I can’t bear the number of negative reviews this movie has gotten! I bet these people don’t like James Bond movies, either.
To fully indulge in Heavy Metal, one has to understand the era it came out in. At the time, most animation, at least what was seen in the US, was frequently of the “family entertainment” variety seen in Saturday morning cartoons and TV commercials. Apart from Ralph Bakshi, most animators were basically shackled by the need to exhibit something that was “rated G”. Heavy Metal took the actual opposite route. It was a liberating experience for the animators working on the film to be allowed to intention things they usually weren’t allowed. And they got paid to do it, too!
After the opening Soft Landing sequence, we’re introduced to the Loc-Nar, a stunning green orb responsible for all the imperfect that has plagued the universe (or at least, that which has plagued the human run) . The various stories contained in the film are told by the Loc-Nar to a young girl, as examples of it’s awesome power.
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The stories include the film noir homage Harry Canyon, the male “wish fulfillment fantasy” of Den (which demonstrates the versatility of the slack John Candy, who voices both Dan, the science nerd who gets transported into an alternate dimension by the Loc-Nar, as well as Den, the Conan/He-Man-esque beefcake that he is magically transformed into), the highly droll Captain Sternn (trivia: the whisper of the prosecutor is done by John Vernon, the actor who portrayed Dean Wormer in Animal House), the EC-esque B-17 (aka Gremlins, which went through so many script revisions, it’s a miracle it got finished at all), the bizarrely hilarious So Resplendent And So Uncertain (ok, maybe there’s some truth to the juvenilia charges during this segment, but only a corpse could hold from laughing at this part), and revenge scenario of Taarna (imagine a tougher, sexier version of Xena, only about a decade and a half earlier) .
While there IS some element of juvenilia here, it’s no worse than any other movie that’s been released by any major studio during the last 25 years. In fact, I bet it’s a diminutive more cerebral than most of those other movies. Harry Canyon is a rather crafted film noir homage, while some elements of Taarna are clearly patterned on Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. And while there are a couple sex scenes and a clear amount of excessive violince in Heavy Metal, again, it’s nothing compared to some of the garbage that’s shown on cable TV these days. I’d certainly rather search for this than Basic Instinct or No Intention Out.
This movie is a classic allotment of animation. Yeah, some of it’s rough around the edges, but that has a lot to do with Columbia’s decision to fade up the deadline so they could have the modern movie out in time for the summer 81 season. One has to think the scope of the undertaking, and the relatively short time that was at hand to build it.
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Look at the “travelling sequence” during Taarna, where she’s shown riding her mount (a sort of colossal bird creature) over a rolling landscape, and believe that it was done WITHOUT the exercise of any kind of computer generated work. It’s explained in the audio commentary on the rough crop of the film, as well as during the documentary how it was done, and why it didn’t quite turn out as planned) . No one had ever done anything like that, and it had to all be done by hand.
Really, you can’t retract this movie too seriously. It’s a movie that exists soley to entertain. There’s no great message or point to the movie. Honest attach the DVD in the player, turn out the lights, turn up the volume LOUD, and unprejudiced indulge in the meander.
It should be well-known, that this disc also contains some of the best bonus features I’ve seen on any DVD. Besides the regular movie, you score a elephantine length “rough crop” of the film, consisting of storyboards, pencil tests, and some completed animation. The only audio for this rough gash (besides the optional audio commentary, by Carl Macek, who also does a completely different commentary for the finished movie) is the dialog. There’s long stretches of silence, but it’s worth watching, as there’s lots of bits of dialog that were cleave from the final movie (we learn, for instance, that Katharine, like Den, was also transformed when she was transported to this mysterious alternate universe) . It’s also racy to ticket that the stories weren’t always in the order that they were in the final movie.
There’s also a half hour documentary with interviews from many of the filmmakers interested in making the film. We finally regain out why we watch a model of a house blowing up at the destroy (because they didn’t have time to conclude the animation for that one bit), and also why Cornelius Cole’s Neverwhere Land was slice from the movie (either for reasons of length/continuity, or because Cole didn’t effect it in time, depending on exactly which version of the tale you wish to own.
You also regain a few minutes of deleted scenes, most notably the above mentioned Neverwhere Land, which was originally supposed to link Captain Sternn and B-17. There’s also a few minutes that surround an early version of the framing account (in whence the Loc-Nar was actually the power source of a magical merry-go-round, and the various objects on the merry-go-round related in one scheme to the stories…ie, there’s a taxicab, Taarna’s mount, etc…each time the girl takes a sprint in a different vehicle on the merry-go-round, she experiences a different myth) .
And finally, you earn all Heavy Metal covers up through 1999, plus various bits of production drawings, cels, etc.
In short, this is a classic film that should be viewed by all fans of animation and/or heavy flicks. Prudes and conservatives who catch cranky at the very plan of a movie being ruined by a cramped too worthy flesh or blood (and really, there isn’t THAT powerful of either in this film) or a petite warped humor (ok, there’s PLENTY of that here) are advised to support away. I unbiased wish they had restored Neverwhere Land to it’s unique residence between Captain Sternn and B-17.
Some critics and film historians have labeled 1981’s HEAVY METAL as the last film to genuinely mediate the mishmash sensibilities of the post-hippy 1970s counter-culture, and stylistically and thematically this appears to be moral. Based on the adult counter-culture cult funny of the same name, HEAVY METAL definitely is a sort of spacey concatenation of disparate visual aesthetics and heterogeneous science-fiction/fantasy narratives. But despite being a hodgepodge as a whole, the film tranquil manages to offer a very provocative arrangement to demolish 90 minutes.
As with the magazine, the film is basically aimed at horny male adolescents, offering plenty of nude, amply bosomed women running around in the midst of stylized violence and gore; lots of rock music (though these ditties from favorite metal bands of the gradual ’70s may not appeal to the fresh generation of horny male adolescents) ; and references to the drug-oriented sub-culture (definitely not a cartoon for the pre-teen crowd) . Each individual segment of HEAVY METAL was scripted and directed independently of the others, which likely accounts for the varying radiant and story styles. But many of these contributors were (and are now) some of the most talented people in the film industry, including writers Dan O’Bannon, Len Blum, and Daniel Goldberg, and directors John Bruno, John Halas, and Jimmy T. Murikami. (Gerald Potterton, listed in the credits as the film’s director, was in reality the overseer for the project as a whole.)
Because the film does not occupy a single cohesive plotline, it is best to evaluate each absorbing segment in its gain lawful. Some of those individual stories are quite thought-provoking or humorous–or both–and even some of the more mediocre segments peaceful offer some amazing visuals. One of the most intellectually animated is a tale called DEN, in which a young bespectacled geek is transported into a parallel universe and transformed into a splendid, muscled barbarian hero. After falling in like with a curvaceous maiden, he helps her set aside her people from their draconian Caligula-like dictator. B-17 is probably the most earnest segment, though there seems to be no intrinsic logic to the sparse record. In it, the expressionless crewmembers of a WWII bomber plane are inexplicably resurrected as flesh-eating zombies, subsequently seeking to beget a meal of the plane’s still-living pilot. Visually, however, this segment is quite handsome, evoking the deliciously evil artistic style of the mature E.C. comics of the ’50s and early ’60s. And in the funniest segment–entitled SO Glowing, SO DANGEROUS–a delicate Pentagon secretary is inadvertently sucked into an alien spaceship that resembles a ample smiley face. After confronting the spaced-out druggie crewmembers, she ultimately becomes the lover of the ship’s robot and decides to remain aboard.
After its initial release, HEAVY METAL attained a cult following of sorts and became a current of the midnight-movie crowd. Unfortunately, its release to the home-video market was delayed for years due to disputes over copyrights for some of the rock songs old-fashioned in the soundtrack. Because of this, poorly produced bootlegged copies of the flick were illegally sold (usually at Sci-fi cons) and swapped among fans, and the deplorable video quality contributed to the film’s unfair reputation for being a mediocre film. But the music disputes were eventually resolved somehow, and the film became commercially available to the home market in the mid 1990s and regained its popularity as a icy cartoon. (Some statistics expose that it is the most favorite film in the Columbia/Tristar home-video catalog.)
Columbia/Tristar’s Special-Edition DVD of HEAVY METAL offers a sparkling digital transfer of the film and soundtrack, along with some really cold bounus material. For animation fans, one of the best of the bonus features is a lively feature-length pencil-test version of the film (with optional commentary) . Columbia/Tristar also offers a version of the HEAVY METAL in their SuperBit collection, but as with their other SuperBit films, the disc area required for the higher bit rate precludes the inclusion of any bonus material. Unless the buyer has a high-definition TV and can luxuriate in the increased record quality of the SuperBit disc, the Special-Edition version is the method to go. Either draw, HEAVY METAL offers enough entertainment value to compose it a noble addition to the DVD collection of any SF or animation fan.
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