Incredible World

Incredible World is an 1992 American live-action/animated comedy film directed by Phil Harnage, and starring ???, Kate Winslet and ???. It tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world he thinks he created, but actually exists with or without him. In this world, he is seduced by one of the characters, a comic strip vamp who wants to be real.

Incredible World marked Harnage's return to feature films after nine years. The film was originally pitched as a live-action/animated horror film by Michael Grais. The screenplay was written by Michael Grais, Mark Victor from adult horror to more of an adolescent comedy-fantasy as per orders from the studio, Columbia Pictures.

Upon its release, Incredible World received negative reviews due to its story, acting, animation, and the effects combining that animation with the live-action. The soundtrack, however, received praise. It was also a commercial failure, grossing $14 million against a budget of $28 million. Since that time it has found an avid audience of Millenium fans and the screenplay praised for it’s originality. Grais alleged that Harnage had continued to tell untruths about his contribution to the screenplay. Grais had also won multiple arbitration against Harnage regarding the credit of the writing of the film.

Plot
In 1945, in Las Vegas, World War II veteran Stanley Griffin returns to his mother and invites her to a ride on his motorcycle. The two are involved in a traffic collision where Stanley’s mother dies. Afterwards, Stanley is transported to an alternate universe called the "Incredible World". In 1992, cartoonist Jimmy Howard is serving a 22-year prison sentence for the murder of a man he had found in bed with his wife. During his sentence, he has visions of Animation World and the femme fatale Leslie White, who seems to beckon him. Jimmy spends his sentence creating a series of comics based on his visions. Meanwhile, Frank has become a detective in Animation World and keeps his eye on Holli to ensure that the two dimensions do not intertwine. Shortly after his release from prison, Jimmy is transported into Animation World and smuggled into a local nightclub by Holli and her henchmen, the Goons.

Stanley aggressively confronts Jimmy, explaining to him that Incredible World has existed long before Jimmy created the comic series. He also informs Jimmy that his fountain pen is lethal and warns him that sexual intercourse between "noids" (slang for humans) and "doodles" (slang for Animation World's inhabitants) is forbidden, as this can break the fabric between both dimensions. Despite this, Stanley himself is in love with the doodle Lucy, but limits himself to platonic advances. Leslie later seduces Jimmy and they have sex, which transforms Leslie into a noid. Holli then secretly steals Jimmy's pen, which she uses to entrap Stanley's partner Saki the Snail when he attempts to stop her. Jimmy and Leslie leave for Earth, where Leslie finds herself experiencing real sensations. Due to the damaged interdimensional fabric, Jimmy and Leslie spontaneously flicker in between their doodle and noid forms. While contemplating their situation, Holli tells Jack about the "Spike of Power", an artifact which was the cause of David being transported into Fun 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 Jack to search for the spike on her own.

Stanley learns what has happened and returns to the real world, where he teams up with Jimmy in a bid to stop Leslie. They arrive at the hotel and climb to the roof, where Holli kills Frank by pushing him off the building and seizes the Spike. A multitude of monstrous doodles begin pouring into the real world and transform many noids in the city into doodles. The Spike also transforms Jimmy into a superhero-like doodle, who returns the Spike to its rightful place, sending him, Holli and the invading doodles back to Incredible World and restoring the balance between the two dimensions. Nails, having been freed from the pen in the ensuing chaos, brings Stanley's body back to Incredible World. As Lucy mourns him, she finds out from Nails that Leslie was briefly in her doodle form when she killed Stanley and explains that when a noid is killed by a doodle, the noid is reborn in Incredible World as a doodle. Sure enough, Stanley is then revived as a doodle, allowing him to continue his relationship with Lucy. Meanwhile, Jimmy (who is still in his doodle form) and Leslie are last seen as Jimmy begins planning their new life together, much to Leslie’s dismay.

Cast

 * ??? as Jimmy Howard, the cartoonist seemingly responsible for the creation of Animation World.
 * ??? as Detective Stanley Griffin, a detective for the Fun World Police Department who is intent on catching Leslie. Lee Miller also provides Stanley's voice in his doodle form.
 * ??? as Stephanie Miller
 * ??? as Himself
 * ??? as Brenda Miller
 * Janni Brenn-Lowen as Agatha Rose Griffin
 * ??? (archival footage)

Voices

 * Kate Winslet as Leslie White, a femme fatale doodle who wishes to be real in the real world. Basinger also portrays her in live action.
 * Winslet as portrays Leslie in her noid form.
 * Paul Rugg as Saki, a snail-like doodle and Stanley's partner.
 * John Kassir as Oggy, a diminutive primate-like doodle and one of Leslie's "Goons".
 * Kassir also voices the sentient door of Leslie's apartment building (credited as "Leslie's Door") and one of the doodle interrogators Stanley meets when he first enters Incredible World (credited as "Interrogator No. 1")
 * Garry Chalk as Purple Cash, a doodle criminal who works as an informant for Increidble World's police department.
 * Michael Bell as Doctor Pilkey, a kind, wise and eccentric doodle scientist who inadvertently transported Stanley to Incredible World through his usage of the Spike of Power.
 * Bell as also voices Mash, a massive bestial doodle and one of Leslie's "Goons"; Jack in his doddle form (credited as "Super Jimmy"); a drunk patron at the Slash Club (credited as "Drunk Bar Patron"); and one of the doodle interrogators Frank meets when he first enters Incredible World (credited as "Interrogator No. 2")
 * Lara Jill Miller as Lucy, Stanley's doodle love interest.
 * Jill Miller also voices Bow, a drag-wearing doodle and one of Leslie's "Goons".
 * Bob Bergen as Coco, a raunchy doodle and one of Leslie's "Goons".
 * Jack Angel as Smug, a doodle who works as a bouncer at the Slash Club and literally bounces.
 * Jenine Jennings as Joker Bear, a bear-like doddle who plays poker with the Goons.

Production
In 2000, Sam Raimi decided that it was time to make another animated film. According to Bakshi, "I made 1,500 bucks in 10 years of painting; I thought it would be nice to pick up a piece of change. So I called my lawyer, who was still speaking to me because no one ever leaves Hollywood, and asked him where I should go to sell a movie." Bakshi pitched Cool World to Paramount Pictures (where Bakshi had worked as the final head of the studio's animation division) as an animated horror film. The concept of the film involved a cartoon and live-action human having sex and conceiving a hybrid child who visits the real world to murder the father who abandoned her.[3] Bakshi states that Paramount Pictures "bought the idea in ten seconds".[4]

As the sets were being built in Las Vegas, producer Frank Mancuso Jr., son of Paramount president Frank Mancuso, had the screenplay rewritten in secret, and gave Bakshi a new screenplay by screenwriters Michael Grais and Mark Victor that "was barely the same".[3] Larry Gross also contributed to the script, but his work was uncredited. In interviews at the time of the film's release, Mancuso Jr., who was best known for the Friday the 13th franchise, stated a desire to move away from horror films, and wanted to produce a film "about what happens when someone creates a world, becomes defined by it, and then can't escape [...] a film about being trapped by your own creation."[2] Bakshi remembers that he got into a fight with Mancuso Jr. and "punched [him] in the mouth."[5] Paramount threatened Bakshi with a lawsuit if he refused to complete the film. "I thought if I did the animation well, it would be worth it, but you know what? It wasn't worth it."[6] Bakshi also stated that he "had a lot of animators there that I'd brought in and I thought that maybe I could just have fun animating this stuff, which I did."[5] Bakshi had developed the film as a mix of comedy and horror that he described as "a hard R-rated story" but Paramount wanted a PG-13 film, one of the reasons for the doomed and angry relationship between filmmaker and studio.[7]

Bakshi had originally intended to cast Drew Barrymore and Brad Pitt in the film's leading roles. Brad Pitt was cast as Frank Harris instead, with Gabriel Byrne as Deebs and Kim Basinger as Holli.[5] The film's voice cast includes Maurice LaMarche, Charlie Adler and Candi Milo. According to Bakshi, Basinger had attempted to rewrite the film halfway into its production because she "thought it would be great [...] if she would be able to show this picture in hospitals to sick children [...] I said, 'Kim, I think that's wonderful, but you've got the wrong guy to do that with.' [...] [Mancuso] was sitting there with Kim [...] agreeing with her."[4]

The visual design of the live-action footage was intended to look like "a living, walk-through painting", a visual concept Bakshi had long wanted to achieve. The film's sets were based upon enlargements of designer Barry Jackson's paintings. The animation was strongly influenced by Fleischer Studios (whose cartoons were released by Paramount) and Terrytoons (where Bakshi once worked, and whose Mighty Mouse character was also adapted into a series by Bakshi).[3] The artwork by the character Jack Deebs was drawn by underground comix artist Spain Rodriguez.[8] The film's animators were never given a screenplay, and were instead told by Bakshi to "Do a scene that's funny, whatever you want to do!"[3]

A soundtrack album, Songs from the Cool World, featuring recordings by My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Moby, Ministry, The Future Sound of London, and others, was released in 1992 by Warner Bros. Records.[9] It included the track "Real Cool World" by David Bowie, his first original solo material in roughly three years; the song was written exclusively for the film. The soundtrack received stronger reviews from critics than the film itself, including a four-star rating from Allmusic.[10] Mark Isham's original score for Cool World, featuring a mixture of jazz, orchestral pieces, and electronic remixes, and performed by the Munich Symphony Orchestra, was released on compact disc by Varèse Sarabande, and in complete form in 2015 by Quartet. It also received positive reviews, as did the work of John Dickson.[11][12]

Promotion and merchandising
As part of the film's promotion, the Hollywood Sign was altered to include a 75-foot-tall cutout of Holli Would. The alteration angered local residents.[13][14] In a letter to the city's Recreation and Park Board, commission officials wrote that they were "appalled" by the board's approval of the alterations and that "the action your board has taken is offensive to Los Angeles women and is not within your role as custodian and guardian of the Hollywood sign. The fact that Paramount Pictures donated a mere $27,000 to Rebuild L.A. should not be a passport to exploit women in Los Angeles."[15] Protestors picketed the unveiling of the altered sign.[15] The promotional campaign was focused on the sex appeal of Holli. It was considered by some experts as misaimed, with Paramount's marketing president Barry London saying "Cool World unfortunately did not seem to satisfy the younger audience it was aimed at,"[16] and designer Milton Knight recalling that "Audiences actually wanted a wilder, raunchier Cool World. The premiere audience I saw it with certainly did."[3]

Several different licensed video games based on the film were created by Ocean Software. The first game was developed by Twilight and released in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and DOS. Two different games were released in 1993 for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES, alongside a Game Boy version of the former.[17] A four-issue comic book prequel to the film was published as a miniseries by DC Comics.[18] It featured a script by Michael Eury and art work by Stephen DeStefano, Chuck Fiala and Bill Wray.