Given the love of all things '70s and '80s in recent years, it was inevitable that someone would come along in the current decade with a love letter to the golden age of PG and R-rated animated fantasy and sci-fi films, which ranged from Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, The Lord of the Rings, and Wizards to Rock & Rule and René Laloux's films like Gandahar and Fantastic Planet. Leaning heavily to the Bakshi fantasy side, filmmaker Philip Gelatt first turned heads with his short animated fantasies like Mongel and the Wrath of the Ape King (2012) and Exordium (2013), which essentially turned out to be a proof of concept for what became the feature-length The Spine of Night after bringing aboard another director, Morgan Galen King (They Remain, Europa Report). The result is an unrated, violent updating of Bakshi's beloved rotoscoping, here with slicker backgrounds and a lot more hand-drawn genitalia and spectacular violence.

With an episodic structure linked in a similar fashion as the glowing Loc-Nar from Heavy Metal, here the film is held together over vast stretches of time by a powerful flower currently held within a skull cave at a remote mountain by The Guardian (Grant). Trekking through perilous climate to find the mystical source is Tzod (Lawless), a formidable sorceress whose people have been affected by the flower's seeds now leading to its offspring in the world. Her story and those of others connected by the flower unfold as she is betrayed by scholar and future fascist tyrant Ghal-Sur (Smith) as they attempt to escape from the barbaric Lord Pyrantin (Oswalt) and his henchman, Mongrel (Manganiello). Ghal-Sur's rise to power complete with an army and imposing fortress also draw in others including the knight Phae-Agura (Gabriel), including an ambitious overthrow plot that doesn't quite go as planned.

Rather than simply imitating the style of its predecessors, The Spine of Night has a distinctive approach to its rotoscoping with colorful, painterly backgrounds contrasting with thick, simple depictions of its human characters outlined in a kind of Magic Marker effect. It looks and sounds great, and even when you're not quite sure how all the various story threads are going to eventually connect, the barrage of psychedelic eye candy and action makes for an engaging experience. The film effectively suggests a canvas broader than what we're seeing in the film (which is where the shorts come in as well), and not surprisingly, it became something of a cult favorite right out of the gate and would have done great business as a midnight movie if newer titles had any chance of that in today's market.

After its limited theatrical run, The Spine of Night was released on UHD and Blu-ray by RLJ Entertainment as part of its ongoing slate of titles distributed by Shudder. That edition, looking and sounding quite nice (with one big caveat we'll get to in a second) featured a strong DTS-HD MA 5.1 English track with English, French, and Spanish subtitles, plus a fun making-of featurette (29m49s) and the Exordium (8m1s) and Mongrel (2m50) shorts, the latter shortening the title down which makes things confusing as we'll see below.

In 2026, the film was reissued by Shudder directly as part of its Vinegar Syndrome partner label slate, an interesting development that broke from the pattern beforehand of only non-RLJ titles being selected. (Amusingly, the film's international distribution is handled by another partner label, Yellow Veil.) Here the UHD and Blu-ray set comes with the same excellent 5.1 mix, but the video -- cited simply as a "new encoding" in the specs (with Dolby Vision for the UHD) -- has one huge plus: the cropped 1.78:1 presentation on the earlier release has been adjusted here to a wider 1.85:1, with a significant amount of extra info on the sides that adds a more expansive feel to several shots. Here you get optional English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, or Russian subtitle options, plus a new audio commentary with the directors who talk about how they connected, the years-long process of making the film, the tricks in bringing the rotoscope fantasy look to the present day, the live action filming process, near scrapes that almost scuttled the whole thing, and much more. The making-of and two shorts are ported over here (with Mongrel and the Wrath of the Ape King under its correct title), plus a deleted 2m43s scene in storyboard form, the trailer, the real 2011 initial Mongrel short (6m33s), a Ratbastards (2m3s) short picking up the ongoing story in a very different style from director (and Mongrel voice actor) Alexander Joseph King, and a six-image poster gallery. The release also comes with a booklet featuring a new essay by Joshua Dysart, a very knowledgeable champion of the film whose own comic appreciation and experience with the filmmakers comes into play here.

2026 UHD

2022 UHD

Reviewed on May15, 2026