriginal, pointless and entertaining how stupid and campy it is.

8. Heavy Traffic

This movie is usually said to be his greatest achievement, and to me it’s his second worst without a doubt. I deem it atrocious in its stereotypical characters, and absolutely pointless in all of those unconnected crime and sex sequences. The animation’s nice, but the movie is otherwise offensive without any true purpose to it.

7. Coonskin

Yes, this movie is much better upon second viewing, and now I can see that it was trying to make fun of stereotypes, and its portrayal of black people was actually admirable. However, the movie is still badly constructed, repetitive, poorly developed in its characters and overall just very weakly executed across the board.

6. Hey Good Lookin’

Hey Good Lookin’ has some fine sequences and a very solid soundtrack, but it’s another mediocre Ralph Bakshi product with an overly crude approach to storytelling and characterization, and overall it simply seemed overly repetitive for the director in its setting and execution.

5. American Pop

This was an interesting departure for Bakshi in that it’s a drama instead of a crime film, but it did not really work. I appreciate the effort and the dialogue is tremendous with some very dramatic scenes here and there, but for a film spanning a century in story, it’s overly short, rushed and very weakly scripted.

4. Fritz the Cat

Fritz the Cat was the directorial debut for Ralph Bakshi, and it’s by far the best of his crime films with a memorable central character and strong animation. It even has some themes in it, but those are all underexplored. Yes, the sex scenes are overly graphic and pointless, but at least they’re hugely entertaining, which is more than can be said for his other efforts in that area.

3. The Lord of the Rings

Yes, this movie has so many boring action sequences that never end and it’s overall a very messy experiment across the board, but it’s a solid film nonetheless thanks to an interestingly darker approach to telling this story and a truly terrific animation with its postcard-like imagery being truly beautiful.

2. Wizards

You can clearly see a pattern here. I do like Bakshi’s fantasy films quite a bit as all three top picks belong in that genre. This was his first genre film which was unsubtle in approach and rather weak in characterization, but the premise itself is awesome, the animation is strong and the world building is truly remarkable. It needed a longer runtime though.

1. Fire and Ice

Yes, the women are so objectified here and the storytelling is very slight overall, but Fire and Ice features so many amazing creatures, memorable fantasy elements, magic and a terrific world beautifully imagined thanks to Bakshi’s best animation ever. It’s also very adventurous in approach and the action sequences are all hugely entertaining how superbly executed they are. It’s a high fantasy that really works, his only truly good film and of course it tops this list.