1981: HEAVY METAL

What’s it about?

An astronaut returns home from a space mission with a mysterious glowing green orb. Once at home, the power of the orb activates and menaces his young, innocent daughter. It shows her vignettes of its past existence, and how it has corrupted others. In the first, a young woman and a cab driver in a futuristic New York City get tangled up with double-crossing mobsters. In the second, a shrimpy boy is transformed by the power of the orb into a meathead and transported to a dangerous planet full of monsters and magic.

In the third vignette, a defense witness testifying on behalf of a space pirate turns into a Hulk-like monster and starts trashing the space station where the trial is taking place. Next, dead crewmembers on a WWII bomber are brought back to life as skeletal monsters as the plane flies on. Then a secretary is abducted by cocaine-snorting aliens and a randy robot. Finally, a gang of medieval cyborgs sets about exterminating a peace-loving race until a defender is called to help.

Is it any good?

HEAVY METAL is a cartoon anthology movie, which means it’s two things that I don’t know a whole lot about. Then throw in what I assume is meant to be some kind of connection to heavy metal music -- something else I know little about -- and I’m not sure that I’m really qualified to say anything about this movie at all. But I’ll try.

The only other anthology movie I’ve written about so far is THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969), in which the tattoos on Rod Steiger’s body come to life and play out short sci-fi vignettes. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) is maybe arguably an anthology movie but not probably not really. In fact, both of these movies hang together much more tightly than your typical anthology -- in addition to a unifying theme or story, they each have a single director and set of screenwriters who are in charge of all the pieces. In the case of THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, the frame story takes up a lot of screen time while the vignettes are brief and few. In 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the four vignettes are all clearly tied together in some way, even if the links aren’t totally obvious.

A typical anthology, on the other hand, puts the focus on the vignettes and the frame story (if there even is one) is usually extremely slight. It’s also common (but by no means always the case) that more than one director works on an anthology. For some reason, most anthologies seem to focus largely on horror, but sci-fi stories also sneak in fairly often. There’s ASYLUM (1972), in which a new doctor interviews the patients at an insane asylum and hears fantastic tales. And ALIEN ZONE (1978), in which a mortician tells gruesome stories about how the corpses in his funeral home met their demise. More famous examples are TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983), and George Romero’s CREEPSHOW (1982). They still occasionally get produced today, though they don’t seem to be very popular anymore. But FEAR(S) OF THE DARK (2007) and TRICK ‘R TREAT (2008) are two recent horror anthologies -- and the first one, like HEAVY METAL, is even animated.

I haven’t actually seen most of the movies I just listed, since it’s hard for me to get excited about anthologies. They aren’t too demanding, since they skip along from short story to short story, but they also tend to be hit or miss. Even a (non-horror, non-sci-fi) anthology like PARIS JE T’AIME (2006) which features directors like the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven, Gus van Sant and more still has lots of forgettable segments mixed in with the winners. So although I don’t really have anything against anthologies, they aren’t something I am very familiar with. (Though I have watched a couple more since seeing HEAVY METAL to try and get an idea of how they usually work.)

As for cartoons, it’s a lot harder for me to give a coherent explanation as to why I usually avoid them. It’s probably partly the usual western prejudice that cartoons are for kids, but none of the three animated movies I’ve written about so far (very much including this one) are appropriate for children. I also liked them all fine, and I don’t think they’d be any better if they were live action movies. I appreciated the unique artistic styles that went into FANTASTIC PLANET (1973) and WIZARDS (1977), and even HEAVY METAL has its own animated charms. (But it also has a lot of animated sex and gore, which is often less than charming. And overall it has far less visual imagination than those other two movies -- though it does have its inspired moments here and there.)

If I have any real grounding for my prejudice, I guess it would be that it’s harder for me to relate to animated protagonists, harder for me to be awed by animated vistas, to fear animated dangers, or to be moved by animated emotions. It’s not impossible, by any means. But in a cartoon world where literally almost anything can be shown, it seems to take more creativity and talent than usual to wow me. Wile E. Coyote spends a lot of time falling off of dramatic rock outcroppings more majestic than any in the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley -- yet I’ve never once felt any of the terror and amazement that such features should inspire. A cartoon is an extra (and very large) step away from reality, so it has to work a lot harder to overcome my suspension of disbelief and really involve me in what’s happening. That’s my opinion, anyway.

So what about HEAVY METAL? It’s okay. The frame story isn’t really that interesting -- supposedly this glowing green orb is the concentration of all the evil in the world, and it corrupts folks everywhere it goes. It’s planning to kill the little girl since she’s the one destined to subdue it in her generation or something. Anyway, the green orb figures one way or another in each of the vignettes, but in a few it barely makes any appearance at all and in others it doesn’t really seem to be evil. Frankly, the appearance of the orb in many of the stories only served to remind me that there wasn’t really any logical reason to throw these stories together, and it likely would have been less distracting if there were no frame story at all.

There’s a lot of mixing of fantasy and science fiction, and a little horror too. None of the vignettes except the last one are really long enough to make a big impression -- for the most part, they end just as they are getting interesting (or are just never that interesting). But the most memorable are probably the one where the cab driver in future New York tangles with alien mobsters and the one where WWII bomber crewmen are brought back to life as skeletons. The final vignette is a cut above even these highlights, however, and is far and away the best.

Most of the vignettes feature pretty explicit sex or gore, which I suppose were the kinds of things that the producers thought fans of heavy metal would like to see. What probably doesn’t appeal to fans of heavy metal, however, are bands like Journey and Devo, which overwhelmingly fill the soundtrack. So do expect lots of topless women with giant breasts, gruesome decapitations, alien monsters, and explosions. But don’t expect a real hard-rocking soundtrack. The London Philharmonic Orchestra makes a more prominent appearance in the music than actual metal.

Still, I enjoyed the flick. It’s juvenile in the extreme, but never really mean-spirited. It’s fun enough and never really boring, and does have occasional moments of wit and grandeur. (The funny bits are scattered throughout, but only the last vignette approaches any kind of visual majesty.) It’s not really the same caliber of movie as FANTASTIC PLANET or even WIZARDS, but it’s unpretentious and mindless entertainment if you don’t mind a lot of rough edges and teenaged fantasies. John Candy and Eugene Levy provide some of the voices, but honestly I didn’t even recognize them until I read the credits. Except for the lack of actual heavy metal, it’s pretty much everything you’d expect a cartoon movie called HEAVY METAL to be.