Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal, the movie, is great encapsulation of Heavy Metal, the magazine. Heavy Metal was and is an anthology of the best of American and European comic writers and artists. It has carried the work of such masters as Moebius, Druillet, Liberatore, Bernie Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Arthur Sydam, Enki Bilal, Richard Corben and Simon Bisley. The movie adapts some of the great stories from the glory days of the magazine.

The movie is much like the magazine: a mixed bag of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, comedy, and erotica. Some of it is good, some not. My personal favorites are Harry Canyon, Den, Captain Sternn, B-17, and Tarna. Harry Canyon is a sci-fi tale of thugs, femme fatales, and cynics ala Dashell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, transported to the future. It has been cited as an inspiration for The Fifth Element, by some; but it bears some resemblance to the works of French artist, Moebius, who created designs for The Fifth Element. Moebius also factors into Tarna, as the entire look of this sequence is almost xeroxed from Moebius' Arzach stories.

Captain Sternn is the anti-hero/criminal from Bernie Wrightson, co-creator of Swamp Thing and illustrator of a beautiful edition of Frankenstein. This is a fun sequence, full of comedy and chaos, much like the Sternn stories. Sternn has more than a slight resemblance to a certain Kryptonian.

B-17 captures the flavor of the old EC horror comics, like Tales from the Crypt and the Vault of Horror. The sequence features design work from Mike Ploog, a horror comics master and artist of Marvel's Man-Thing. It has a nice creepy, decayed atmosphere and lets the visuals tell the story.

Den is adapted from Richard Corben's tales. The melon-breasted women that Corben is known for are on fine display here. We also get the humor that also permeates Corben's work. John Candy was quite good here, giving Den the perfect adolescent voice.

Tarna is the most lush sequence, with sweeping vistas and the use of rotoscoping for the character. It is also quite violent. Again, it owes a great deal to Moebius' Arzach.

So Beautiful, So Dangerous is pretty forgettable, with juvenile humor and boring animation. Soft Landing is fairly pointless, except to serve as a title sequence. The whole linking device is unnecessary, as the segments bear little relation to one another and are stronger as separate entities. The soundtrack is great, with most pieces capturing the flavor of the animation.

Ultimately, the uneven stories and lower budget animation holds this movie back. The movie is best viewed as an anthology, rather than a complete story, and with a forgiving eye to the budget. With that said, it's still entertaining and an important work of adult animation.

Trying to con Harry Canyon in futuristic New York City ("big deal"), striking a deal with Den, having sex with a robot (or, as he puts it, using "mechanical assistance"), bribing Hanover Fiste to testify on your behalf in court, praying for Taarna to save you. None of these things have anything in common except for the Loch-nar, a green ball supposedly containing the essence and entirety of evil.

It doesn't matter if none of this makes complete sense or if it's even that good in terms of plot construction. This is Heavy Metal!

The concept of this 1981 animated experiment is two-fold: show good and evil in a constant state of flux, and bring to life the richness and erotic energy of the popular animated magazine. Add to that some science fiction, a slight reverence for history (in the beautiful ghoul scene in the WWII B-17) and a juvenile insight into drugs and sex, and you have the definition of my '80s youth culture.

I was one of those kids who'd sneak an issue of Heavy Metal, found on the magazine stands in the local drug store next to the grocery store where my father did his weekly shopping, inside another magazine and stare at the drawings, looking for some violence and humor ... and naked women with bi g breasts. I did the same thing whenever I got my hands on a National Lampoon and, if I was lucky, Hustler.

It's pre-pubescence at its hormonal best! And seeing it again as an adult brings all that excitement back to me. Every story, every piece of music ... God, every shot for that matter -- they all bring me back to being 10 years old and wrestling with my older cousin as she tried to block my eyes when the chick Harry Canyon picks up off the street strips and slides into bed with him to the tune of Journey's "Open Arms."

This movie wasn't meant to be cinematic greatness. It was meant to be a boy's fantasy and his coming of age. Sometimes we take these things too seriously. A good movie is a good movie, and a good memory is a good memory. Let's leave it at that ... and let me get a whiff of that stuff the spaceship pilots have lined along the floor...

One of my all-time favorite flicks is this animated anthology of stories all bound together by this glowing green "Locnar," an orb of evil unmatched in all of time and space. The animations are terrific: "Harry Canyon" about a futuristic cabbie in NYC, "DEN" about a nerd who is transported to a far off land as a hulking muscleman, "Taarna" about mankinds last stand against the power of the "Locnar," and others. My personal favorite is the short "B-17" about a bomber in WWII and the horrible power of the "Locnar." As I mentioned previously, the animation is spectacular...reminding me of a day when not everything was computer-generated. Features Cheap Trick, Riggs, Nazareth, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Devo and others on the kicking soundtrack. Overall, a classic of the 80's: one that shouldn't be missed at any cost. My Highest Recommendation.

Gerald Potterton's "Heavy Metal" is definitely one of the best animation movies ever made.It has everything:violence,sex,nudity,humor and intelligent story.Great soundtrack by such hard rock/heavy metal groups like Black Sabbath,Nazareth,Devo,Blue Oyster Cult,Journey,Sammy Hagar,Trust,Grand Funk Railroad etc.My favourite segment from "Heavy Metal" is "B-17"-this one is dark,bloody and creepy!My highest recommendation.

I remember when this came out I was maybe 14 years old, and this movie had a legendary status among my crowd (none of whom ever got to see it). And why not, just looking at the poster promises everything to excite a young teenage male, basically a Rock album cover (or DnD book) come to life.

And it does not disappoint! I had no idea what to expect 40 years later, but I am more than happy with what was delivered - a sequence of loosely connected stories that, in some sense are obvious and unsophisticated, but are all strangely compelling.

And of course the girls, OMG, the girls. It's probably best I did not see this at 14 because my brain would surely have exploded.

Yes, sure, we live today in an age on infinite porn, so who cares about these girls? I think this is where some evolutionary psychology can help. Consider your male ancestor; sure there's one module in his brain for actually performing sex, doing the job; and that's the module that's tickled by porn. But there's a different module (I don't want to say more important, let's just say more subtle) that's about the search for a female mate, for the part before the porn kicks in. It is that *that* module that this movie kicks in overdrive and beyond, an on-going stream of "her, no her, no her, no HER HER HER".

And hell, it even teared me up towards the end. All in all far far better than I expected, and well worth a watch, even two or three.