Hey Good Lookin'

Plot synopsis:
In Brooklyn during the 1980s, a heavyset, middle-aged woman walks alone meets a mysterious man who greets her and shows her the remains of a black leather jacket. The woman sobs at the sight of it, and the man begins to tell a story.
In the 1950s, Vinnie is the leader of a gang named "the Stompers". His best friend, Crazy Shapiro, is subject to multiple murder attempts by Crazy's detective father, Solly. While in an old basketball court, Vinnie reunites with an old flame named Rozzie, but their reunion is abruptly interrupted by Rozzie's protective Jewish father, who chains her to her bed so she won't meet with Vinnie. Vinnie and Crazy spend the evening drinking, meet up with two prostitutes and go to sleep on the beach, waking up to find themselves close to a group of showering women and their mobster husbands. While Crazy inches over to the ladies, Vinnie finds a dead body buried in the sand. The screams of Vinnie and the women alert the mobsters, who beat up Crazy. It's later seen that Crazy has killed off the mobsters.
Vinnie runs off, finding himself on the black area of the beach where he bumps into rival gang leader Boogaloo Jones and his gang, the Chaplains. Boogaloo sets up a rumble between his gang and the Stompers. Vinnie later meets up with Roz and the girl Crazy dates, Eva; Crazy has meanwhile beaten all the mobsters. The four head out to a party, where Vinnie tells the Stompers that they are going to fight with the Chaplains, to which the gang responds negatively. Much of the gang and their girls head out to a rock and roll show. Vinnie is horrified at the idea of Crazy and himself having to fight the Chaplains alone. One of the Stompers named Sal and his girl have a run-in with Boogaloo while driving, and wind up in a car crash. Vinnie finally persuades the Stompers to rumble with the Chaplains.
At a drive-in restaurant, Vinnie and Crazy make out with their girls. When Roz spots a car that she thinks Boogaloo is in, Crazy is quick to drive off after it. Crazy ends up shooting two of the black gang members in an alley, much to Vinnie's shock. Solly investigates the death of the two black gang members. He questions Boogaloo, who tells him that he should be looking for the Stompers.
Crazy and Roz are then seen at a pier. Rozzie tells him that Vinnie is ditching town, her and the rumble, which makes Crazy the leader of the Stompers. Disgusted with Vinnie's cowardice, Roz allows Crazy to make love to her in an abandoned warehouse. Solly interrupts, and fights Crazy to get him to talk. As he is losing, Crazy lies, saying Vinnie killed the gang members. Vinnie packs up his things and leaves, but bumps into the Stompers and in time for the rumble. As the two gangs wait for Boogaloo to show up, Solly drives up, ready to arrest Vinnie. On the rooftop of a nearby building, Crazy begins shooting randomly towards the street, causing both gangs to begin shooting at each other. Vinnie tries to run and is shot at by Solly. Crazy jumps off the rooftop, landing on Solly, killing himself and Solly. As Roz calls up a radio station to make a memorial request in honor of Vinnie, he stands up and walks away, leaving Brooklyn.
As the mysterious man finishes his story, he claims he left because he was heartbroken over the death of Crazy. The woman knows he is lying. She reveals that she is Roz, and that the man is Vinnie, returned after 30 years. Roz angrily berates him for abandoning her and the gang just to save his own skin. Roz tells him that her husband will soon come looking for her, and he hates to see her with another man. She gives Vinnie a second chance, if he will fight for her like she wished he did before. But she's bluffing. At first Vinnie imagines himself walking out on her again, but then embraces Roz telling her "I've been waiting for you."

Tags: comedy, cult, violence, flashback, psychedelic, humor, satire

Review:
You either love, loathe or simply don't understand Bakshi's films.
Me and a friend of mine were obsessed with it and would quote it to each other (and others who must have wondered what the hell we were on about) constantly.I love Bakshi's animation, it maybe rough and sketchy at times but this is part of the appeal.
There is also less of his trademark mixing of animation over live action backgrounds although it's still present to good effect in certain scenes.
In a sense, it's perhaps more streamlined and consequently more accessible to new comers to the world of Bakshi than his previous works.
When "Coonskin/Streetfight" caused a load of controversy and the technical specs caused difficulty, this one sat on a shelf for WAY too long.And it may be Bakshi's best.This was like "Heavy Traffic" but two decades earlier.
Not for the first time either.The best part of this film is the wrecking of the 50's myth.
Both this and "Traffic" have the struggling artist character getting heat from all around him.This was like a JD flick but VERY serious.
Having first seen "Hey Good Lookin'" at the movies in 1982, the year I was seventeen, I have always considered this a film that connects me directly to my past.
I was involved with my first "real" girlfriend at the time, and this is one of the first films that we saw together.
That aside, having seen this movie countless times since then I have been struck by it's completeness, and excellence as a film.
Bakshi's only film that featured a completely original, and brilliant, musical soundtrack, "Hey Good Lookin'" gives a good look into what it meant to be a guy growing up in 1950's Brooklyn and the role you needed to play in order to get respect, get along with your friends, and what was necessary to get the girl.
From the leather motorcycle jackets, the slicked back DA's and the rumbles, Ralph Bakshi gives us a window into which we might look into a past where male / female roles were clearly defined, and a man could still be a man.
Ralph Bakshi's Mean Streets.
You remember Mean Streets- Scorsese's rough and raw and unpredictable tip of the hat to Little Italy (and, consequently, episodic though with a little plot), which was about as personal as movies could get.
With Hey Good Lookin', warts and all, Bakshi has his Mean Streets.
It's about two guys, Vinny and Crazy (Shapiro), who go lookin' for girls, start up a possible rumble, and just act like cool and wacky 50s Brooklynites.
But to say that this is simply what it's about is nonsense; it's about mood and time, if that doesn't sound too pretentious, and about an abstract sensibility (or, if you will, an impression) of what life was like in Brooklyn hopped up with lots of rock and roll and attitude.
It is, indeed, none other than a Bakshi film.But what does this mean for those who've only seen his work from Fritz the Cat and Lord of the Rings (or, on the lower end of the spectrum though more recent, Cool World)?
What may seem like chaos in a Ralph Bakshi film isn't a fault but the actual style of the piece.
Everything and anything can happen in a scene, and like an early Scorsese or Cassavetes it's extremely improvisational.
His characters are ugly and crude and physical and filled with such puffed up cliché or (yes) stereotype via ethnicity or race or (especially) sex, that it's easy to see why some would be turned off in a second.Hey Good Lookin' doesn't want the most amount of viewers like a Disney flick.
Bakshi has a crazy means to his vision, but for those tuned in it's a deranged kind of bliss.
His film is alive and wild in not just the style of drawing but in little set-ups (where else will you get a raucous sex scene in a pile of hamburgers, or a car busting through a music hall and killing the band).
While this time Bakshi might not have the best musical accompaniment- the songs range from being slightly catchy 50s throwbacks to crappy would-be-50s-really-80's tunes- and the chaos in the storyline or specific scenes might backfire once or twice into total "what the hell is this" territory, mostly it's all good.This is a true wildman pulling off a personal vision of a time and place with an eye for character, a knack for casting true to the setting as opposed to higher-scale talent (David Proval, also of Mean Streets, incredibly plays Crazy Shapiro), and if it's not one of his very best, it's close..
I became a Bashki film from the first time I saw American Pop. It was the most amazing cartoon I'd ever seen and since then, I'd been on the look out for more Bashki cartoons.Hey Good Lookin' is my second round of Bashki.
It was a darkish cartoon look at rumble life of a couple of 1950s hoods.
But, unlike American Pop, which also had the bazaar stlyistic drawings of dark alley life, Hey Good Lookin' has a lot of cartoonish humor like a guy being caught up in a basketball game and chucked in a basketball hoop.
I liked it all except for the ending, which got me a little confused, getting wrapped up in Crazy's hypnotic dreaming sequence dancing around and shooting antennea's and stuff.
But nonetheless, I did like this movie, and I'd definitely check out more Bashki films..
Excellent Animated Film.
The first time I saw this film was at 3am after returning home from a bar.
This video is now among one of my most prized tapes.The story is based around two good friends, Crazy Shapiro and Vinnie.
Vinnie is the leader of a gang known as the 'Stompers'.
Vinnie isn't much of a leader, and Crazy is a loose canon.
The story takes us on a journey of how Vinnie dealt with his cowardly ways and how Crazy took a leap to insanity.One of the reasons this movie has made it into my all time favorites is due to how the movie ends.This movie like most Psychedelic cartoons is not for everybody.
This full-length animated feature takes an amusing and often outrageous look at life during the '50s.
If you liked this you will love FRITZ THE CAT..
hey good watching.
Though, I usually watched family-oriented animated films.
I first encountered Ralph Bakshi's films when I was a teenager; I don't know how old I was.
I started with "The Lord of The Rings;" then "Wizards," that film became my favorite Bakshi film.
And then I watched on YouTube : "Fire & Ice," "Cool World" (live action/animated), "Heavy Traffic" and this film "Hey Good Lookin'."Well anyway, this film takes on a gritty,outrageous look at Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s.
But the film's story is about the gang-leader Vinnie, his gang called the Stompers; his relationship with his sexy girlfriend Roz and his "friend" "Crazy" Shapiro.
And also the all-out rumble with the black rival gang called the Chaplins near the film's ending.I love the scene where we first meet Roz, it has a great homage to Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood" cartoons.
I also love the part where Vinny screamed at the corpse buried in the sand and all the Sicillians that are on the beach, dogpiled and beat up Shapiro; that guy is TOO MUCH!.
Hey Good Lookin' summary.
This film is complete garbage.
The main character, Vinny is a bit of a tool and I've noticed similarities between him and Danny Zuko from Grease.
This could mean that Hey Good Lookin' supposedly ripped off Grease, that would explain why many people hate this film.Vinny, now that I've compared him to Danny Vuto, that led me thinking about how John Travolta played Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction.
Yep, and Vincent could be Vincent's real name, but everyone in the film refers to him as "Vinny."  Despite that Pulp Fiction was released 12 years later than Hey Good Lookin', Vinny is more like Danny Vuto, due to the fact that he picks up chicks, has a cocky personality, and is portrayed as a greaser, as well as Grease being released prior to Hey Good Lookin'.The dialogue is somehow entertaining in certain parts of the film, but mostly involves lots of yelling, cheering and reactions to things.
After watching the first ten minutes of the film, the dialogue gets boring and loud, sounding like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
The slippery slope of how the producers dealt with marketing this film started when Ralph Bakshi started writing the script for this film, after producing Coonskin.
Many black animators were informed about this becoming a film, so they joined Ralph Bakshi's studio and contributed on this film.
Once they realized how the black characters in the film were given mainstream African American stereotypes, the black animators left the studio; supposedly as a response to how Bakshi avoided giving blacks stereotypes in Coonskin, but exploiting the stereotypes negatively and crossing the line in Hey Good Lookin'.The film contains live action footage that blended the animated characters with the backgrounds used for the film.
In one scene, the black characters break dance, despite the fact that break dancing wasn't popular to the release of this film.
This film perfected the dance style and this dance became popular among African Americans in hip hop culture.Since Bakshi wanted the break dancing scenes in the film, a lot of the live action footage was deleted and reshot.
The film was then shelved until the release of American Pop, and despite that Warner Bros.
was fascinated with Bakshi's script, yet I personally find it uninteresting.
The music is cheesy, and pretty much exploits the lifestyle the characters live in.
The music attempts to be 50s music but sounds more like 80s music, the type of music this film has is like the 80s version of Nickelback.
The character Crazy has the stupidest name in the film.
Naming him Kangaroo would've been better, because it isn't too obvious that his personality is like a kangaroo's.
Crazy is clearly really clumsy and goofy and the fact that his name is Crazy makes us know that the film will be boring.The animation is good, and is supposed to be a representation of Coney Island.
However, there's this one scene where Vinny feels something in the sand and digs up a disturbing skull that petrifies the women at the beach.
Hey, Goodlooking is an intelligent, dark, and satirical look on the American youth culture of the 50's.
Look beyond the poor standard of animation to a story of friendship, love and betrayal.
If you can get past the early-80's, cheap techniques, as in Bakshi's LOTR, you'll discover a great film that works on many different levels..
In the top 4 of Bakshi's best movies.
I am not the biggest Ralph Bakshi fan, but I have liked quite a number of his films(Cool World was the only one really that I disliked).
Presently my top 4 are American Pop, Heavy Traffic, Coonskin and this, Hey Good Lookin'.
The animation could be seen as crude by some, that I can understand, I find his most visually beautiful films to be American Pop and Wizards(the latter though I had mixed feelings on), but I find the rough-around-the-edges animation to be part of Hey Good Lookin''s charm.
Overall, one of Bakshi's best.
I first saw this movie when I was 6 years old.
He was my hero until I watched Hey Good Lookin' and met Vinnie.
He was an ugly, ape-like man with plenty of Neanderthal features.
Not only was this movie packed with 3 major interests of mine (cursing, violence, and sex) but it was a cartoon as well.
I literally thought I had died and gone to heaven.Hey Good Lookin' is vulgar and rude.
What this scene means I will never know, but that's the beauty of it.
We meet Old Vinnie and Old Roz in present time first, and they both look absolutely terrible.
We flashback 30 years to Vinnie as a young man, and he looks absolutely terrible.
Vinnie is the leader of a Brooklyn gang called The Stompers.
His first Lieutenant and best buddy is a guy named Crazy.
A running gag in the movie is the fact that Vinnie can't keep his hands off her more than ample breasts.
One day, at the beach, Vinnie bumps into his old nemesis, Boog-a-loo, the leader of a rival gang called The Chaplins.
Boog-a-loo is the blackest black man I have ever seen in a movie.
If there were ever any stereotypes towards black people, Boog-a-loo fits every one of them.
He looks a lot like Eddie Griffin, and part of me is convinced Griffin did his voice...but I don't think he was around back then.
The movie rapidly moves from one pointless scene to the next, leading up to the big rumble showdown, which is actually a try out for Dance Fever.But who even cares about the "plot..." what the hell was going on in this movie??
If it was indeed suicide, why even include Boog-a-loo in the scene?
I can't believe I'm even asking questions about this movie.The movie is basically an animated version of Mean Streets.
Everyone is drawn terribly, and all the characters look like Satan.
I have been waiting for the sequel now for 20 years, and if Ralph Bakshi reads this, hopefully he will oblige, instead of going "Hollywood" and making pure crap like Cool World, a movie with no nudity.* * * * * stars out of 5..
It's alright, but not the film that we should watch..
Hey Good Lookin was finished in mid-70's, and it was Bakshi's Fourth feature film.
It's original version, featuring Animated Characters against live-action characters discussing girlfriends and haircuts must've been a treat to watch.But Warner Brothers delayed the film for 4 years before they officially scrapped it entirely, and ordered Bakshi to re-made the whole film in animation, and throughout the production of Wizards and Lord of the Rings, Bakshi used his gains from those movies to remake Hey Good Lookin in animation, but he didn't felt like it, so in the end, he didn't even watched the final film, so just like Cool World, Hey Good Lookin was just made without any love or care, it's just a shell of what it once was.The reason why this film would feel much different than the original version is because it probably had a charm to it, the new version doesn't has a charm, it's just colorful characters slapped on lifeless, static and bland backgrounds, there are a few scenes where the characters are against a Live-action background, and it looks great, not Roger-Rabbit great, but it's a different take, it's not supposed to look like they're really there, it's just an experiment Bakshi made to see of how far the suspension of disbelief went.However, there are a few scenes that I like in the current version, SPOILER ALERT, like the scene where Vinnie and Crazy hang out in Manhattan, or any of the scenes with Vinnie and Crazy in them, because they're really well acted, Richard Romanus and David Proval showed some really nice chemistry on their parts as best friends Vinnie and Crazy Shapiro.
I like the rumble scene, where the dancing people are rotoscoped, quite surreal, and I like the scene where Vinnie griefs for the death of Crazy, and walks around by himself in Manhattan, it's kinda heartbreaking, to be honest, and I like the ending too, despite what some people say.
I don't like sad endings, I like closure.All in all, I really want to see the original version of Hey Good Lookin.
Come on Warners Brothers, time to dust off that Hey Good Lookin print sitting on your vault and restore it to it's full glory and release it on Blu-ray.
I've watched "Heavy Traffic", "Fritz the cat", "Cool World" & "Coonskin", all of which were pure awful, just like this one.
This film also had the lack of story line and super bad characters in this.
After this, I'm not gonna bother looking at another Ralph Bakshi because really, I'm always disappointed in his movies.
I'm not even gonna watch his 2015 movie, I'll probably wouldn't like I either....I wouldn't recommend this film, it's pure stupid.....
One of Bakshi's better films(contains spoilers).
Quebec Rating:13+ Canadian Home Video Rating:14AHey Good Lookin is one of the four Ralph Bakshi films I have seen.The other Bakshi films I have seen are Fritz The Cat(his best movie),Coonskin(good but not as good as fritz or this) and Cool World(which wasn't very good...but not bad).Not many people seem to have seen this film(as of August 28 2007, it has 97 votes).Hey Good Lookin is a film about the 1950's.A mysterious man tells a girl a story.The story follows Vinnie, who is the leader of the gang "The Stompers".Him and his friend Crazy Shapiro have fun smoking,drinking and trying to pick up girls.One day, Vinnie accidentally goes on the rival black gang's turf.The leader of the gang asks Vinnie to rumble with him.He agrees.The rest of the film shows gang trouble and Vinnie and Shapiro dating two girls.Vinnie's girl's name is Roz.Also Crazy Shapiro's father is a cop who hates his son and tries to kill him.The rumble at the end of the film is pretty good but weird with Shapiro hallucinating and shooting at garbage cans and street signs.Vinnie ends up getting shot but is okay and Shapiro falls to his death.We then see the film go back to 1982 where we find that the mysterious man is Vinnie and the girl is Roz.The two then reunite.Hey Good Lookin is one of bakshi's better films and if you can find it, I recommend it.Hopefully this will come out on DVD.