In her review of Heavy Metal, when it opened during the summer of 1981, New York Times film critic Janet Maslin wrote:
“Heavy Metal is bound to seem a big success to fans of the magazine on which it is based. Indeed, for anyone who doesn’t think an hour and a half is a long time to spend with a comic book, Heavy Metal is impressive. Though it owes some slight bit of its toughness and nihilism to Ralph Bakshi, this animated feature is off on its own track, combining science fiction, mysticism, sex, violence and rock music. Much of the time, these elements do what the filmmakers want them to and make for a heady mix.”
This seems to be exactly what fans of the film wanted and still want, looking back at the film as it celebrates its 45th anniversary this summer.
The film grew out of Heavy Metal magazine, which published edgy science fiction and fantasy comics. It was launched in 1977 by National Lampoon editor Sean Kelly who became intrigued with the French magazine Métal Hurlant and looked to create an American version, which became Heavy Metal. As it was in a magazine format, it wasn’t bound by the Comics Code Authority and could include nudity, graphic violence, and profanity in its stories.
When Heavy Metal became popular, producer and National Lampoon editor Matty Simmons approached producer and director Ivan Reitman about independent Canadian financing for a film inspired by the magazine, after Heavy Metal magazine publisher Leonard Mogel pitched the idea to 20th Century-Fox, which passed on it.
Gerald Potterton would direct the film as a whole, with segments being produced by multiple animation studios. The different sections of Heavy Metal were helmed by such directors as John Bruno, Harold Whitaker, Jack Stokes, Jimmy T. Murakami, John Halas, Julian Harris, Paul Sabella, Barrie Nelson, Julian Szuchopa, and Pino Van Lamsweerde.
Like the magazine itself, Heavy Metal was an anthology film. It opens on a barren, star-studded sky, in space, with a narrator stating, “A shadow shall fall over the universe. And evil will grow in its path. And death will come from the skies.”
From a spaceship, an astronaut in a convertible drops out of the cargo bay and rides the car down to Earth, driving up to his house. Once home, he greets his young daughter and shows her what he’s brought home – it’s a glowing green orb called Loc-Nar.
It turns out to be “the sum of all evil” in the universe, which we see as the orb kills the astronaut and turns to the terrified daughter. Loc-Nar, in a booming voice-over, will be the continuous thread through the film’s stories.
The first is a futuristic film noir-like tale of Harry Canyon, a cynical cab driver in a dystopian New York City, who finds himself with a woman being pursued because of the Loc-Nar. Then, there’s the tale of Den, a teenager on Earth, who is transported to another world and transforms into a towering, muscular being who fights an evil ruler over the Loc-Nar.
From here, it’s the trial of Captain Sternn, a pompous, corrupt starship commander, who bribes a witness whom the Loc-Nar has infected. The next story is set during World War II, where a bomber’s crew is transformed into zombies due to Loc-Nar.
After, a Pentagon secretary is abducted by an alien spacecraft and held captive by a lecherous robot and laid-back aliens. Then, in the final segment, a warrior woman named Taarna avenges a village destroyed by mutants corrupted by the Loc-Nar, and vanquishes the glowing green orb.
Heavy Metal then concludes with the astronaut’s daughter becoming the new incarnation of Taarna.
The film’s voice cast includes a number of the legendary SCTV cast, including John Candy, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis. The cast also features Don Francks, Richard Romanus, Al Waxman, Harvey Atkin, Marilyn Lightstone, Susan Roman, John Vernon, and Rodger Bumpass.
Additionally, Percy Rodriguez is the uncredited voice of the Loc-Nar. Rodriguez is probably most familiar for his work as a voice-over artist for many movie trailers, including the original Jaws (1975).
The film plays out against a soundtrack that included songs from Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Devo, Donald Fagen, Don Felder, Grand Funk Railroad, Sammy Hagar, Journey, Nazareth, Stevie Nicks, Riggs, and Trust.
Heavy Metal embraces the adult sensibilities of the magazine, with plenty of nudity, violence and profanity to go around, and balances this with an eclectic array of entertaining styles, thanks to the various animation studios who worked on the film.
The tale of Den has great, comic book-like layout and shading, while the Captain Sternn segment embraces a cartoony charm. Additionally, many scenes in Heavy Metal come with a tongue-in-cheek wink and well-crafted humor (the robot and aliens who kidnap the secretary are the film’s comedy standouts).
Released on August 7, 1981, Heavy Metal received a mixed response from critics and audiences. It was later, through its airing on cable TV and midnight screenings in theaters, that the film developed a following, enough so that it spawned a sequel, Heavy Metal 2000. This was spearheaded by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman, who purchased the magazine in 1991. Eastman also untangled the legal blockades around the soundtrack that prevented a home video release, which it eventually received in 1991.
Forty-five years later, Heavy Metal is an insightful time-capsule into a period in animation history when the medium embraced the science fiction and fantasy genre geared toward adults (Fire and Ice and Rock and Rule, both released in 1983, are two other examples).
And, in the words of Janet Maslin, the film is indeed a “heady mix.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
This sounds so amazing that I would hope for a Blu-ray or even 4K release down the line (coupled with Heavy Metal 2000 and the soundtrack discs). How’s that for a package?
That home video delay seemed an eternity as I turned to my Cinemax VHS tape for years. Now my favorite extra on the Blu-Ray is Carl Macek’s commentary over the rough cut version of Heavy Metal. Having authored the book Heavy Metal: Animation for the 80s, it’s great to hear Carl share the stories of how each segment evolved and what was removed from the rough cut.
Suffice it to say that a “hard R” animated feature with graphic violence and full-frontal female nudity would be more difficult to get greenlit in our oh-so-progressive modern era than in the early Eighties with its “cartoons are for kids” mentality.
The MVP of the voice cast has to be John Candy, who performs multiple roles here with remarkable versatility—They’re all different, yet recognizedly him. It makes his untimely death just thirteen years later even more heartbreaking.
no “offense”, but you must be living under a rock if you missed “Fixed”
You missed the point—Of course, there’s been raunchy animated fare of recent vintage, But unless Fixed contains an abundance of realistically-drawn nude women as HM does, that’s not at all an apt comparison.
It might’ve been difficult for the film to get noticed in the early ’80’s considering the publics’ interest in animation at the time.
John Candy isn’t the only recognizable voice in this movie. Along with him is fellow SCTV alum Harold Ramis (heard with Candy in the segment “So Beautiful And So Dangerous”), as well as Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy, both heard in the Captain Sternn segment along with John Vernon (Dean Wormer of “Animal House” fame), and another familiar voice actor, Rodger Bumpass, currently best known for playing Squidward on Spongebob Squarepants.
I wrote that Candy’s voice was always recognizable, not that it was the only familiar one in the cast.
The movie and magazine were big influences on my own projects that didn’t go anywhere like Flexia and InterStellar OverDrive, and to a lesser extent Sci Fi Guy!
Best part of Heavy Metal for me was the soundtrack album, with solid entries by Sammy Hagar, Don Felder, Black Sabbath, Grand Funk and others.
This reminds me, might need to give my Blu-ray a re-watch sometime soon.
I find it amusing that “Squidward” is one of the additional voices (“……..Future, future, future, future, future”).
I didn’t realize realize Potterton did this after directing a Buster Keaton movie before Cool McCool and Yellow Submarine. This guy was amazing,
I wonder what Buster Keaton would have thought of “Heavy Metal,” but unfortunately he’d been gone for 15 years by the time it came out. Buster never made any sci-fi films himself, but he did appear in a “Twilight Zone” episode in which he’s an unwilling time traveler. Rod Serling occasionally indulged in some sci-fi comedy, and Buster’s entry is one of the very best of these episodes.
Having never seen “HM” (hard rock music definitely isn’t my cup of borscht and was enough to keep me away), I never would have connected Gerald Potterton with such a project if I hadn’t read this post! He definitely entered a far, far different universe than The Great Stone Face’s “Wonderful World of Slapstick.”
Which is the title of Buster’s autobiography— it’s well worth reading!
Buster Keaton appeared in a “sort of” science fiction film produced in Mexico in 1946 — “El moderno Barba Azul” (The Modern Bluebeard, released in a dubbed version as Boom in the Moon, and produced by Alexander “Superman” Salkind). He doesn’t actually go the moon, but there is a scientist who invents a rocket that Keaton and several other people fly off in — they land in the desert and think they’re on the moon.
I completely forgot about that film, and it’s probably better forgotten. Like Laurel & Hardy’s “Atoll K” (aka “Utopia”), 1951, it’s a pitiful cheapie that was made only because these once-stellar performers were all down on their luck at the time and simply needed a paycheck.
An emaciated Stan Laurel was in such poor health that he looks like he might keel over dead at any moment. Not only that, but most of the European cast didn’t speak English and had to be (ineptly) dubbed. The whole production looks like it had a budget of about fifty bucks— which can also be said of “Boom In The Moon.”
Buster made a satisfying and quite lucrative late-career comeback in the 50’s and 60’s, but Stan and Ollie couldn’t pull that off, due to the seriously failing health of both of them.
I prefer to remember, and watch, the old-time comedy greats when they were still in their primes…