Cool World (1992)

Cool World (1992)

Directed by: Ralph Bakshi

Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Kim Basinger, Brad Pitt

In stark contrast to the interesting artistic direction of the melding of live action and animation in Coonskin, Cool World takes it the completely wrong way and makes a movie that’s just ugly and terrible. Really, that’s the best way to describe this movie: that they did everything the wrong way.

A comic book artist gets sucked into the cartoon world of his creation by a showgirl named Holli Wood. Holli wants to have sex with him so she’ll turn into a real person, but Brad Pitt, another real person who crossed over into the cartoon world in the 50′s, is a cop hell bent to keep this from happening, because I guess it would destroy both worlds or something. They do it, Holli turns into Kim Basinger and pulls out some magic cork that makes everything a cartoon, and then the movie gets REALLY bad.

Seriously, everything about this movie is terrible. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Bakshi was rebelling against in the 70′s, this awful family-friendly Disnification of vaguely Bakshi-esque concepts. I guess he needed booze money and sold out, and you can tell that nobody actually cared about how the movie came out. Not only that, but this may be the worst performance for both Pitt and Basinger. Pitt just always looks confused and kinda tired and doesn’t really believe that he’s interacting with cartoons, and Basinger just devours the scenery once her character turns real. Never, ever watch Cool World. Don’t do it. DON’T!

Heavy Metal (1981)

Heavy Metal (1981)

Directed by: Gerald Potterton

Starring: Richard Romanus, John Candy, Joe Flaherty

This is a pretty stupid movie at points, but seeing it right after Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and comparing it to Heavy Metal 2000 which I watched like a week ago… it looks like a goddamn masterpiece. That’s a sign that I’m watching too many bad movies. FINALLY.

Nothing really sums up the plot of this movie better than the IMDb blurb:

A glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with a collection of stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.

It’s startlingly accurate.

Sure, the movie is mostly just an excuse to show a bunch of cartoon boobs with a nice helping of bloodshed and goofy alien drug use, but the animation is pretty good (it’s mostly rotoscoped, so it has that weird rotoscope feeling to it, but still). The music isn’t that bad, either, and it’s used in small chunks in the background, not randomly blaring over the dialog like in the sequel. It just goes to show that even a dumb movie can be seen as a nice break in the right circumstances.

King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1933)

Directed by: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Starring: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot

I love this movie. It’s pure pulpy goodness, like some sort of hard-to-drink glass of orange juice that is still somehow about a giant ape. See, this is why I’m not a metaphorologist.

A filmmaker learns about an undiscovered island where a monster of some sort lives, and he’s gonna bring a random woman he finds on the street to lure it out so he can film it! His plan goes exactly as planned, and the giant ape (“Kong”, as the natives call him) captures this woman and takes her back to a cliff, fighting off a billion dinosaurs along the way. One of the sailors on the crew of the boat that brought them to the island goes after the woman and rescues her, then as Kong follows them, the filmmaker knocks him out with gas bombs. Obviously he brings the ape back to New York to show him off, and just as obviously Kong breaks free and goes on a rampage.

King Kong is a goddamn classic film with special effects that were amazing 80 years ago. It looks goofy as crap now, of course, because that’s what happens to movies mostly about showcasing special effects. Still, it’s a fun jungle adventure film that’s still well-known today, which is interesting because the “jungle adventure” genre is all but gone nowadays, but it was HUGE back in the 30′s and 40′s.

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

Directed by: Michael Coldewey, Michel Lemire

Starring: Michael Ironside, Julie Strain, Billy Idol

Man, this movie is so bad. They actually managed to make it worse in EVERY respect than the original Heavy Metal, and that movie was pretty fucking bad itself. At least with the original you got the impression that someone TRIED.

An evil space pirate named Tyler is out to get an immortality serum by… wait, the space bad guy’s name is actually “Tyler”? That’s the least threatening name in the English language. The only thing I’d be scared of a Tyler doing is getting my order wrong at Chili’s. Anyway, there’s some stupid shit and a “chosen one” and lot of boobs and strippers with boobs and prostitute stripper robots with boobs. And yes, that is the plot.

Besides the stupid story (because I kinda expected that going into the film), I was most surprised by the quality of the animation, because it was fuckin’ terrible. It was like some sort of 3/4ths Disney house style, 1/4th anime thing combined with some CGI that I’m sure they were proud of in 2000. Not even the music was worthwhile, and I like that kind of music. Easily the highlight of the film is a Pantera song (which sounds like every other non-single Pantera song), and like fifteen seconds of a Monster Magnet song which was completely out of place. There was ICP on this soundtrack, that’s all I really need to say. That and it had a song by Sinnistar, the worst band I have ever seen live. In fact, when I’m making fun of bad metal music, I usually compare them to Sinnistar, but I say it all drawn out like “SINNN ISSS SSTARRRRR” because it’s a fucking stupid name on top of everything else.

TeleVoid (1997)

TeleVoid (1997)

Directed by: Michael Boydstun

Starring: Sir Mix-A-Lot

There’s at least one other voice in this “movie”, but I guess they didn’t credit him anywhere. It was probably the director, actually. Anyway, Sir Mix-A-Lot does one song in there and he raps about eating people’s souls through the TV.

This isn’t really a cohesive film. It’s just a bunch of obnoxious 90′s computer animation sequences that are flashing lights and giant monoshaded pyramids floating around. Remember when we thought that was cool? No? Yeah, neither do I. There is a claymation bit that kinda ties it all together with a skeleton watching TV, and the different music videos are different channels, but that’s about it. I guess Sir Mix-A-Lot’s thing about souls could be considered part of the plot, too.

The only purpose of this film was to show off what they could do with computer graphics at the time, and they obviously don’t age well at all. You could say that the technology at the time just didn’t allow for anything good, but Toy Story came out two years before this, and that movie still looks pretty decent. Of course, Pixar had way more money than this guy, and also they were the only people to make computer animation work for like, a decade, so it’s not really fair to compare the two. Pixar never had Sir Mix-A-Lot, though…