The Cool World is a 1964 film which tells the story of life in the African-American ghetto in the early 60s. It stars Hampton Clanton, Yolanda Rodríguez, Bostic Felton, Gary Bolling, Antonio Fargas, Carl Lee and Clarence Williams III.

The movie was adapted by Shirley Clarke and Carl Lee from the novel by Warren Miller, and directed by Clarke. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Cool World is a 1992 live-action/animated film. It was directed by Ralph Bakshi, and starred Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne, and Brad Pitt. It tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world he created, and is seduced by one of his characters, a comic strip vamp who wants to be real. Cool World marked Bakshi's return to feature films after nine years. The film was originally pitched as an animated horror film about an underground cartoonist who fathers an illegitimate half-human/half-cartoon daughter who hates herself for what she is and tries to kill him.

During production, Bakshi's original screenplay was scrapped by producer Frank Mancuso Jr. and heavily rewritten by screenwriting duo Michael Grais and Mark Victor, best known for writing Poltergeist and Poltergeist II: The Other Side, and an uncredited Larry Gross. The film received mostly negative reviews from film critics, and was not a commercial success. Bakshi himself publicly attacked the film years after its release. He did not make another animated feature film until 13 years later, when he began production on the independent film Last Days of Coney Island.

Jack Deebs is a cartoonist who is due to be released from jail. His comic book "Cool World" describes a zany world populated by "doodles" (cartoon characters) and "noids" (humanoids). What Jack did't realize is that Cool World really does exist, and a "doodle" scientist has just perfected a machine which links Cool World with our world. Intrigued at seeing his creating come to life, Jack is nonetheless wary as he knows that not everything in Cool World is exactly friendly. Written by Murray Chapman

Filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") directs this powerful, stark semi-documentary look at the horrors of Harlem ghetto slum life filled with drugs, violence, human misery, and a sense of despair due to the racial prejudices of American society. There is no patronizing of the black race in this cinematic cry for justice. A fifteen-year-old boy called Duke is ambitious to buy a "piece" (a gun) from an adult racketeer named Priest, to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem. It is a clearly patent allegory of an attempt by Duke to attain manhood and identity in the only way accessible to him - the antisocial one. Written by alfiehitchie