This article is about the 1981 animated film. For other uses, see heavy metal.
Heavy Metal is a Canadian animated film released in 1981 and directed by Ivan Reitman with the cooperation of various international animation studios. The film is an anthology of various adult oriented science fiction and fantasy stories adapted from the comic book Heavy Metal magazine and original stories in the same spirit. Like the magazine, the film has an unusual amount of bloody violence, nudity and sexuality for a North American animated film, especially in the time before the popularity of adult oriented Japanese anime.
Table of contents |
2 Critical Reaction 3 Popular Reaction |
These stories are in order:
The critics were generally dismissive complaining that the film was wildly uneven and appealed only to adolescent tastes.
Plot Summary
The movie's framing story is about a little girl who is terrorized by a glowing green orb, The Loc-Nar who claims to be the sum of all evil who kills her father and then shows her a bizarre series of tales to illustrate his malevolent influenceCritical Reaction
Popular Reaction
The film enjoyed only limited appeal in its initial run, but the film became a popular cult attraction for midnight theatrical showings much like Rocky Horror Picture Show. The film's mystique was hightened when legal problems with the film's music rights kept the film off the commercial home video market for 15 years which allowed the film to have a kind of rare appeal since viewers could see it only in theatres or in bootleg recordings. In 1996, the legal issues were resolved and the film is now in general availability.