1972, Variety reported that Krantz had appealed the X rating, saying "Animals having sex isn't pornography." The MPAA refused to hear the appeal. The misconceptions about the film's content were eventually cleared up when it received praise from Rolling Stone and The New York Times, and the film was accepted into the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Bakshi later stated, "Now they do as much on The Simpsons as I got an X rating for Fritz the Cat." Before the film's release, American distributors attempted to cash in on the publicity garnered from the rating by rushing out dubbed versions of two other adult animated films from Japan, both of which featured an X rating in their advertising material: Senya ichiya monogatari and Kureopatora, re-titled A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra: Queen of Sex. However, neither film was actually submitted to the MPAA, and it is not likely that either feature would have received an X rating. (Unlike the NC-17 rating, the MPAA never obtained a trademark on the X rating, thus any film not submitted to the MPAA for a rating can declare itself "Rated X.") The film Down and Dirty Duck was promoted with an X rating, but likewise had not been submitted to the MPAA. The French-Belgian animated film Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle initially was released with an X rating in a subtitled version, but a dubbed version released in 1979 received an R rating. Reception Initial screenings Fritz the Cat opened on April 12, 1972, in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Although the film only had a limited release, it went on to become a worldwide hit. Against its $700,000 budget, it grossed $25 million in the United States and over $90 million worldwide, and was at that point the most successful independent animated feature of all time. The film earned $4.7 million in theater rentals in North America. In Michael Barrier's 1972 article on its production, Bakshi gives accounts of two screenings of the film. Of the reactions to the film by audiences at a preview screening in Los Angeles, Bakshi stated, "They forget it's animation. They treat it like a film. ... This is the real thing, to get people to take animation seriously." Bakshi was also present at a showing of the film at the Museum of Modern Art and remembers "Some guy asked me why I was against the revolution. The point