Wizards (1976)

Bakshi's first foray into fantasy animation and the experience he needed to gain confidence for his vision of 'The Lord of the Rings'.

The story is simply about a post-apocalyptic Earth where mutants live alongside new races of elves, dwarfs and fairies...yes. Two brother wizards battle each other; one on the side of the elves and dwarfs, the other with the mutants. They rage war to claim/save the Earth, as you might have guessed.

This sure is a weird combination of ideas that's for sure. Hand-drawn animation of goblins, elves, wizards, knights, mutants etc...Whilst rotoscoping is used for many battle sequences that appear to show various winged demons, orcs, goblins, and many more variants of knights. Various live-action sequences taken from other films and historic footage also appear to have been used.

The whole idea is this baddie wizard, with his mutants, discover ancient buried technology from our present-day and use it against the good forces. This includes planes, tanks, machine guns and a film projector that projects footage of Hitler and his Nazis. Certainly an odd inclusion for what was meant to be for youngsters as well as adults. Never the less this animated film shows how propaganda, when used correctly, can be just as devastating as technology. There are a few allegories within this film that are quite clever and would clearly go over a child's head. I was never really sure who this film was really aimed at.

There are plenty of bloody moments throughout just like in Bakshi's LoTR. Lots of creatures getting cut down with blades and shot to pieces by gunfire, even an arrow and meat cleaver to the head for two unlucky characters! On top of that you have street hookers that hang around in the streets of the evil wizard's city of 'Scortch'. And the good wizard Avatar has a sidekick fairy in training called Elinore who is dressed in a very skimpy, breast revealing, little number (Jessica Rabbit eat your heart out). Clearly for the adults and clearly Bakshi utilizing his skills from previous urban-based animations.

A strange mix of different concepts but definitely no lack of imagination and flair. The animation has a rough seedy urban blaxploitation-esque vibe and style about it which I was kinda down with. It has obviously aged somewhat but did remind me of those tatty old foreign cartoons from my childhood which were always a bit obscure (for the time). A strong colour palette much the same as LoTR incorporating nice dark cloudy skies, bleak murky landscapes, and some decrepit dusty old cityscapes set the scenes nicely. The blend of animated characters and rotoscope is fine but not as natural looking as Bakshi's later Tolkein feature. This offering tends to look a bit crowbarred together, plus the animated characters look a tad too cartoonish in places.

Overall it's hard not to compare this to his other cult work. Overall Bakshi's Tolkien adaptation probably wins due to the classic story for one and the fact visually it's a more well-oiled machine. 'Wizards' is an interesting but not very novel idea about simple ways vs technology. All the archive footage from Nazi Germany was possibly not required along with the baddie characters having Swastika's on them, comes across more like a fascist's wet dream from time to time.

I do like this film more for the artistic side really, the rest is somewhat dull with a lot of dialog that is uninspired. Some characters look really good like the thin soldiers wearing gas masks, whilst others look like something from a cheap kids flick. Certainly worth a watch but it's nothing to rave about. A Bakshi oddity that remains a full-on cult with intriguing visuals but little else.

6/10