THE NINE LIVES OF FRITZ THE CAT Directed by Robert Taylor (American International)

My friend Marya has a cat named Irwin who spends most of his spare time masturbating in the hallway. Fritz and his offspring do much of the same thing, except they do it on the movie screen. So why is Fritz a star, and Irwin just another long-tailed Brooklyn charmer?

Not for many good reasons, except breeding. Fritz, of course, was an underground comix star before being discovered in the catnip section of Schwab’s Drugstore. His first movie was an X-rated full length animated feature by Ralph Bakshi. Fritz the Cat upset R. Crumb, the creator of the comic strip, badly enough for him to insist his name be taken off the credits. It appalled audiences (well, it appalled me) because (watch out for sanctimony here) it proved to me that people involved with the so-called counter-culture were much better at damaging same than any outside agitators (cops, politicians, media).

Though rated R (for wRetched), The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is a continuation of the sexual and pharmaceutical fantasies of our hero. Fritz is a catpecked husband, married to a shrill shrew of a Bronx princess whose voice, by Reva Rose, is one of the film’s few outstanding features. They’re on welfare, Fritz smokes dope all day (remember marijuana? The stuff that used to be illegal in Ann Arbor?), won’t ball the wife, but has plenty of ideas.

Because of the “R” rating, the sex scenes aren’t as “explicit” as the first Fritz’ (and not nearly as pornographic as Crumb’s strip). There’s a lot of very quick action tumbling, and come to think of it, maybe that’s Fritz’ problem. But sex is a mere incidental through most of these nine vignettes, with the real concern of the filmmakers being racism.

Anyone who thinks this movie is about spoofing racism has been mixing kitty litter with their Romilar. CREEM’S own forays into free-lance Archie Bunkerism may be no easier to defend (and maybe they shouldn’t be). From my own point of view, some of it seems to be a sigh of relief at not having to give lip service to the liberal homilies of the so-called sixties that all of us agreed with but few of us believed in. It feels right to be paranoid on the A train from the Bronx or Brooklyn to Manhattan at 2 in the morning. That train ride is very much like Fritz’ uptight but naive cruise through the streets of allblack New Africa, which thanks to President Kissinger, is the place we used to call New Jersey.

Writers Robert Taylor, Fred Halliday and Eric Monte exploit the clever simplifications of black street life to the point of abuse. All the women have Yoruba asses and Ubangi breasts, and are either hookers or baby making machines. The men are deceitful exponents of jivetalk, completely apathetic about one of their own dying in the gutter of stab wounds. They tolerate corruption at the highest level of their independent black state. “How do I find President Supreme Jackson?” Fritz, the White House courier asks a border guard. “Wave a dollar bill,” is the reply.

Puerto Ricans are similarly “satirized.” Juan is an acquaintance of Fritz. He is a rat. Not a mean person, but a rodent. He gets upset when Fritz farts in his face, and starts castigating him in Spanish. “Why don’t you people learn how to speak English, we were here first,” says Fritz, which is the cornerstone concept at the base of AngloLatin relations in New York. It doesn’t work so well with Chicanos of Texas or California, because they were here first, but that's not the issue entirely.

The • question is whether by relying on cliche and stereotype, the writers can claim to be making a satirical statement about the nature of racism, which in itself is such a cliche that I’m amazed a modern scriptwriter would consider tackling it in the first place. The answer is only if they’re funny, and The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat is anything but funny.

Other scenes, including an abominable episode psychoanalyzing Hitler in the last days of the Third Reich, evokes responses somewhere between pity and contempt. It leaves little wonder that the name of R. Crumb doesn’t appear in any connection with this Steve Krantz production. (An American International spokesman “presumed that Krantz bought the rights” to Fritz). From Crumb’s point of view, I would hope that it has as much to do with needing to live with yourself as the attraction of Krantz’ gelt.

THREE THE HARD WAY (Allied Artists)

There’s this mad millionaire who is a' racist. He’s hired a research scientist who looks exactly like William Kunstler to develop a selective toxin which, when dumped into the water supplies of key U.S. cities, will poison all non-Caucasian people. Unfortunately for him, Jim Brown, an A&R man in Los Angeles producing the Impressions, gets wind of the program, and calls up Fred Williamson, a public relations executive in Chicago, and Jim Kelly, a karate instructor in Washington.

Dozens of red-beret sporting fascist stooges sprout from the woodwork in Chicago; Detroit; New York; Los Angeles; Washington. Armed with machine gurts and as many old cars as they can destroy, they fight a losing battle against Brown and his companions. The fascists fall like flies. They fire a million rounds of ammunition at the good guys but hit nothing. Jim Brown fires one shot from his revolver and six red berets drop dead and two old Chevies explode.

As the mad millionaire’s merry marching society falls like suds before a hose, it becomes clear that money and racism is no match for three tough black businessmen, who are only too happy to drop everything and put down a genocide program with the same ease they might play a game of touch football.

The movie looks a lot like Where Eagles Dare in that there are so many explosions that the dialogue has to be sandwiched in sideways. As Director Parks put it, “Jim Brown is John Wayne, Fred Williamson is Errol Flynn, and Jim Kelly is Clint Eastwood.” Kelly’s karate sequences look terrific and show that stylistically, at least, he is an admirable successor to Bruce Lee. But if there was any acting in the film, I missed it.

Mike Baron

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT (United Artists)

Of course, there are the inevitable complainers. There are too many clips and not enough full sequences: the film emphasizes dancing to the detriment of singing; it ignores many of the stalwarts who deserve tribute; it relies too heavily on films that are currently being shown on television; much of the material, itself, is mediocre.

In addition, this Hollywood vision, circa 1928-1952, as seen through an assortment of 100 film clips culled from the ultimate library of MGM film musicals, portrays a world that is WHITE! WHITE! WHITE! And a world in which every problem can be solved by putting on a musical in the high school gymnasium of your favorite hometown: Goodness, U.S.A.

Well, all the carpers are right! And so what! That’s ' Entertainment is gaudy and hilarious and filled with unabated energy and joy. Indeed, at this moment there is nothing showing on anybody’s screen as compelling and captivating as Esther Williams backstroking her way orgiastically through an MGM azure blue sea while a panting, smiling, Maybellined and water-proofed Ricardo Montalban hornily breast-strokes his way after her.

The films from which these clips were selected were made during those halcyon days when a great many people believed unabashedly in God, education, capitalism, war, early-to-bed and earlyto-rise, and all of the other ramifications of the Protestant Ethic. (The above listed in no particular order.) Since God was on this gang’s side, they were simultaneously middle-class and elitist. They didn’t care about blacks: they wanted problems solved in neat, clean, trivial, antiseptic and nice ways.

The result: movie Kitsch of glorious proportions — an art form of magic and madness that will never be duplicated again. (Can you imagine an entertaining film consisting of 100 film clips of rock bands?)

In ancient Greece, by order of the state, in homage to their gods, the Greeks destroyed all babies who did not match high standards of physical and mental excellence. The result: a people of unparelled beauty and intellectuality whose creations still stand as the highest examples of the excellence that man can achieve. The moral: Elitism produces superior results as well as allowing one to demonstrate the most infectious uses of Technicolor.

Henry Edwards