Heavy Metal. What an incredibly awesome animated movie. I think the first time I saw this movie, I may have been 6 or 7. Totally not a movie for child at that age, but don’t blame my parents though. When you’re that age, your parents just can’t stay up as long as you can on the weekends, so late night HBO was my ticket towards seeing this movie, plus a little help from my older brother… But for those of you that are unfamiliar with Heavy Metal, let me give you a brief explanation of what Heavy Metal actually is.

Originally, there was a Sci-Fi magazine in France that went by the name of “Métal Hurlant” which translates to something like “Howling Metal”. Leonard Mogel, purchased the license to produce the magazine in the states and changed the name to “Heavy Metal” instead. it debuted in the States in 1977 and featured translations of the French stories, as well as eventually featuring works by American artists and writers as well. The mag also went through a few editors before it finally established what kind of magazine it was going to be over here. Currently, the mag is owned by Kevin Eastman (of TMNT fame) and is still published to this day. Remember this, because I’m gonna come back to it.

Now, the actual Heavy Metal film is very much like how the magazines are (anthology), with the exception that all the stories are tied together by a common item in the film, The Loc-Nar. The Loc-Nar is an orb of seemingly unimaginable power that drives civilizations to either great prosperity or complete destruction. Loc-Nar spends the majority of the movie telling a little girl stories about how he has caused great mischief in the Universe. We are then treated to what I feel is an all-star cast of voice acting as we bare witness to some of the more popular Heavy Metal stories come to life on the screen. From what I can gather, the most popular of the longer tales was that of “Den”, the story a kid who is whisked away to another world where he becomes a manly-man and his inner-voice is that of the great John Candy. As a child, I recall this part of the movie of having the most nudity in it. As an adult, I see it as a cool Conan/Kull kind of story set on another planet. A similar story follows a strong willed female warrior and her flying beast as they proceed to open up an infinite number of cans of whoop-ass all over these mutants that were created by the Loc-Nar. This particular story ties into the overall ending of the story, so I’ll remain mum on that subject.

There are a nice handful of other stories that are stored within this 3 year production of a movie. All of which are beautifully animated, with a few hiccups here and there… I challenge anyone to view this movie and tell me that there wasn’t something in it that they didn’t like. However, this movie isn’t without it’s problems. One of which, had to do with licensing issues over the monster soundtrack that was attached to the film. This caused the movie to not be release on home video until 15 years after it’s theatrical debut. Well… Officially released, anyway. There were plenty of bootlegs out there to be found. Another big problem was that it spawned an awful sequel; Heavy Metal 2000. This turd of a movie was based off a story that was written by current editor of the magazine, Kevin Eastman, and starred the likeness and voice of his wife (at the time…), B-Movie/Porn Actress Julie Strain. Just garbage. And it takes a lot for me to call a movie garbage, remember, I’m the guy who ranks Howard the Duck in his top 5 movies of all time. But Heavy Metal 2000 is one of those movies were it just goes to show that maybe we shouldn’t risk a franchise so that your spouse has something to do. And that doesn’t just go for Eastman, but also to Kevin Smith, Tim Burton, Ben Stiller, Paul WS Anderson, James Cameron… The list goes on. Even if you put out an awesome movie, please, be gentle with us, your wife isn’t always the best actress for the part, and yes, it counts against you if she becomes your wife after the movie is finished.

Anyway, Eastman was talking about there possibly being an additional Heavy Metal movie in the works, this time, it’d be more like the original movie and be an anthology. Although, it seems that it’s been having a rough time getting to actual results, but names have been tossed around for possible directors for sets, ranging from David Fincher to Zack Snyder to Gore Verbinski to Guillermo Del Toro to James Cameron. How much of that is legit, I don’t know. Sounds good to me though. So here’s to that. And that, my friends, is the end of this post. See ya next time.

-Fleet

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