Animation has never been just for children, though it has often been treated as such. Yet there was a time—brief, wild, and gloriously unbound—when adult animation existed as a frontier of experimentation, a place where psychedelic visions and narrative freedom collided. Some were surreal fairy tales for adults, others harsh allegories of contemporary society, and still others entirely unclassifiable, existing solely in the fevered logic of their creators’ imaginations. Directors in France were bending the medium into a surrealist, nightmarish, and deeply poetic form, while underground animators across Europe and the United States were transforming the simplest of line drawings into phosphorescent journeys that could bewilder and disturb, all in a single sitting. This is acid animation: a short, dazzling era where the screen became a playground for the mind’s most fevered visions.
Here are ten of the most extraordinary examples from that period.
heavy metal (1981)
45 years on, heavy metal still remains unmatched: a hallucinatory blast of adult animation, dripping with excess and imagination, that still scorches the senses years on. the loc-nar, a glowing orb of sheer malevolence, threads its way through multiple tales of astral horror, far flung realms, and dystopian futures. canadian animators dared to blend violence and pure psychedelic chaos, while the soundtrack, black sabbath, devo, blue öyster cult, drive each image. it’s a surreal baptism, a collision of imagination and audacity that defined animation for a generation.
wizards (1977)
wizards (1977)ralph bakshi’s wizards explodes across a shattered world where magic and machines tear reality apart. hand drawn landscapes swirl with rotoscoped figures, while a wild soundtrack of folk and electronica pulses like the lifeblood of the realm. two brothers, one a master of ancient sorcery, the other a warlord commanding unstoppable machines, clash in a battle that will decide the fate of humanity. beneath the sparks of spell and steel, bakshi spins a political allegory, a darkly hypnotic fable of tyranny and ideology that marks bakshi’s early genius.
belladonna of sadness (1973)
a young peasant woman, scarred by betrayal and cruelty, seizes witchcraft as both weapon and liberation. belladonna of sadness drifts through a phantasmagoric medieval world, where fluid animation and electric, bleeding colours clash with forbidden erotic visions. born from a france/japan collaboration under mitsuyo laloux’s visionary hand, its narrative subversion is haunting and otherworldly, twisting every scene into a dream turned nightmarish. this is adult animation at its most hypnotic and unrelenting.
time masters (1982)
there’s a kind of quiet terror in time masters, the way director rene laloux shrinks human ambition against an infinite cosmos. explorers stumble across alien worlds that feel alive and indifferent, chasing the remnants of a vanished civilisation like ants crawling over the bones of gods. strange, luminous creatures drift through landscapes that stretch forever, each frame reminding you how small, how fleeting, we are. the animation, designed by the legendary mœbius, gives the world an otherworldly precision, turning cosmic scale into something you can almost touch. it’s sci-fi, it’s philosophy, it’s existential vertigo rendered in motion. by the end, you’re left thinking less about plot and more about scale and the peculiar thrill of watching time itself unfold on screen.
rock & rule (1983)
this canadian animated musical thriller follows angus, a mutant rock singer who channels dark magic to bend the city, and the music world itself, to his will. in a jagged, dystopian metropolis, humans and mutants collide, their fates set to the legendary sounds of lou reed, rick james, ian hunter, and debbie harry. a work of pure fantasy and unbridled rock ’n’ roll audacity, it is unruly, unforgettable, and the kind of film best viewed in a rundown cinema at a midnight screening.
the lord of the rings (1978)
ralph bakshi’s daring adaptation of j.r.r. tolkien’s epic follows the fellowship on a perilous journey to destroy the one ring. using rotoscoping to give human characters a startlingly realistic motion, bakshi crafts a visual texture for middle-earth that is unlike anything else, fluid characters move across stylised, painterly landscapes that feel both grand and unsettling. epic battles are fought and our heroes are presented with gut wrenching moral dilemmas, all underscored by leonard rosenman’s sweeping classical score, which amplifies every moment of tension and wonder. controversial upon release for its mature themes and unfinished story, it endures as a cult favourite, captivating both casual viewers and devoted tolkien enthusiasts alike.
fire & ice (1983)
co-created by ralph bakshi and the legendary frank frazetta, fire & ice is pure, unrestrained fantasy unleashed on the screen. a frozen kingdom groans under the iron grip of a sorcerer, and only a fearless warrior and a fiery princess stand between chaos and ruin. frazetta’s signature muscular, larger than life designs practically leap off the screen, filling every frame with irresistible force. this is a film to get lost in, to gasp at, to cheer for, the kind of spectacle that makes you remember why you fell in love with fantasy in the first place.
fantastic planet (1973)
rene laloux’s fantastic planet throws you into a world so alien it feels like it’s seeping from another dimension. tiny, human-like creatures scurry under the watchful, terrifying gaze of towering, technologically advanced humanoids, and every day is a bizarre ballet of control and ritual. the jerky animation jolts the planet to life in ways that are equal parts mesmerising and deeply unsettling. visionary in every scene, the film is rightly hailed as a milestone of adult and experimental animation. it’s uncanny. it’s strange. it makes you laugh, it makes you wince, it makes you wonder how on earth (or off it) anyone could conjure such a world.
american pop (1981)
watching american pop is like dropping a needle on the soundtrack of the 20th century. four generations of a musical family stumble, soar, and sometimes implode as jazz mutates into rock, and bakshi’s rotoscoped ghosts make every trumpet blast and guitar riff feel tactile, like you could grab it. armstrong, presley, dylan, lennon, legends showing up not to comfort but to remind you how loud history really is. it’s messy, it’s raw, it’s a little exhausting, but it pulses with the thrill and tragedy of ambition: lives measured in riffs, in notes, in the electric flicker of a cartoon hand. bakshi animates obsession, and by the time it’s over, you’re not just watching a family, you’re feeling the weight of the entire soundtrack of popular culture in your chest.
