From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Heavy Metal released in 1981.
Starring:
Richard Romanus, John Candy, Joe Flaherty
Directed by:
Gerald Potterton and Various Artist
Genre:
Animation, Adventure, Fantasy
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$9,300,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.7
The Synopsis is:
This is a compilation of stories following the trail of a mysterious green orb, called the Loc-Nar that sometimes does far more harm than good wherever it goes in the universe.
Story:
The film is based on the magazine bearing the same name, or more or less catering to the fans of the magazine. In case you are not familiar with Heavy Metal Magazine it is a science fiction and fantasy comics magazine for a mature audience featuring multiple story vignettes and galleries of exceptional fantasy art by titans in the industry, like Richard Corben, Jean-Claude Forest, H. R. Giger, Jean Giraud, and Olivia De Berardinis.
When I was a kid, about 12 years old, my mom’s boyfriend left our home, but when he did, he left a whole bunch of comic books, which I kind of inherited since my mom knew I loved comics. I am not sure if she knew, but Heavy Metal magazine was part of the collection. But then again, I am pretty sure she did know, because, I had often used them to practice drawing. My mom was cool like that.
I was mesmerized with art and the stories of how outrageously structured they were. As well I loved the fantasy element of the adventures there in, even though I may not have been totally mature enough to understand all of the nuances.
Many of the stories in the magazine are unconventional, funny, mysterious, and don’t shy away from graphic erotica and gore.
Originally it was released in Europe as Métal Hurlant or as it is translated "Howling Metal" in January 1975 before publisher Leonard Mogel brought it to America.
The magazine had a growing popularity by the 1980’s so it was not long before Hollywood became interested in it.
Heavy Metal Magazine was owned by the National Lampoon company who had worked with Ivan Reitman on Animal House. Ivan became the producer on the film and played a big part in coalescing the film along with Gerald Potterton, as the chief director since each segment would have it’s own production team from writers, directors, actors and animators.
Much like the magazine, the film stays in line with the same themes of fantasy science fiction, featuring a great deal of graphic violence, mature situations, and dark humor.
This film also mirrors the vignettes in the magazine by separating the movie experience into eight segments of short stories, each one completely unique to all of the others.
However, the film brilliantly threads all of these segments together tying in how the orb, or the Loc Nar affects the people and environment it comes in contact with through time in the universe.
- Soft Landing (a car from space lands on earth)
- Grimaldi (the Loc-Nar terrorizes a girl with his story)
- Harry Canyon (in 2031 a cab driver gets involved with the mob and a mysterious artifact.)
- Den (a scrawny kid turns into a hero on another dimension)
- Captain Sternn (a mild mannered man turns into a beast, delivering justice to a scheming criminal)
- B-17 (a B-17 bomber becomes over run with zombies)
- So Beautiful, So Dangerous (two hippy aliens kidnaps a girl)
- Taarna ( Councilmen summon a Taarakian champion to defend their world from vicious mutant barbarians)
- Epilogue (the ending)
So in that regard the film is very loyal to the source material and as a fan of the magazine, I was accustomed to the format, whereas, non fans of the magazine may be a bit confused by this interesting take on storytelling film making.
Pacing:
At 1 hour and 26 minutes it is surprising that the film feels a lot longer than it is and I think it is because there are so many stories that the audience experiences that by the end we feel as if it was an intense journey. With each segment, the pacing changes to fit the tone, some really work well, some move extremely fast, and there are some that are flat out excellent.
Challenge:
The film starts out with a corvette in space being deployed to land on Earth near the astronauts home. Inside, is his daughter waiting for him. The Loc-Nar kills the astronaut and sets his sights upon the daughter, taunting and intimidating her as he boasts of his former adventures across the universe.
In many ways the film is about the Loc-Nar, who is also the challenge. Each time it enters a new place the environment and the characters react completely different from the last encounter so it’s never predictable enough for the audience to figure out how it works or even how it may be destroyed.
This was described by the filmmakers as a problem defining what the Loc-Nar does, but I felt that, that sense of unpredictability is exactly the kind of tension that keeps the audience guessing.
Will the Loc-Nar melt your face or be a pretty piece of jewelry? I think it’s brilliant… and it works for me as and entity that describes itself as "the sum of all evils".
It is an excellent challenge.
Empathy:
The empathy in this film is a little tricky without breaking down each segment. The interesting part about it is that with the villain of the story being so very clearly determined as the Loc-Nar, we have various ranges of bad guys and it’s not always clear to see who the good guys are.
However, there are special segments wherein there are well defined heroes. The ultimate story about the Loc-Nar causing all of this action leaves the audience curious about what happens in the end. That investment is pivotal, but I am not sure you could always call it empathy.
This is the part where I really want to break down the segments a bit more, but not in full detail because I don’t want to make my review just be a retort of what happens in the film beat for beat.
The first two segments set up the overarching story of Grimaldi’s daughter being tormented by the Loc-Nar.
In the Harry Canyon segment, in the year 2031 a cab driver gets involved with the mob and a mysterious artifact. Harry is not a do gooder, but he knows how to protect himself in a very efficiently. By the end of the sequence, you want him to succeed because everyone around him is so corrupt.
In the Den segment the Loc-Nar turns a nerdy kid into a musclebound hero and sends him to another dimension. Being nerdy and scrawny myself as a kid, I could totally identify with dreams of one day being big enough or strong enough to protect myself from bullies.
What I also love about Den is that his dialogue is awkward and honest.
The next segment is Captain Sternn. Captain Stern has hired a mild mannered man to lie for him in court. The man’s name is Hanover Fiste, a name playing upon the term, hand over fist, meaning making money. During his testimony he turns into a hulk, then chasing Captain Sternn to deliver justice. Besides being hilariously laden with dark humor, the segment has no solution other than to present the notion that justice is often never served. Hanover Fiste is more concerned with making money than delivering justice as we all want him to do. There are no wholesome parties here.
The next segment is B-17, which is the name of bomber during World War II that becomes over run with zombies. Its an excellently creepy sequence that is sure to give you the chills, but it happens so fast we don’t get to care about the characters and no one gets out alive. Perhaps that is an allegory about life as well, no one gets out alive.
So Beautiful, So Dangerous is a segment where two hippy aliens kidnaps a girl who is wearing the Loc-Nar. The segment is fun and wacky but it had no challenges and no heroes. And it’s just a mashup of cool ideas and visuals. The Loc-Nar is pretty tame in this one. It’s almost as if it is just hitching a ride to get to the world of the next segment and storing up its energy for that encounter because it's the big sha-bang!
In the segment, Taarna, workers in an outpost set upon what they think is a green meteor crashes lands on a volcano.
The meteor is actually the Loc-Nar, which erupts a green ooze that mutates the men into vicious green barbarians that take over their society with violence. The high council summon a Taarna who is a Taarakian champion to defend what is left of their world.
Taarna, is a female warrior giving us all of the satisfaction of seeing her defeat the barbarians and although she never speaks it is quite easy to like this character as she embodies the very spirit of the fantasy genre, being a female, being underestimated, and being quite good at what she does with a moral compass so great that she sacrifices her life to save others.
The epilogue at the end really ties up the story by making Grimaldi’s daughter the next Taarakian champion and I had no idea that I cared about her until the very end.
I felt that it was brilliantly crafted and ends the tale with room to imagine many more epic adventures.
Technical:
Because the film was structured like the magazine, many of the segments of the movie were conceived and designed by separate teams of creators. The aesthetics was different for each one.
For me the art was nearly straight lifted from the pages of the magazine full of color and wild imagination of other worlds, times, and dimensions. All of this is right up my alley.
The scenery and backgrounds were absolutely amazing fantasy visuals, some taken from previous issues of the magazine, and others original, with inspiration from properties they couldn’t procure such as Moebius' Arzach stories which influenced the Taarna sequence which is one of the most memorable and highly regarded sequences in the film.
The use of color really held true to visuals of the comic book genre and the magazine pushing the limits of reality with them.
What helps the stories really feel engrossing is that the animation is a visual spectacle, not always prospectively correct or gracefully rendered, but it found a way to convey a dynamic flair in its execution.
I also feel as if the areas of imperfection of the animation may be what gives the look of the film a gritty texture that added to my personal viewing pleasure. It felt like seeing moving art, in a way.
There was a combination of originally drawn animation, rotoscoping and one particular live action shot. In case you didn’t know the technique of rotoscoping includes shooting models and actors and then tracing them precisely to create a cell of animation to be compiled together into a scene.
It was a time consuming process, but it really helped to make many of the movements of the characters and objects feel realistic at a time when CGI and motion capture did not exist.
When looking at the segment So Beautiful, So Dangerous one would swear that the alien space ship was computer animated. It wasn’t.
The score was wonderfully composed by Elmer Bernstein who also worked on the scores for both this and the John Landis film An American Werewolf in London (1981) at the same time. There is a dreamlike and airy commonality in the two scores.
The theme for Taarna was actually written for the character Alex in Saturn 3 (1980). Since it wasn’t used in that film, he used it in this one which works excellently to convey the wonder of hope in the midst of sadness or loss.
The film took the Heavy Metal in its title seriously loading up the soundtrack with wicked classic rock by artists like Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Devo, Sammy Hagar, Journey, and Stevie Nicks. It helped to remind us of it’s 1970’s origin giving the film a powerful style and energy. I just loved it! Turn the volume up!
Performances:
John Candy was the most noticeable reoccurring voice in the film Desk Sergeant in "Harry Canyon", Dan / Den in "Den", and the Robot in the "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" segment.
Many of the other familiar voices were from John’s SCTV series mates like Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis.
And anyone who sees this film can not forget the impressive voice of the Percy Rodrigues who was the voice of the Loc Nar. What an incredible voice.
Enjoyment:
This film had mixed reviews when it came out and so did many adult themed animations at the time. Many of the comments about the movie was that it was a male juvenile fantasy and made for a stoner audience.
That may be true to an extent, but it then makes no sense why I like it and I am not male or a stoner.
I feel as if, my indoctrination of the magazine was the main reason why I enjoyed it so much. I was already accustomed to this kind of art and the segmented storytelling.
Yes there were many naked female forms in the film playing upon the male fantasy. But to the credit of the film, there was male nudity as well and both sexes were drawn with exaggerated attributes. It is kinda nice to see a film with near equal exploitation.
As a woman now and as a young girl when I saw this film, found the women in the film, whether scheming or heroic, liberated self thinkers in nearly every sequence, but especially the film’s ultimate hero in the Taarna sequence.
The film has influenced our world today. It seems Elon Musk loved the movie and was influenced by opening segment, Soft Landing.
Blade Runner and The Fifth Element were both said to be influenced by the floating cars in Harry Canyon segment. Corbin Dallas is a scruffy taxi driver whose life is changed by an orange haired passenger just like Harry.
Besides that, the film’s cult following has kept the buzz about this movie going for so many years, myself included.
What really ensnared me was the way the film was able to capture the charm and the spirit of Heavy Metal Magazine.
Every time I watch this film it reminds me of what it felt like to flip through a really great issue of Heavy Metal Magazine as a kid or even some of my favorite graphic novels that I used to spend hours and hours reading over and over again trying to absorb all of the creativity therein.
I remember imaging for a moment that I was part of these worlds and although some of them were dark and the humor was cryptic and ironic, I loved taking that mental escape. And for a time afterwards I always felt renewed and eager to create my own warrior princess or magical beast for her to destroy. I just felt inspired to create.
It’s a beautiful memory and I’m glad to have this movie to remind me of it.
My Rating:
9.5
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
If you enjoy my content and want me to continue you can help at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/retronerdgirl
Follow Retro Nerd Girl on twitter: https://twitter.com/Retro_Nerd_Girl
Like Retro Nerd Girl on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/retronerdgirl
No comments:
Post a Comment