Joining the Cult: Wizards

wizards-1977-1108x0-c-default
wizards-1977-1108x0-c-default

Author: Cameron Fairchild

Nothing in Wizards fits together.

The characters in Ralph Bashki’s 1977 animated fantasy rarely look as if they quite belong against the beautiful, jagged paintings that provide the backdrop for an Earth millions of years older than ours, ravaged by nuclear warfare. The animation—literally, the motion of things in the frame—always seems at odds with this backdrop, either spaced awkwardly in the background or traversing it too quickly. Nothing quite fits, and at first glance, one could dismiss Wizards as a minor, ugly thing. However, it is the seams of the film that hold it together.

Wizards is the story of two brothers: Avatar and Blackwolf, two wizards locked in a seeming eternal conflict. Avatar, far from the archetypal hero, is perpetually lazy, stumbling through his quest to yet again defeat Blackwolf. Their final confrontation doesn’t rest on their magical abilities, but with an anticlimactic gun shot. Animated characters bleed, and major characters are killed without warning. The idyllic fantasy world is subverted and replaced by stark violence.  No one in Wizardsperforms, moves, or acts the way you’d expect, and with the help of disorienting animation, Bashki creates a purposefully alienating world, marked throughout by nightmarish imagery. It is intentionally ugly. The Earth in Wizards should have never been allowed to exist—when fought over, no one really wins.

Wizards came out in 1977 and was produced by Fox alongside a little film called Star Wars, and the two are interesting when held up against each other. Star Wars, for what a risk is was for Fox to produce at the time, is very clean in the way it is presented—within its risky sci-fi framework, there is no blood, no moral relativism, no surreal, nightmare logic. Its fantasy world is fundamentally safe and inviting. It is a clean presentation, whereas Wizards, which shared a production company in Fox and actor Mark Hamill, is decidedly not. Wizards represents something of a singular approach to fantasy storytelling, not bothering with heightened language, grand fantasy vistas, or much reliance on traditional idyllic character types. It’s down in the dirt, cutting against the sort of clean fantasy blockbuster that Star Wars promulgated. There’s something galvanizing about how Wizards, between its disturbing animation style and damaged characterizations,feels ultimately more human than its counterpart.

Much of the film was independently produced by Bashki, and combines painting, traditional animation, stock footage from other films, and rotoscoping. The film is more of a collage of styles, ultimately unfettered by studio interruption, and the result is a beautiful mess of images, especially during the climactic war scenes. Bashki had originally promised Fox a more family-oriented film after a string of animated adult cartoons, such as his debut film Fritz the Cat, which was the first-ever-“X”-rated animated film. The end result, of course, is much darker and more violent than something family-oriented like Star Wars, so Bashki had to pay for the film himself to pursue his vision. Wizards was technically a box office hit, making 9 million dollars off a 2-million-dollar budget.

The thing Bashki couldn’t account for in trying to make a family film was his interest in discussing the perpetuation of fascism in the modern day. Bashki has stated that Wizards, which heavily draws on found-footage of Nazi documentaries to aid Blackwolf’s propaganda machine and inform his outlook on the world, is a commentary on the foundation of the state of Israel and the continuing persecution of Jewish people. What Star Wars harmlessly alludes to, Bashki makes textual, and violent, and real. Wizardsis not about a heroic quest against evil, but rather a re-assertion that evil always lingers, and is reborn from one movement to the next. It’s not hard to draw parallels between Blackwolf and Neo-Nazism, Trump, Putin, and any number of modern-day fascist movements. It’s a blunt instrument in its portrayal of the way propaganda and ignorance creates hate, and violence, and war, but it is a damning and effective portrait nonetheless. For a weird, animated, cult hit from the late 70s to accomplish that puts it in conversation with the great post-WWII anti-war films of the period, from Apocalypse Now to the German masterwork Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Wizards is a landmark independent film, and a visceral, beautifully ugly portrait of what animation can accomplish.


Further Viewing:

Fritz the Cat (1972) – Bashki’s debut film; the first X-Rated cartoon.

Watership Down (1978) – Martin Rosen’s animated adaptation of the Richard Adams novel, another excellent “adult” animation. 

Felidae (1994) – Michael Schaack’s neo-noir animated film about cats solving sex crimes and preventing genocide. The most expensive German animation ever made.


CAMERON FAIRCHILD | KXSU Arts Reporter

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