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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.

The women in this collection of animated short stories are very fond of taking off their clothes and/or hopping into bed with men they just met. Not a criticism, just an observation. When you add graphic violence, elements of sci-fi and fantasy, and relatively crude animation to the busty nymphos, you have a slapdash, strangely affecting film that is both irritating and fascinating.

As has been mentioned in several comments, the quality of the stories vary from dull to captivating. The taxi driver tale and the story about the young geek who becomes a muscular hulk are weird and fun to watch; others, like the final story about an avenging beauty clad in a skimpy system of straps, are tedious and revel too much in their unique brand of kinkiness. However, the story about the fighter plane which becomes infested with the living dead is an underappreciated gem.

The writing is average and the animation is pedestrian when compared with some of today's animated classics ("The Iron Giant," "Tarzan"), but "Heavy Metal" is an amusing enough exercise in rock and roll cartooning. (The selection of music is hit-and-miss as well, and the exclusion of Ted Nugent is inexcusable.) If you rent this not expecting much, you might be pleasantly surprised.

It took 40 years, but I finally got around to watching the animated movie everyone had kinda recommended I should watch. Time doesn't really change your perception of a piece of art, but one can look back into a prism and see just how they would have fallen for the piece of art back in the day. Fourteen year old me would have loved it, while 44-year old me finds it interesting and nostalgic. Go figure.

So how do I critique such a work? Do I go back in time and compare it to it's cool temporaries, the 2D Era of Disney and the rotoscoped images of Rankin-Bass? From the point of view, the animation holds up fairly well, even if it looks choppy in some spots. This was the era before the 80s cartoon boom created a uniform, simplistic approach to animation that was meant to be broad and cater more toward selling toys. And 14-year old me can certainly say one thing....it's like the animators idea of the ideal female body was incepted right out of my pubescent head.

What I didn't realize was the story would be an anthology. While a couple of the stories seemed rather silly, there was some cool storytelling that would be perfect for the sci-fi and medieval imagery that metal bands were using in those times. Plus a story about an orb that stirred up evil where ever it went was like an old Rush album from the 70s. This format did have an added benefit at least. With a slow and often times disjointed story, the anthology style did allow you to engage in different stories.

Is this film a triumph of animation? Depends on your age, I guess. Is it essential viewing for all rock and metal lovers? Of course!

I have to admit, I loved this movie from when I first saw it. A true cult classic, and second in Midnight Movie viewing only to Rocky Horror.

I think one reason that this movie was looked forward to for so long is that it was unavailable for so long. I remember around 1984 when a release was planned, and a dispute with the multiple musicians caused it to be pulled. But thankfully this was finally resolved, so we can own it again.

I bought a pirate copy when i was in Japan in 1988 (On Beta no less), and almost played it to death. And having been a fan of the comic when I could find it, I think it told the stories very well. I admit that the "green sphere" link was silly and did not work, and that the original "carousel" concept would have been much better (watch the DVD release for details on this). The simple fact that I have bought 3 copies of this time and still own all 3 of them says something about the movie.

Harry Canyon, Den, and Taarna are the be the most remembered pieces of this movie. Each in itself could even be fleshed out to hour long length, and still be enjoyable. So Beautiful, So Dangerous is enjoyable, and Harold Ramis and John Candy steal the show with their voices ("Hey man, you got any of that plutonium niborg left?"). And I admit, the film version of the story was MUCH more enjoyable then the original one from the comic.

PS: Watch for the cameo of a destroyed USS Enterprise. I love pointing that out to people that miss it.

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 didn't know what to expect when I sat down to watch this.

Keeping in mind that it is over 30 years old, the animation is fantastic.

The heroine, a voluptuous woman, is also way ahead of it's time. Four stars to full figures.

I really thought I would be in for some loud head banging music, but I was thrilled by the score. It was really fitting to the film and enjoyable.

This is film history, a "camp" classic, and would look totally different if made today. I should be seen as an excellent example of early animation.

HEAVY METAL (1 outta 5 stars)

I was very much into the "Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant" magazines back in my late teens... and I think it was this movie that got me disinterested in the books for good. Yes, there was some good material in the early issues but there was a lot of crap, too. Too bad the crappy elements of HM are all that seemed to make it into this movie... a series of short sci-fi/fantasy cartoons linked by the lame device of some evil, sentient green jewel that sets out to kill the one person that can destroy it... but first, it's going to tell its victim several irrelevant stories. Most of the stories are based on some of the best cartoons from the early years of HM... but the transition to animation doesn't do them any justice. The best cartoon of the bunch, "Captain Stern" is but a pale, pale echo of Bernie Wrightson's original 7 page strip. Every other sequence is just an endless parade of juvenile sex/drug jokes and senseless bloody violence. I guess you could argue that that's all the magazine ever was anyway... but at least there was an artistic vision behind it all. There is no art in this movie whatsoever... just clumsy animation, bad writing, crummy voice work and lousy inappropriate heavy metal music (hey, the movie is called "Heavy Metal"... better cram some heavy metal music in it!) I just recently saw the movie again to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Guess what? It is!

Animated anthology about a glowing green orb called the Loc-Nar, which is apparently pretty bad stuff. All of the stories tie back into the orb somehow. The best stories were: "Harry Canyon" about a cabbie in futuristic New York who becomes involved with a sexy woman on the run from bad guys, "Den" about a nerdy teenager who is transformed into a muscular hero, and "Taarna" about a silver-haired big-breasted beautiful savior out to save her planet from an army of zombies. The rest of the stories are all okay, although I liked "Captain Sternn" the least. That's about a guy named Captain Sternn put on trial for his crimes where one of the witnesses turns into a monster. Anyway, they're all watchable. Some of them were adapted from stories from Heavy Metal magazine. The animation is crude at times but there's certainly a lot of imagination put into it. The story doesn't always make a lot of sense either but it's still very interesting and fun. The music is great. It's obviously for adults, not kids. It's good if you enjoy fantasy stuff and can manage to not take it all so seriously.

This movie is bad in every way conceivable. It's a adult-oriented yet approached in a very immature manner. The animation is anywhere from sketchy to stiff and dead. The plots in each of the stories only serve the singular purpose of indulging in whatever immoral and ridiculous themes that the writers thought of. The film as a whole is just shallow and mindless, like living out some immature adolescent comic book geek's dream. You don't sit through this film, you trudge painfully through it. For a film that requires no thought whatsoever, this movie causes your head to hurt too much. Why waste your time with it? There are better adult-oriented animated films from the era, see those.

Even though Heavy Metal (from 1981) may be somewhat silly and incredibly disjointed at times, it is an impressively animated anthology of 8 sexy, Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories set to (what else? - but) heavy metal music.

These fantastic stories of graphic violence, female nudity and perverse sexuality were adapted for this film from the original Heavy Metal comic book, which was all produced by the magazine's publisher, himself, Leonard Mogel.

Heavy Metal's stories follow the path of a glowing green orb called Loc-Nar that contains the sum total of all the evil in the entire Universe. Loc-Nar travels continually through time and space, spreading violence and discordance everywhere in its wicked wake.

Heavy Metal's artists and animators were recruited from 17 different countries. The animation process used in Heavy Metal was the old, roto-scope technique, which consisted of filming models and actors, then tracing the shot onto film for animation purposes.

To be sure - Heavy Metal is an adult, animated, feature film that is certainly not gonna appeal to everyone.

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.

Heavy Metal is an anthology of short films loosely tied together by a framing story about a glowing green orb, which stars in all the stories and is also the sum of all evil. The film has as its inspiration a fantasy magazine of the same name that began publishing in the late 70s and is still ongoing. It focuses mostly on dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. Which sums up the stories in this film rather nicely.

The short films vary in length. Some are just a couple of minutes long, almost like short music videos or brief mood setters, while some have their own full narratives and story arcs. Different studios were hired to film the segments, so the quality and animation style fluctuates quite a lot. Still, all have that grungy 80s vibe to them, and the imagery is amazing, if nothing else.

Couple of segments stand out, however. First of them is about a taxi driver working his trade in a dystopian cyberpunk city of the future. His name is Harry Canyon and one day he picks up a broad, who's fleeing from assassins, who want the very same orb featured in the framing story, and which in this particular story has fallen to the hands of her late father. It's a cool, almost noir-ish story, which sets the mood for the film perfectly.

This story is almost immediately followed by Den, which is about a boy of that name. A weedy, nerdy little kid, who happens to find a mysterious orb to add to his rock collection. But then he gets transported into a distant planet and transformed into a veritable He-Man. The animation in this segment is noticeably better and overall it harkens really nicely back to those Edgar Rice Burrough stories of the early 20th century.

And as the last story we have Taarna. Easily the longest segment and also the one that lends the film its cover and its outward identity. It's once again about that orb and about a female warrior, the last of her race, standing up to avenge those that have been taken from her. And once again it's filled with admittedly rather pointless female nudity, lots of cyberpunk paraphernalia and more cold glaring than is absolutely necessary. But one has to admire its style. There's a certain aesthetic to it that only really existed in the 80s, and which I find myself missing quite often these days.

Heavy Metal is not for the easily offended. It is sexist, but also empowering in a very roundabout way. It is brainless, but also has cool ideas. It looks very rough around the edges, but simply oozes style. Definitely worth a watch if you like the darker movies that came out of the 80s. This is all about that.

That being said, if you want to watch something like this, but with a hint more taste, better budget and even cooler ideas, check out Love, Death and Robots, which was heavily inspired by this one.

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.

Based on the science fiction/fantasy comics magazine that is still being published to this day. Personally I do own a few of these from over the years and would state that they are heavily violent and/or heavily erotic, but always beautiful artwork that is based in science fiction or fantasy. If that sounds like it is up your alley then perhaps you should go out and look for one in your local corner store. They might have one.

The one thing I would say first off about this film is that it does not really capture the amazing artwork that is within the magazine. While not terrible animation, it never really amazes you or is exactly memorable like the artwork is. The film as well is not for everyone and may be aimed at the fantasies of young straight teenage boys. Mind you I think the strongest character is the main female in the last story. One thing that does work in the film though is the voice work of the characters. Most of them are actually really well done and you may recognize the names of a few of the actors.

I will try and make this review as short as I can, but it like the magazine is a film about a group of short stories and it tries to have a narrative that connects them all. Sometimes it works well other times it is sort of thin, but they all do connect.

After a car descends to earth after leaving a space shuttle in space, it lands and drives home. An astronaut Grimaldi (voiced by Don Francks) steps out with this interesting encased green orb. Once he shows it to his daughter he is killed and the extremely deadly green orb (voiced by Percy Rodriguez) has stories to share with the girl and about his evil. He goes under the name Loc-Nar for the stories. Perhaps that sounds like a really weird opening, but in fact it really works and sort of brings you to not expect anything and sort of accept anything that may be weird that happens during the film.

The stories that the orb spins are a story about a cab driver named Harry Canyon (Richard Romanus) who picks up a sexy young lady (Susan Roman) whose being chased for the Loc-Nar that her father found. Al Waxman, John Candy and Harvey Atkin also lend their voices for this segment. The second story is quite funny and memorable. Pretty much due to the narration that John Candy provides. He plays a dorky nerd named Dan who finds the green orb. He then conducts a science experiment during a thunderstorm and bam he is transported to a new world called Neverwhere now much bigger and stronger. The third story is one of the weaker installments as we see the court case of Lincoln F. Sternn (Eugene Levy). Joe Flaherty, John Vernon, Douglas Kenney and once again John Candy provide their voices. It is kind of silly until a nice little twist at the end. The fourth story is one of my favourites. It is very serious and does not play the comedy card like the previous stories had done. Written by Dan O'Bannon it is about a WWII B-17 bomber that is being followed by the Loc-Nar. It in turn brings the dead back to life within the bomber. Nice twist at the end that makes we wish that story would continue. Certainly more in the horror vein than any of the other stories. The fifth story is about aliens who visit the Pentagon and accidentally abduct a woman named Gloria (Alice Playton). John Candy voices the robot and Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis voice the two pilots of the ship. Some good laughs in this entry although I am not exactly sure what the point of this segment is as the story doesn't seem to lead anywhere. The sixth and final entry is much more serious and is the longest story. It is about a Taarakian warrior named Taarna. To me she is the strongest character in the film and she seeks out vengeance for a city that has been destroyed.

Also has a great soundtrack including Blue Oyster Cult, Journey, Black Sabbath, Stevie Nicks, Sammy Hagar and many others. Would love to get my hands on the LP. The underrated Elmer Bernstein does the music when the "metal" bands aren't playing. It does add a wonderful warmth to the film as well. In the sixth story I found the music was in fact reminiscent of GHOSTBUSTERS. But, it should be, since he did that score as well.

The film comes around full circle and although using the plot device of the green orb or Loc-Nar to connect all the stories at times is thin it does seem to work out in the end. Produced by Ivan Reitman. Followed by a name only sequel HEAVY METAL 2000 that does not connect with this film.

This animated film essentially begins with a green orb from outer space which lands on earth and is then carried by a man into his house. The orb then disintegrates the man and holds a young female in terror as it announces that it is the "sum of all evil". As the horrified girl looks deeper into the orb she is allowed to observe into the future as well as other worlds where the orb has wreaked havoc and destruction. What follows are several loosely connected vignettes which vary from one another but inevitably lead to a conclusion. Some of the scenes-especially those at the beginning-were pretty good but those at the end tended to be less interesting. At least for me. Likewise, there was some good music by groups such as Blue Oyster Cult but all of the songs were cut off after the first verse or two which was equally disappointing. Be that as it may, if a person has ever read any of the Heavy Metal magazines they will know that the plots are rather dark and there is quite a bit of eroticism as well. So this film is definitely not for children. In any case, I found this to be an adequate picture for the most part and for that reason I have rated it accordingly.

A misunderstood and underrated film work that deserves more attention.

This set of interesting and entertaining stories merges into one truly fascinating cinematic work. From the first second we are drawn into that amazing world where anything is possible, a world full of fun characters, good music and fascinating adventures.

The music is excellent and fits perfectly into the stories and further enhances the impression of this unusual film experience.

What makes Heavy Metal special is its atmosphere and the spirit of the time. This is a film that consists of several different stories that all make sense together, and each has its own separate point.

The characters are surreal and the stories are fascinating. There are stories that are brutal and dark, and there are also humorous ones that all together make one extraordinary film work. Music blends perfectly with the stories and the atmosphere, music is that magical ingredient that gives these stories life.

Some stories have a happy ending and some don't, just like in reality, and although they are surreal and fantastic, we can feel and experience them. They give us a glimpse into another world, which is both fantastic and brutal at the same time.

A fascinating film work that deserves its place in the history of film art.