When I was a teenager growing up in San Diego, R Crumb's comic books were available in every head shop. It was a lot hipper to have a stack of Crumb's work stashed away in your room than it was to have a Playboy or a Penthouse. Crumb's work was misogynistic, sexist, racist, and about as politically incorrect in every way that it could be yet it was the toast of the counterculture.

I was visiting friends in Las Vegas when Crumb was first released and saw it while I was there. It made such an impression that I put it on my list of DVDs to own and finally got around to getting my copy this year.

Robert Crumb is nothing if not bizarre. On watching the interviews with him, some of his family members, his friends and others around him I got the feeling that his perverted talents developed because of his dysfunctional upbringing rather than despite it. The raw talent was always there, it is just a twist of fate and mind that propelled him to fame as the foremost cartoonist of his generation.

Think what you will of his subject matter, his work is undoubtedly great. Crumb taps into a vein of humor that springs from the darkest corners of his imagination and brings it to life in such a way that we can laugh while simultaneously being repelled. Nothing is taboo to Crumb, in fact he seems to revel in the most degenerate imagery. And to think that he is the most normal of the family members who were interviewed for this documentary! Incredibly, both of his brothers proved weirder than he, the one who still lived at home reminds the viewer of Goober from the Andy Griffith Show only stranger. David Lynch could hardly imagine an odder lot for one of his odder movies. (Crumb's sisters declined to be interviewed for the film, probably out of embarassment).

Since I enjoy Crumb's work, I found it interesting to discover the things that made him the kind of guy he is. His awkward relations with women undoubtedly color the way he depicts them and its funny that while some of the women interviewed are appalled, others are more philosophical. The film didn't touch on his relations with blacks although his cartoons feature black characters in the crudest caricature imaginable. That I find very ironic, because one of Crumb's lifelong obsessions has been the promotion and preservation of early black music, particularly the blues.

R Crumb is pure mondo bizarro. If you are easily offended, then this documentary is definitely not for you. However, if you are a fan of one of the greatest and most controversial illustrators of the second half of the twentieth century and would like to find out what makes him tick, you may find this film to be quite a revelation.