Heavy Metal

This movie was great in it's time. I used to see it in the theatre every weekend at the 'midnight movies' we had where I grew up. This movie is fantastic. I watched it last month and it still entertained me. The segment Harry Canyon is IMHO the inspiration for the movie The Fifth Element. The character Bruce Willis plays, the cab he drives and the time period the movie takes place it all scream of Harry. Heavy Metal is not for everyone, and neither is this movie. I loved it. =)

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, 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.

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!

Little cult treasure often unfairly ignored, the film Metal Howling is a guilty pleasure that I still do not get tired of and that I like to watch from time to time with a certain pleasure! To say that it is a cult work is an understatement, conceived as a sketch film with a nice red thread, it is above all a condensed of fantastic stories more crossed than the others mixing many styles of animation well before the famous Animatrix. Everyone will have their favorite segment but personally, I find them all as great as the others and I can only advise you the viewing as soon as possible.

Great cocktail of humor, horror and science fiction in the most total subversion, this film is a bit the brilliant digest of the magazine of the same name that more than marked its time becoming as much a UFO, as a phenomenon. Designed by the greatest French comic book authors of that time (Moebius, Druillet or Jodorowsky to name a few, but there are many more...) all their stories influenced Hollywood cinema in the 80s! And if you want to know the inspirations and origins of Alien, Mad Max, the 5th Element or Star Wars, then go for it! You're gonna enjoy yourself.

The film remains a little unknown gem that I can only advise you! (Ok ok I'm a little fan:D) Besides, for those who wish to plunge back into this universe, know that the magazine came back from the dead a few years ago and you can find it today at your tobacconist. It is still today a real wind of freshness and originality that makes a crazy good.