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(Archive) Honorable mention: Cool World (1992)

Originally posted: January 10th, 2022 Ralph Bakshi, the champion of underground animation. Throughout his career he has always fought to push animation in other directions than the kid oriented market of the American mainstream with films like Fritz the Cat. Unafraid to go raunchy, gritty irreverent and just plain dark, his work is characterized for focusing less on technical perfection and more on trying to do something new and daring. Which makes the case of this film such a tragic loss.

Originally pitched as a flat out erotic horror film involving the daughter of a human comic book artist and the living incarnation of one of his characters, executive meddling(from both the producer and lead actress Kim Basinger) befuddled almost everything this movie was aiming for. The desire to make it something more family friendly led to a movie that isn't fully adult oriented yet isn't really appropriate for children either. Murder, sexuality and vice are still rampant, just not as overtly explicit, and in a clumsy attempt to cash on the success of Roger Rabbit (something Bakshi wasn't interested in doing) they got a young Brad Pitt to interpret a cop dating a cartoon girl while trying to stop another one from bedding a human, since that's the one forbidden crime in the cartoon world.

If the plot sounds like a mess… it's because it is. So what's worthwhile here? That despite the butchering of Bakshi's vision, there's still something enthralling about this thwarted experiment. While a film like Roger Rabbit presents an inviting cartoon world, everything here is twisted, both literally and metaphorically. It feels less like Looney Tunes and more like a Tijuana Bible.

It's underground, grungy aesthetic combined with some shreds of potential the mangled plot still has, while unable to tell a striking tale on it's own, do fuel the imagination of what could've been and show the possibilities the premise of two different worlds clashing actually offer. Such a bloody shame.

#roskirambles #animated films #adult animation #ralph bakshi #kim basinger #brad pitt #gabriel byrne #Michael Grais #Mark victor #cool world

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986). The Freeling family have a new house, but their troubles with supernatural forces don't seem to be over.

Having re-watched the original only a few days ago, I was looking forward to seeing what angle they'd take the sequel and, well! It's certainly an interesting one! It's nowhere near as good, which isn't exactly uncommon with 80s sequels, and it's tendency to overshow the monstrous/the other side ruins a lot of the tension (those 80s VFX have not aged well), but still, it has its moments, and it's nice to spend a little more time with the family. 5/10.