EDITOR’S NOTE: Cool World aired on USA Up All Night on February 14, 1998.

“History is written by winners, baby. So let’s make a little of our own tonight. If you’re thinkin’ my idea of fun is a drag, then you’ve never been to paradise. Do my kisses burn? Do they take your breath? You’ve got a lesson to learn, now. I’m the kiss of death.”

There was a time in the mid-90s when My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult was showing up in movies all over the place. Hey look — that’s them playing “After the Flesh” in The Crow! Oh wow, they’re on the soundtrack of Showgirls! That’s “Hit & Run Holiday” in The Flintstones! Heck, they’re even on the soundtrack of BASEketball! And they’re all over Cool World, too.

Between “The Devil Does Drugs”, “Holli’s Groove”, “Sex on Wheelz”, “Her Sassy Kiss” and “Sedusa,” TKK makes up a good chunk of this film, which is kinda like the band we’re talking about — a mix of the past, the imagined future, sex, violence, drugs and danger.

Cool World is the first movie Ralph Bakshi made after Fire and Ice. He’d been developing plenty of films, including an adaption of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and an animal version of Sherlock Holmes. He also turned down directing Something Wicked This Way Comes and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which he passed on to Ridley Scott who turned it into Blade Runner. After an attempt to film J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, he actually got the opportunity to speak to the mysterious author, who told him that the novel was unfilmable. This led to Bakshi’s brief retirement (he still ended up working with Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi on the Rolling Stone’s “Harlem Shuffle” video and TV’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures) before getting excited about Cool World.

In its original pitch, a cartoon and human give birth to a hybrid child who visits the real world to find and kill the father who abandoned him. Bakshi had longed to create a film that looked like a living, breathing painting that people could physically walk through. Designer Barry Jackson helped bring these worlds to life, which were created as gigantic paintings and the animation was to look like a mix of Fleischer Studios and Terrytoons.

Yet even as the expensive sets were being built, Paramount producer Frank Mancuso Jr. secretly had a new screenplay written and demanded that Bakshi direct the film, under threat of lawsuit (Bakshi punching him in the face may have had something to do with that). Even casting was changed, with Holli Would’s role switching from Drew Barrymore to Kim Basinger.

It got to the point that even Basinger was rewriting the script, because she wanted to show it to sick kids in hospitals. As for Bakshi, he just told his animators to do whatever they thought was funny.

So what ended up on screen?

Las Vegas, 1945. World War II vet Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) takes his mother on a motorcycle ride that ends in tragedy when a drunk driver hits them. He retreats to an animated alternate dimension called “Cool World” to deal with the loss.

Cut to 1992. Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) might have killed his wife after catching her in bed with her lover, but he’s also created a comic book called Cool World. In truth, he’s really just tapping into the other world. And inside that world, Holli Would (Kim Basinger) has kept trying to visit the real world but is continually denied by Frank, who is now a detective who keeps people from crossing over between dimensions.

Once he gets out of jail, Jack finds his way back to Cool World and meets up with Holli and Frank. Frank warns him that this world has existed way before he was even alive and that for years, noids from the human world have tried to have sex with doodles, or Cool World inhabitants. It’s never really stated, but something horrible will happen if this occurs.

Holli, of course, seduces Jack and becomes a human. This is in direct contrast to Frank, who has a rough relationship with a doodle named Lonette. His partner, Nails, doesn’t tell him about Holli’s crime so that Frank can try and patch up his latest fight with his girl. Unfortunately, Holli murders him and crosses over to our world.

Holli goes wild in the real world, performing onstage with Frank Sinatra Jr. and consuming every vice she can get her hands on. Yet she and Jack are now stuck between worlds unless they find the Spike of Power, a magic object that a doodle in the real world has left behind. She unleashes Cool World on our world, but Jack succeeds in stopping her. Holli kills Frank, but because she was a doodle in our world — who decides on these laws? — he can now be reborn as a doodle in Cool World, to the delight of his girlfriend. Plus, Holli and Jack end up as a toon couple.

Cool World feels like it wants to be an adult Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which was how it was sold. They don’t explain much, but I feel like Cool World is where the imagination of our world ends up living (as symbolized by the sketches that show up out of nowhere). It feels like there is plenty of potential, but knowing what we know today, studio interference took the heart and soul out of the film.

Interestingly, Paramount Pictures created a publicity uproar by placing a huge cut-out of Holli Would on the D of the Hollywood sign. All they had to do was make a donation of $27,000 to the sign’s maintenance fund, another $27,000 to the Rebuild L.A. fund and the salary for two park rangers to guard the sign. Local residents were enraged, however, and demanded that the ad be taken down.

Back to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. Even if you don’t enjoy the film, you’ll probably love the soundtrack. It also boasts songs by David Bowie, Thompson Twins, Electronic, The Future Sound of London, Ministry, The Cult, Moby, Brian Eno and others. It’s totally a time capsule of 1992 and worth listening to.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

The ancient future test is one to determine if the movie that you are watching fits into that genre, a time when books like Neuromancer were being strip-mined for ideas to make high concepts films that were five minutes into the future in the 1990s but are now hopelessly mired in the past.

Let’s give Nemesis this test.

Does it have the title of a Philip K. Dick book but not really have much to do with it?

Nope, but you would not be blamed if you believed that director Albert Pyun and writer Rebecca Charles — who is of course Pyun using a different name* — weren’t watching tears in the rain and robotic mutton sleeping.

Is there a lot of rain?

Of course there is.

Does the male hero wear dress clothes and/or a trenchcoat?

More than that, everyone in this movie wears sunglasses. In the day. At night. Sunglasses on top of sunglasses.

Do Keanu Reeves, Ben Affleck, Dolph Lundgren or Udo Keir appear in it?

Amazingly, no.

Does the internet do something it can’t do yet, yet look dated AF?

Oh man. You can download your entire soul onto the video game grid, something Jared (Marjorie Monaghan) does before — spoiler warning — sacrificing herself.

Are Stabbing Westward, KMFDM, Ministry or God Lives Underwater on the soundtrack?

The budget couldn’t afford any of those bands. It’s also a few years too early.

Is it a crappy version of Blade Runner?

Can a movie be Blade Runner, The Terminator, an anime and The Matrix seven years before that movie got made?

Are there numerous Asian-influenced scenes?

The U.S. and Japan have pretty much become one big country.

Do people use future terms that make no sense?

You know it, akachan.

Are there a lot of whirring sound effects?

All the whirring.

Do people stare at the camera as it moves through a neon-lit strip club?

I mean, they have sunglasses on, but I think the answer is yes.

Are there rock stars in it?

Shockingly, no.

Is there a feral child?

You would think so, but somehow, nope. There’s a dog that Alex saves in the beginning and loses, but that happens so fast that there is really no emotional impact.

I’ll still say that this is an ancient future cyberpunk movie.

After Dangerously Close and Down Twisted, this was to be Albert Pyun’s last film in his three-movie contract with Cannon. Golan and Globus wanted Pyun to make a more mainstream action movie and he pitched a remake of Nicolas Ray’s Johnny Guitar with John Travolta — who Cannon thought didn’t have enough power at the box office — and Alex Rain, a serial killer being chased by the cops movie. Pyun started on the Alex Rain script, which was to star Kelly Lynch as an FBI agent hunting a serial killer amongst the Neo-Nazi community 25 years in the future. Or maybe 400 years and on Mars. Before that could happen, Cannon had him finish Journey to the Center of the Earth and do Cyborg.

In 1991, Pyun made Arcade for Full Moon and went back to Alex Rain. His new idea was to have the lead be a violent street urchin working undercover for a futuristic L.A.P.D. He planned on Megan Ward, who had been in Arcade, to star. He started looking for the right studio to make it with and decided on Imperial and the Shah Brothers. They told him that if he changed Alex from a 13-year-old girl to a 30-year-old male and cast French kickboxer Olivier Gruner, he could do whatever he wanted.

After being bullied as a kid, Gruner started to study Shotokan karate, boxing, kickboxing and full contact kickboxing. After school, he joined the French Navy, volunteering for their Commandos Marine unit and fought pirates. He left the military and won his first kickboxing title — the W.A.K.O. World Championship — before plastering the 1987 Cannes Film Festival with his photo. Obviously, he’s been a success — he’s been in more than forty films — as well as having a fashion line, being a volunteer firefighter and even continuing to work as a bodyguard for clients like Celine Dion.

He starts the film as just 86% human named Alex Rain. He’s an assassin/bounty hunter for the LAPD — not a stretch, right? — who is attacked on a routine case by Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti, Double Exposure) and The Red Army Hammerheads. After months of cybernetic reconstruction — who can even guess his percentage now? — he finds Rosaria in Baja and gets his revenge. That’s when her handlers show up to get the pieces, Sam (Marjean Holden, who has been in everything from Dr. Caligari and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot to playing Sheeva in  Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) and Alex’s ex, Jared (the previously mentioned Marjorie Monaghan).

Alex decides that he’s done with the LAPD, but he’s brought back in by Commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson!) for one last job. He has to stop Jared before she sells vital security intel about the Japan/U.S. summit to the Hammerheads. To add another influence to the film, they Snake Pliskin his heart by inserting a bomb that will blow him up in three days unless he finds Jared before she meets with Hammerhead leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who is literally the bad guy’s bad guy; speaking of Phillip K. Dick he was in the TV series of the book The Man In the High Castle).

You may not be shocked to learn that the cops are the bad guys and the Hammerheads have humanity’s best interests at heart. There are several sinister androids stalking the highest levels of human society, copying the minds of powerful leaders into their perfect synthetic bodies. One of them you’ve already met, as Farnsworth has been taken over and has already sent another cyborg named Julian (Deborah Shelton, Body Double) to destroy the Hammerheads. She removes the tracking device in his eyeball, injects him with a scrambler that allows her to remove the bomb in his heart and sacrifices herself to save him when the cops bust in. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, she’s also naked — as she is for most of the film — and shares some love scenes with Thomas Jane. She volunteered to be nude for these scenes and Jane decided to follow her lead.

Alex saves the life of Max Impact (Merle Kennedy), the sister of the cyborg he killed earlier, Rosaria, and wins her over to his side. Despite all of the Hammerheads getting killed — the movie jumps from city to jungle in some of the action — Alex and Max used Jared’s digital spirit to destroy most of the replicating machines and then kill Farnsworth and Germaine (Nicholas Guest), who tells him that they can’t stop all of their creations.

There are several endings. The  Extended Version has Alex and Max walk into a still-alive Farnsworth cyborg while Sam’s voice asks, “Should we take them out now?” Farnsworth answers, “Why not?” Farnsworth is still alive in this cut as they never fight him in the previous scenes. There’s also an ending — which is the one I watched on Tubi — where this conversation happens but you never see Thomerson’s robotic bad boss.

This movie has so many people in it that I forgot its cast includes Thom Matthews (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), Yuji Okumoto (the best bad guy ever, Chozen Toguchi from The Karate Kid Part 2, as well as one of the Howard Cossell-loving brothers, Yee Sook Ree, in Better Off Dead) Brion James (who was in everything; he grew up in his parent’s movie theater and went on to be in films like The Horror Show (AKA House 3), Brainsmasher… A Love Story, Striking Distance and perhaps most essential to this movie, Blade Runner), former surfer Vincent Klyn (Cyborg and so many other Pyun movies), one-time Bad News Bear and someday Freddy Jackie Earle Haley and Arnold’s buddy Sven-Ole Thorsen, who played La Fours in Mallrats, Thorgrim in Conan the Barbarian, The Demon in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and henchmen and hired thugs in more movies than I can even think of.

Pyun made a lot of movies. He had a thing called “Rock and Roll Filmmaking” where he’d spend the first few days just getting pick ups he’d never use. This caused producers to get upset. But you know, do we even know that producer’s name today? Nope. But we can watch this Pyun film and be amazed at what he did on such a small budget and that this was the time that fate decreed that it would all work out right, that all the influences would come together and that this was his most perfect film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Thanks to the always amazing Bulletproof Action for confirming this.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Nemesis here.

Directed by Kuo-Chu Huang and written by Chi-Hua Liu, this stars Michiko Nishiwaki (In the Line of Duty 3) as Sha Sha Lee, a fashion photographer who keeps having visions of Chit Chit (Gordon Liu), a former kickboxer with brain damage who now stalks the streets of Thailand taking photos of women before he kills them.

Yet Sha Sha isn’t some frightening girl who needs saved. In one scene, she and her boss Queen (Cynthia Lam) fight a gang at a food stall while continuing their conversation. The problem is that Chit Chit soon figures out that she’s inside his mind and decides to kill her before she can figure out who he is and tell the police.

I’m used to see Nishiwaki as a villain and Liu as a monk hero, so this is definitely a big change. I also find it amusing that so many reviews call this a giallo — which it totally is! — but don’t remark how much it takes from The Eyes of Laura Mars. Instead of fashion and eroticism, you get fight scenes. And Queen being in love with Sha Sha, but can you blame her?

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on September 9, 2021.

Brian DePalma didn’t want to go back to the thriller and felt like it was a step backward. Kind of like Argento going back to make Deep Red. I say this because for two guys who have been accused of being overly inspired by Hitchcock, this one feels like DePalma had a debt to pay to someone in Italy — particularly the one scene that reveals the killer that feels lifted from the end of Tenebre.

But hey — didn’t Argento get Jessica Harper for Suspiria after seeing Phantom of the Paradise?

Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow) may regard his daughter Amy as a science experiment and that rightfully upsets his wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich), but perhaps she’d be more upset if she knew that inside her husband’s brain lived a whole bunch of other folks, like a young kid named Josh, a protective nanny named Margo and the violent Cain. And oh yeah — Cain is making Carter continue the experiments on children that ruined his father’s career.

His wife is also sleeping with someone else, a man named Jack (Stephen Bauer) and she’s planning on leaving, but Carter starts implicating Jack in his crimes and then tries to drown his wife. He’s also abducted his own child and claims that she is with his father, who has been dead for years.

That’s when we meet the woman who helped Carter’s father with his book, Raising Cain. She had no idea that the man was psychologically abusing his son so that he could study the personalities that emerged from the systematic manipulation that he put him through. And oh yeah — the man has faked his death and established a new identity in Norway where his son sends children to create more multiple personality disorders.

Anyways, this movie is pure silliness in all the best of ways, with Lithgow having an absolute blast, DePalma outright referencing scenes from more than one Hitchcock — Psycho is the easiest to spot — and an ending that isn’t an ending. I’m here for all of it.

Also known as Foxy Lady and Spiando Marina (Spying Marina), this is a movie about Mark (Steve Bond, Picasso Trigger), a hitman who was once a cop until the death of his wife and son. The only thing that keeps him connected to humanity is his obsession with the sex worker who lives next door, Marina (Debora Caprioglio, who was the star of Tinto Brass’ Paprika).

Then she loses a snake in his apartment and ends up in his bed playing with it. I guess that’s the kind of meet cute you get in a giallo or an erotic thriller, which this is closer to. And Mark, well, he was a bad cop on the take to organized crime and that’s why his wife and child had to die.

Of course, these two escaping their lives is going to be impossible. All they’ll ever get are the stolen moments, quick bursts of physical passion and then violence is going to make its way in-between their story.

That said, I wish I could report that this was the same kind of film that Martino effortlessly created back in the 1972. You can blame Steve Bond for being a hangdog void from which no charisma can be unleashed. Perhaps it’s the music by Luigi Ceccarelli, which is hilariously from some other movie — or it seems that way — and not what we’re currently watching. Or you could blame the script by Martino and Piero Regnoli (who also wrote Voices from Beyond and Demonia for Fulci as well as Malombra, Sword of the Barbarians, Burial Ground and Patrick Still Lives. Or you can perhaps find fault in Martino’s skills. Maybe he felt the same way, as he used the name George Raminto for this.

That said, you can’t blame Debora Caprioglio. Not to be one of those dudes that leeringly wants to talk to you more about scream queens or Hammer girls, but if you’re a lover of women — or can appreciate the female form — she just might convince you that there is a Grand Designer to all of our world. Also: she dated Klaus Kinski when he was in his sixties and she was 18. Also also: In this movie it feels like she’s at war with clothes and hates them to the point that she should never be in them.

This was shot by Giancarlo Ferrando, who has endured filming some of the roughest entries in filmdom, including Troll 2, Devil Fish, A Bear Named Arthur (the only movie Martino said that he ever lost money on) and Detective School Dropouts. But you know me. I kind of love all of those movies.

The daughter of a lawyer, Ripa di Meana opened a fashion boutique in Piazza di Spagna, Rome soon after she finished college. The shop was a place where influential women of high society shopped as a result, Ripa di Meana became involved with the leading figures of the day, whether they be political, artistic, diplomatic or in the media. Famous for her political beliefs about animal cruelty and environmentalism, she was a frequent guest on TV panel shows and even acted in one movie, the sixth chapter in the Nico Giraldi film series that starred Tomas Milan, Sergio Corbucci’s 1979 film Assassinio sul Tevere. She never did again, as she hated being commanded, or so she said.

Beyond being a gossip columnist, she also wrote 14 books including four autobiographical books, I miei primi quarant’anni (My First Forty Years), La più bella del reame (The Most Beautiful in the Realm), Invecchierò Ma Con Calma (I Will Grow Old But Calmly) and Colazione al Grand Hotel (Breakfast at the Grand Hotel). The first two of those books were made into movies starring Carol Alt. The first was written and directed by Carlo Vanzina, who also made Nothing Underneath and the second was directed and written by Cesare Ferrario, who made The Monster of Florence.

When she directed and wrote this movie, it was pretty controversial, as she received public funds from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, allegedly through personal friendships. That’s one of the reasons why it tops Italian lists of the worst movies ever. Wired Italy listed it along with Robot Monster, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Frankenstein Island, Disaster Movie, Cross of the 7 Jewels, Box Office 3D, Alex l’ariete, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Troll 2.

Writer Gabriel Nigla said, “Ripa Di Meana ‘s debut (and only film) as a director is a rambling product, the result of those who not only don’t understand how narration works, but have also seen few films in their own lives. History of women, violence and feminism makes all possible mistakes. A sampling of bad examples.”

Eva Grimaldi (Obsession: A Taste for Fear) is a recently divorced woman named Alma who falls for a male exotic dancer named Brian (Brando Giorgi) whom her friends have hired for her twenty-fifth birthday. She also has to deal with her ex-mother-in-law Milli (Anita Ekberg) who thinks that she has ruined her son’s life and now she wants revenge. Alma and Brian decide to jump on his motorcycle and get out of town,  but they’re soon followed by his jealous ex-lover Marilyn (Florence Guérin, Profumo, Too Beautiful to Die).   They try to hide out with Brian’s sister  Esmerelda (Apollonia Kotero) but now so many people are following them.  that it starts to feel like Benny Hill does giallo because Brian is soon killed and the hunt is on for a new man for Alma.

What blows my mind is that the cast for this movie is filled with talent. Were they worried that Ripa di Meana had some dirt on them? Why is Burt Young in this?  How about Debbie Lee Carrington, Thumbelina from Total Recall? Most importantly, at least to my state of mind, is how did Kid Creole end up in so many movies, particularly two incredibly strange Italian films of this era? He was also in Obsession: A Taste for Fear around this same time. Stranger still, Kid Creole did a song “Not Yet” with Grimaldi five years after this movie.

This movie makes no sense and you should only watch it if you’re obsessed with Italian genre films and movies that somehow unite the weirdest casts.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Five movies into the Fabrizio De Angelis-directed, Olga Peharo-written saga that is Karate Warrior and I really don’t want it to stop.

Larry Jones (Ron Williams) may have triumphed at the end of the last movie, but the odds are stacked up yet again. His enemy Joe Carson (Christopher Alan) has a double-fanged assault. He’s kidnapped Larry’s girl Betty (Dorian D. Field) and put the blame on his friend Leo (Scotty Daffron), who has joined the Extra Large Club of America with his new girlfriend Bobbi Lou. As if that’s not enough, the second part of his plan is paying off another martial artist, the monstrous Alabama Bull, who is played by Marty Wright, who one day would be known as the WWE superstar The Boogeyman (he’s also a football player in two well-remembered films, Butler in The Replacements and Beastman in Any Given Sunday).

As the movies in this series go on, there’s less and less karate. This one is no different, as much of it is spent watching Leo try and lose weight while making fun of the obese, Betty bound in a trailer and there’s our hero, training in a strip mall like he’s an indy pro wrestler.

Luckily, he gets thirty seconds of training from his teacher, Mr. Masura (Richard Goon) before he goes into final battle.

You know, there’s a TV series of Karate Warrior and they share cast and crew. Part of me thinking that they just filmed everything all at once and the TV series is just a longer version of the movies, like how there’s a six-hour cut of Yor Hunter from the Future that blows away the actual film. No, really: check out Yor’s World part one, two, three and four.

You have no idea what I paid for that TV episode. You have even less idea what I would pay for the Karate Warrior series.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Man, Larry Jones (Ron Williams) can’t catch a break.

After coming out the winner at the end of the last Karate Warrior and winning the heart of rich girl Betty Nolan (Dorian D. Field), this takes place just about the very next day. His enemy Joe Carson (Christopher Alan) has paid off another martial arts fighter, a Korean killing machine named Bruce Wang (Edward Wan) to get revenge. But it’s not going to be just physical revenge. Oh no, Bruce is aptly last named, as he’s going to seduce Larry’s little sister Julie (Katy Johnson) and steal her away from her boyfriend — and Joe’s friend — Craig. Or Greg. Look, even the dub isn’t sure.

If that isn’t enough, Larry’s father Lt. Alfred Jones (David Warbeck) is back from the war and Larry wants nothing to do with him. Only the Karate Warrior franchise could have Warbeck play not just one, but two of the lead character’s estranged fathers who I swear are not the same person. But what if they were?

Well, beyond all that, Betty’s dad (William Rothmell) is now all into Larry’s mom (Ginny Gravlin), which after the last movie was about him subsidizing her life if Larry never spoke to his wife again, the idea of cucking the son and the father seemed like a dastardly plan. And somehow, Leo (Scotty Daffron) remains the comedy relief that you wish to see get decimated again like the last movie, as all he cares about is getting rich.

Also: Miyagi figure — the second in the series, so we have two absent dads and two new father figures —  Masura comes into this when they use his restaurant to poison Larry just before the big fight. There are also more motorcycle races in this than fistfights, which seems strange when your movie is called Karate Warrior 3. What do they poison him with? The very same diet pills that Leo has been trying to sell. Poor Larry. Poor Leo. Multi-channel marketing has hit so close to home for the Karate Warrior family. Or crew. Or krew.

Also also: David Warbeck plays the not-so-great dad in Karate Rock, another Karate Kid cash-in by the very same director, the always astounding Larry Ludman, who come on, we all know it’s Fabrizio De Angelis.

And is that Ron Jeremy giving the trophy to the winner of the fight? I saw that on Monster Hunter and yes, I agree, it sure looks like the Hedgehog.

This piece of Italian magic was written by Olga Pehar, who was married to Umberto Lenzi, and also wrote Hitcher In the Dark, Black Demons and the incredibly titled Navigators of the Space.

You can watch this on YouTube.