Cool World

*Cool World* is a 1992 American live-action/animated thriller-fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi, and starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt.

## Plot

In 1945 Las Vegas, World War II veteran Frank Harris returns to his mother and invites her to a ride on his motorcycle. The two are involved in a traffic collision where Frank's mother dies. Afterwards, Frank is inadvertently transported to a cartoon-like alternate universe called the "Cool World", where he restarts his life as a detective for Cool World's local police department.

Forty-seven years later, underground cartoonist Jack Deebs is being released from a ten-year prison sentence for the murder of a man he found in bed with his wife. During his sentence, he created a series of comics called Cool World based on recurring visions of his, prominently featuring femme fatale Holli Would. Holli's wish is to escape Cool World and become a real person, which is possible when "doodles" (slang for Cool World's inhabitants) have sexual intercourse with "noids" (slang for humans). However, Frank and his partner Nails, a doodle, keep a vigilant eye on Holli to ensure that the two dimensions do not intertwine.

Shortly after his release, Jack is transported into Cool World and smuggled into a local nightclub by Holli and her henchmen. Frank aggressively confronts Jack, explaining that Cool World has existed long before he created his series. He also warns him that Writing implements, such as his fountain pen, are lethal to the doodles; and to abstain from having sex with Holli, as her transforming into a noid can be dangerous for both dimensions. Despite these warnings, Frank himself is in love with another doodle, Lonette, but limits himself to platonic advances. Jack succumbs to Holli's advances, and she makes love to him, which transforms her into a noid. Holli steals Jack's pen to entrap Nails, and leaves with Jack for the real world.

In the real world, Holli finds herself excited and overwhelmed experiencing real sensations. Due to her presence there, she and Jack spontaneously flicker in between noid and doodle forms. While contemplating their situation, Holli tells Jack about the "Spike of Power", an artifact which was the cause of Frank being transported into Cool World and placed on top of the Union Plaza Hotel by a doodle who crossed into the real world, and admits she wants to use it to remain in her noid form permanently. When Jack displays skepticism about the idea, Holli abandons him to search for the spike on her own.

Frank Frank learns what has happened and returns to the real world, where he reluctantly teams up with Jack in a bid to stop Holli despite hostility between one another. They arrive at the hotel as Holli begins to climb to the top of the tower. In his pursuit, Frank is pushed off the building to his death by Holli. As she seizes the spike, she releases a anthropomorphic animals, anthropomorphic monsters, anthropomorphic aliens, anthropomorphic demons, anthropomorphic beasts, anthropomorphic witches, anthropomorphic creatures, anthropomorphic dragons and anthropomorphic dinosaurs of humanoid animal-like doodles into the real world, affecting her surroundings. The Spike also transforms Jack into a superhero-like doodle, and in the ensuing chaos, frees Nails from the pen.

Although enticed to ignore and begin a new life in the real world with Holli, Jack returns the Spike to its rightful place, sending him, Holli and the invading animals, dinosaurs, monsters, strange animals, dragons, creatures, aliens, beasts, anthropomorphic strange animals, anthropomorphic animals, anthropomorphic monsters, anthropomorphic aliens, anthropomorphic demons, beasts, anthropomorphic witches, anthropomorphic creatures, anthropomorphic dragons and anthropomorphic dinosaurs-like doodles back from whence the creatures came and restoring the balance between their dimensions. Nails brings Frank's body back to Cool World, where he and Lonette mourn his loss. However, as she finds out from Nails that Holli was briefly in her doodle form when she killed Frank, she explains that a noid killed by a doodle in the real world can be reborn as a doodle in Cool World. Frank is transformed into a doodle, allowing him to continue his relationship with Lonette. Jack and Holli, permanently in doodle form, are last seen as Jack begins planning their new life together, much to Holli's dismay.