Spicy City was basically Tales From The Crypt … only animated!
Spicy City is an animated series that is all but forgotten today. Indeed, it never got ANY kind of home media physical release on VHS or DVD and it’s STILL not streaming anywhere (legally) in the United States today. Which is weird for a lot of reasons.
First off, Spicy City holds the distinction of being the very first TV-MA rated animated series to hit the airwaves — beating South Park to the punch by a couple of weeks in late summer 1997. Secondly, it was a series that was doing the whole cyber-punk shtick YEARS before that became a common trope in Western animation. Really, it was the closest thing U.S. viewers had to a bona fide “domestic” anime, and would remain so for quite a while.
The show was created by Ralph Bakshi, who is pretty much the father of “adult” American animation (for whatever that particular term is worth to you.) He gave us Fritz The Cat and Wizards in the 1970s before hitting a creative speed bump in the 1980s (which you could argue he never really recovered from.) In hindsight, it’s pretty amazing that HBO would even give the guy the keys to the premium cable kingdom, so to speak; I mean, late night sci-fi-erotica cartoons are about as niche a product as they come.
By and large Bakshi’s career was “killed” by 1992’s Cool World — an ambitious Roger Rabbit clone that was MEANT to be an explicitly adult horror movie until the studio execs neutered it into a PG-13 mess that wouldn’t satisfy kids OR grown-ups. Spicy City was sort of a redemption opportunity for Bakshi, and surprise, surprise, he kinda muffed the punt again. Apparently the show did get pretty good ratings and HBO even wanted a second season produced. Alas, Bakshi wasn’t a fan of having a new team of writers onboard and the entire series got axed after a mere six-episode run.
But the six episodes we DO have of Spicy City are quite interesting. Maybe not always good, in the traditional sense, but certainly interesting.
I guess the easiest way to describe the show is “a sci-fi/horror erotica version of Tales From The Crypt … and it’s all animated.” Like, we even get a Crypt Keeper stand-in in the form of the show’s hostess Raven, who introduces the tale at the beginning of each episode. Oh, and if you REALLY want to have your mind blown, guess who they got to voice her: none other than Michelle Phillips, of the ’60s hippie super-group The Mamas and the Papas.
The show isn’t just akin to Tales From The Crypt structurally; HBO may have tried to market the show as sci-fi, but most of the stories herein are pure horror, or super black comedy at the very least. And alike Tales From The Crypt, almost all of the episodes have some sort of “poetic justice” ending, with deserving evil-doers getting what’s coming to them through some sort of ironic and macabre twist of fate. Case in point? The episode “Eye For an Eye,” where an evil, corrupt cop ends up getting sentenced to death … and having her entire body carved away and practically sold to the highest bidder.
Some episodes are clearly better than others. My personal favorite has to be “Mano’s Hands,” about a talented bongo player who runs afoul of the mob and has his hands sliced off as punishment. Of course, this being a horror series and all, the hands gain sentience and start running around seeking vengeance, a’la Ash’s severed hand in Evil Dead II. It’s immensely morbid and entertaining stuff, replete with a bizarre beyond words ending that I’m not even going to think about spoiling for you here.
At the time the show was controversial for its sexual content. Remember, this WAS 1997, where the idea of animated nudity and hardcore profanity was a very new thing for broadcast television in America. Today, though, I get the feeling the show would be far more controversial for its … questionable … depiction of minority characters. There’s no way to sugarcoat it; some of the ethnic characters in the show are like this close to bordering on minstrel caricatures. There’s a fine line between “stylized” and racially insensitive, and Spicy City is a show that toes it VERY uncomfortably. Of course, I’m not insinuating that the people who made the show are racist, but at the end of the day, the optics ARE what they are. So don’t so I didn’t warn you ahead of time.[*]
[*] According to this interview from a few years back, Bakshi says that the writing crew assembled for Spicy City consisted of “Asians, Blacks, Transvestites [and] guys out of jail.” So make of that what you will.
Looking back on the show today Spicy City was REALLY prescient on a lot of issues. The very first episode was about online trolls and stealing cyber identities, with later episodes dealing with surveillance states, authoritarian responses to pandemics and yes, A.I. gone rogue. There’s an entire episode about “biological” prostitutes being put out of business by android hookers — something that seemed comically impossible in the late ’90s but frighteningly feasible in 2026. Sci-fi has always been sci-fact 50 years early; and seeing so many of the grandiose elements of Spicy City turn into reality is quite amazing, if not a little horrifying.
You’ll recognize a lot of voices on the show. Tuesday Knight from Elm Street 4, E.G. Daily of Rugrats fame, even a couple of The Simpsons voice actors pop up from time to time. And the animation style is pretty inventive, with a classical ’40s animation meets contemporary anime look that really hasn’t been replicated by any subsequent series. Hardcore animation nerds will want to check out the series for sure, just to see what Bakshi and pals could cook up with a relatively fat budget and practically zero censorship.
Not all of the show holds up today, of course. But there’s enough interesting and ahead-of-the-curve aspects of Spicy City to make it worth going out of your way to see if you’re a sci-fi/horror nut. It’s a shame we never got a second season, because the show definitely had a lot of promise. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to find Spicy City out there in the waters of YouTube and DailyMotion. And since you can watch the entire series in about two and a half hours, you won’t have to worry about too much of a time sink here.
You might love Spicy City or you might hate it. But one thing is for sure — you’ll be anything BUT bored while you watch it.
