Spicy City (1997)

Neon, Nipples, and Noir: Ralph Bakshi's Filthy Animated Cyber-Jazz Cocktail

Spicy City (1997) was Ralph Bakshi's last flaming arrow into the morally scorched sky of late-night cable TV — a radioactive love letter to sex, sleaze, and science fiction, all served dripping hot on HBO like a plate of neon-lit, whiskey-soaked ramen at 3 a.m. Imagine Blade Runner snorting a rail of crushed-up Heavy Metal magazine, then trying to explain cyberpunk to a prostitute in a dark alley behind a strip club — that’s Spicy City. Bakshi, the chaotic wizard behind Fritz the Cat and Wizards, lured viewers into a twisted metropolis of murder, cyborg pimps, dirty detectives, and silicon-enhanced femmes fatales. It was animation for grown-ups — but not your wine-sipping, jazz-collecting grown-ups. No. These were adults who still chain-smoked indoors and lived off diner coffee and bad decisions.

Each episode was a standalone pulp hallucination, narrated by a sultry host named Raven — a gothic cartoon goddess channeling a cross between Jessica Rabbit and a post-apocalyptic dominatrix — guiding us through tales of betrayal, bio-enhancements, and cartoon carnality. Bakshi’s style was unapologetically raw: jagged edges, gritty textures, and dialogue that sounded like it was written on a bar napkin after three boilermakers. The show was ahead of its time and too filthy for its own good, scrapped after one deranged season. But for those glorious few weeks, Spicy City throbbed on the TV like a dirty neon heart — proof that animation could be dangerous, decadent, and definitely not for the Saturday morning crowd.