Heavy Metal

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...

Sure, it's not the best animation by today's standards. However, for when it was made the animation was top notch. It does have a great voice cast and the music is great. I graduated highschool in 1991 with long hair down my back. I went to my senior prom wearing a Motley Crue t-shirt--so nothing more to be said. I think anyone like me must appreciate Heavy Metal at least on some level. I also appreciate it for the art work and the small details. Watching a beatiful warrior godess slowly don her ridiculously sexy red outfit before wielding a sword to gut a bunch of mutants--it couldn't get any better. The movie as a whole, a conglomerate of strangley unrelated yet joined stories, makes this movie a cult classic--as true as they come. Perhaps that is what is lacking in Heavy Metal 2000--truely a sad attempt as a sequel, with no potential of ever being a worthy classic to sit on a shelf next to the original. The FAKK sword is the coolest thing about the movie, besides the Simon Beasley cover art. At least I think that's Simon's work and not Royo's--perhaps someone could confirm that. Okay, but not to stray from the topic of Heavy Metal (1981)---take it for what it is--don't over analyze it. Sit back, have a few laughs, poke fun at it, and at the end I think it's worth the watch.

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.

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.

Grimaldi returns home from a Space Shuttle trip landing his Corvette through the atmosphere. He bring home a present for his daughter, a glowing green orb called the Loc-Nar. It turns out to be a sum of all evil. It disintegrates Grimaldi and shows the little girl how he destroys the lives of people it touches in a series of short stories.

The animation is dated with the 70s style. The material is violent and full of scantily clad women. It is sexist and juvenile. It just does it with such abandon that it fully develops what it promises. It revels in the big boobs women in tiny outfits and muscle bound men. It's grotesque. It's got good music. It's a cult classic and fully deserves to be.