I was looking for something new in the sword and sorcery genre, and came across Spine of Night (2021), an adult animated film.

It wasn’t the best animation (the backgrounds were gorgeous) nor was the writing very special. I even think the voice acting left something to be desired. So you might think that I disliked the film?

No! It scratched my itch for kinda-shitty, Ralph Bakshi-esque underground animation. You have rotoscoping, you have naked people, you have gory violence. I don’t know how this movie got made, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been crowd funded.

It even reminded me of Heavy Metal. In Spine of Night, the plot is one story told like an anthology collection. More like an excuse to show off a different premise every 20 minutes than a complete package. Unlike Heavy Metal, there is definitely a direct relation between each segment.

If people can think of more animated movies like this that are worth checking out, let me know! It doesn’t have to be fantasy themed.

  • Ithorian [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I just watched that a few weeks ago when i was on swords and sorcery kick. I agree with all your points about it’s flaws but i still loved it. Unfortunately digging around i found very few other movies in the genre. If you’re looking for animated Gandahar is decent, everything else i found was unwatchably bad. (Assuming you’re already familiar with lotr (1978)) Love death and robots is probably the only other modern thing that comes close to scratching the itch. For live action if you’re fine with pure cheese Sorceress (1982) is so bad it’s good. If you find anything worth watching in your search let me know, i can’t get enough.

    I also read a bunch of the original Conan stories, most of them are actually pretty good.