Calling The Ribald Tales of Canterbury a “classic” requires a specific definition. It is not a classic of literature, nor of cinematic craft. It is a classic of midnight movie sleaze and pre-internet adult animation. For decades, it circulated on grainy VHS tapes, traded among collectors of weird ephemera.
The film’s charm lies in its complete lack of pretension. It knows it’s cheap. It knows it’s silly. And it revels in it. The Wife of Bath is drawn with a cartoonishly enormous bustle and a voice like a Brooklyn truck driver. Chaucer himself appears as a drunk narrator who keeps losing his pages. The animation occasionally forgets to color in a character’s arm, leaving it flesh-colored on a flesh-colored background—bloopers that fans now celebrate as features. The Ribald Tales Of Canterbury -1985- -Classic-
To understand why this film is a “Classic,” one must place it in the timeline of adult cinema. 1985 sits precisely between the “Golden Age” (1972-1984), which produced narrative-driven films like Behind the Green Door and The Opening of Misty Beethoven, and the “Dark Age” of the late 80s, when VHS and cheaper production led to the “looping” of plotless scenes. Calling The Ribald Tales of Canterbury a “classic”
The Ribald Tales of Canterbury is a final gasp of the Golden Age’s literary ambition. It assumes the audience has read Chaucer—or at least remembers the Cliff Notes. It trusts its audience to understand the joke of a “revel” gone wrong. This is erotica for the VHS renter who also watched PBS’s The Canterbury Tales (1972) and thought, “This needs more nudity.” For decades, it circulated on grainy VHS tapes,
(Adjust according to whether you’re covering the film or the book; substitute specific tales and scenes.)
Then (1985): Virtually ignored by mainstream critics. Variety dismissed it as “barely animated burlesque.” The LA Times mentioned it only in a roundup of “video nasties.” Conservative groups called it “depraved,” which only boosted its rental numbers.
Now (Retrospective): Reviled by Chaucer scholars. Adored by fans of Fritz the Cat, Rock & Rule, and The Groovenians. It holds a 68% “Fresh” rating on the cult film aggregator Rotten Weird (a fan site, not Rotten Tomatoes), with the consensus: “Crude, immature, and borderline unwatchable—but if you’re in the right state of mind, it’s a howlingly funny time capsule of 80s sleaze animation.”