The very first frame of this film is a shot of a quarter being dropped into a pinball machine… apparently Bakshi often played pinball, and seems to use it as a metaphor for life in a big city. Indeed the various characters bounce around the streets and off each other crazily.
A lot of the live action shots of pinball playing have been processed somehow to alter the colors (my experimental filmmaker friends could not identify the exact technique used). Here are a couple of example stills of that with a Time Tunnel (Bally, 1972) machine (but it could also be Space Time, which is the same game but with different number of players… the backglass is never shown, so there is no way to tell)...
There is also a composite shot involving color-altered ladies panning across the score reel of a Travel Time (Williams, 1973)...
The film mixes animation and live action. Michael, the main character of the film appears in both animated and live action incarnations. In part of his off-camera narration, he repeats “Tilt City, Pinball Alley. Blinkin’ lights, shot to Hell, fuck it all!” a couple of times. He can be seen in an arcade playing a pretty beat up Foto Finish (Gottlieb, 1961)...
In a climactic scene, Michael’s frustrations mount to the point where he tilts the poor machine in a major way...
TILT.
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