Director: Gerald Potterton
Screenplay: Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum, based on stories and artwork by Richard Corben, Angus McKie, Dan O'Bannon, Thomas Warkentin and Bernie Wrightson
Starring: John Candy, Jackie Burroughs, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, Richard Romanus, Alice Playten, Susan Roman, Percy Rodriguez
Running Time: 90 minutes
Genre: Science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation
This Canadian adult animated anthology film adapts several stories from the comic book Heavy Metal. A young girl is terrorised by "the sum of all evils", a glowing green orb called the Loc-Nar (Rodriguez) which shows her several stories to illustrate how it has spread chaos and destruction throughout time and space: In the nightmarish New York City of 2031, cynical taxi driver Harry Canyon (Romanus) tires to save a woman from hired killers; A nerdy teenage boy (Candy) is transported through time and space to a bizarre fantasy world where he is transformed into a bald, musclebound warrior; On a space station a witness in the trial of a criminal space captain transforms into a giant rampaging monster; In the Second World War, a badly damaged B-17 bomber heads home after sustaining heavy casualties, but, under the Loc-Nar's influence, the dead come back as zombies; A woman (Playten), abducted by aliens, forms a relationship with a robot; A silent warrior woman avenges a brutal attack on a peaceful city.
Since it's release, this has become quite a major cult movie, although it really has not aged well. Loaded with sex and violence, it's very juvenile and, to put it mildly, it is problematic. Loaded with gratuitous nudity, women are almost always depicted as sex objects, and in a couple of places sexual assault is played off as a joke. It feels like a missed opportunity to bring adult animation and more edgy fantasy into the mainstream, but feels like a compendium of all the things that the genre is criticised for. On the plus side some of the animation is very good, each story had it's own animation team and so each has it's own distinctive feel, and some of the imagery is really startling, so it never really gets dull. As you would expect from a film called Heavy Metal the soundtrack is packed with heavy metal and hard rock songs, which now just feels kind of quaint. Coming across at times like the cover of a seventies rock album or fantasy paperback cover come to life, this can be enjoyed as mindless, noisy, late-night fun, but it lacks any charm, and there's a nasty quality to it that leaves a bad taste.
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