Review of Heavy Metal (1981) by Shalaya L — 02 Feb 2011

It's your one way ticket to midnight. Call it HEAVY METAL! No clear narrative. No explanation. No problem. With animation this cool looking with the coolest soundtrack, the only danger is the threat of rocking out too hard.

Heavy Metal is a Canadian production based off the internationally successful comic book. Just like the comic book, Heavy Metal is a story of good and evil throughout the universe, through many dimentions, worlds and time periods. A mysterious green orb reveals itself as pure evil to a little girl, showing her it's destructive influence through multiple tales before it kills her. Each story isn't that long nor detailed, but it's bloody, violent, vulgar and erotic creativity is the exact embodyment of the cult classic comic. It's not the pinnacle of storytelling, but it's 100% entertaining.

It might not look as smooth by today's animated standards, nor compared to many Disney movies, but this Canadian animated production in it's time pushed animated boundaries to a new creative experience. This movie is incredably detailed with it's sci-fi/fantasy drawings, and with the best use of colour mixing, looking exactly like the comic. This movie was made with the roboscoping technique, i.e. filming live actors and models, then drawing them out for the animation. So you get a very good vision of life and depth in the drawings, making the movie pop out in an impressive way. But one of the best things in this movie is, THE INCREDABLE SOUNDTRACK with songs from the best metal bands in rock history.

For such a sexy, violent and bleak movie, it sure stars the voices of a lot of comedians, including stars of the Canadian comedy show SCTV, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis. Heavy Metal is trippy, graphic, erotic, mystifying, and just good old rock n' roll. The perfect combination to this one of a kind animated adventure.