Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal

In the late 1970’s, Heavy Metal Magazine had just hits the stands. An adult comic book magazine that was focused darker stories, creepy and weirder plots, and yes, a lot of erotica. Today, the current publisher is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman and releases only a few issues each year. The stories range from really interesting to the lowest common denominator in entertainment. However, the magazine is one of the main influences in the more adult story telling in comics.

In every 1980, one of the magazine’s readers was filmmaker Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Meatballs, My Super Ex-girlfriend) decided to create a feature film based some of the stories in Heavy Metal Magazine. What was made were the following stories:

1)   An Original Story about a New York City taxi driver Harry Canyon in a film noir style alien mafia crime story set in 2031.

2)    Richard Corben’s Den, the story of a skinny teenager being sent to a another planet and is transformed into one of the strongest persons one the planet and he is then on a quest to save the love of his life.

3)   Bernie Wrightson’s Captain Sternn. A comical court case set on a space station.

4)   B-17. A World War 2 boomer fight and unseen enemy and then the rising dead.

5)     So Beautiful and So Dangerous. The government has meeting about whether or not aliens are real and aliens abduct a scientist and a stenographer. The aliens are basically stoners, the scientist dies on entry, and the stenographer begins a relationship with a robot.

6)    All the other stories told to everyone by a huge source of evil called the Loc-nar and the final story is how he influenced a huge number of people to destroy the citizens on this planet and one warrior named Taarna is out to kill them all.

One of the reasons that I like this film is due to the sound track. It has a great original score and some of the acts on the sound track include Black Sabbath (when Dio was in the band), Journey, Grand Funk Railroad, and Devo. While these scream 1980’s, it is very nice to listen to. Also, because Reitman needed to get many independent studios to animate each section of the film, it does have a look that say low budget, but it still very impressive to look at. For any fan of animation, this is a must see.