Review of Heavy Metal (1981) by Raji K — 19 Dec 2016

The movie Heavy Metal is in many ways what the Disney's Fantasia was for classical music. Various metal songs are placed throughout different story lines. The common theme of all the story lines is a green orb that is the summation of all evil. The green orb tells a little girl its long history of wreaking havoc and chaos across the universe.

The first segment is with a cab driver in futuristic New York that gets involved with a damsel in distress. The girl is trying to get rid of the green orb, and has an offer of 300,000 to buy it from her. The cabbie Harry gets involved to keep her safe, only to find she will double cross her for greed. The second segment a nerdy teenager gains massive powers from the orb and is transported to another world. He saves a virgin about to be sacrificed and takes on the empire that includes an evil queen and her minions. The third segment involves a space captain that has gone through some heinous crimes, and pays off a witness to testify that he is a spectacular individual. The orb however mutates the witness into a giant who then wreaks havoc on the courtroom and city. The fourth segment features a World War II bomber that has a bunch of its men murdered, and then are subsequently turned into zombies by the orb. The fifth segment has an alien spaceship abducting a couple people. A robot (John Candy) then seduces one of the prisoners, while the pilots get high and nearly crash the spacecraft. The final segment, and the best of them all starts with the orb manipulating a bunch of men into ruthless warmongers. The owners of the city make a last effort and summon a Taarakian warrior. A beautiful one comes to the city on a giant velociraptor like bird and gets revenge and destroys the orb.

Heavy Metal is an interesting idea for a film. The concept art and style of the movie is quite original and works well for the type of film. Some of the segments seem pointless and could have been left out. The last segment inspired the sequel Heavy Metal 2000. Like many movies of its kind, the movie has a better idea on paper than it has execution. The film has some great concepts and ideas, but could have been much better. The fusion of the soundtrack with the orchestral score was one of the film's better strengths. The dark and mature themes will detract most, but fits well with the themes of most of the music. Heavy Metal is still an influential and cult hit type movie that is generally underrated for what it tries to accomplish. Hopefully the film day will one day get the budget and a director that can truly make this concept shine.

-12.19.2016.