Escape to the Movies: Heavy Metal
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I was born in '78, so I wasn't actually old to watch the original at release, but I watched it in the 90's. Shrooms helped A LOT, watching it the second time. And at least the second movie was, in fact, a pretty obvious sequel, even though it kinda roared off on a tangent, pretty quickly.IronChuck said:
I must wholeheartedly disagree. Heavy Metal was the single greatest thing that ever came out of 80s pop culture. And the reason is because it's entertaining. The movie has no misconceptions about taking itself seriously, the creators knew that. Watching the movie you can't think they were taking it seriously. For the love o' Pete there's a bar fight in which the "futuristic" version of DEVO are playing.
Yes it's not very good, but that's really what makes it great. In the same way that I watch movies like Commando, Rush Hour, Bad Boys and a whole host of other movies starring Will Smith, I watch the movies to have stupid, mindless entertainment. You want to know why? Because when I watch a movie: it's what I'm looking for.
But I digress, we have different opinions, it should not go further than that. In the end, it's all just good Niborg, man.
Yes it's not very good, but that's really what makes it great. In the same way that I watch movies like Commando, Rush Hour, Bad Boys and a whole host of other movies starring Will Smith, I watch the movies to have stupid, mindless entertainment. You want to know why? Because when I watch a movie: it's what I'm looking for.
But I digress, we have different opinions, it should not go further than that. In the end, it's all just good Niborg, man.
Heavy Metal is just another one of those movies whose status as a classic hinged almost entirely upon its ability to freak out 'square' society. If women had Topfreedom then, it wouldn't have even been a blip on the pop culture radar. That pretty much goes for far too many things in pop culture in general. Crap like BMX XXX hardly even rates as a cultural curiousity in Europe since they aren't seeing anything that they can't see on a beach without having to endure the awful graphics and tedious potty humor of that game.
Seriously, since girls don't have to go to the same lengths to see man 'boobage', they don't hold up fare of dubious quality such as the Gidget movies as true classics. No, they could just look at a Lass Mag poster of some teen heart throb in a wet t-shirt or no shirt if they really wanted to, not that it would give them the thrill of acquiring forbidden knowledge that the lads get from 'rediscovering' something that most people saw as a baby on a regular basis (but not attached to their mothers this time).
What little value it had besides that would have been lost had Disney not become synonymous with both animation and virtual puritanism. If Uncie Walt had made some PG-13 or R-rated movies himself, there wouldn't have been anything for the makers of Heavy Metal to rebel against.
It's a real shame, though. Heavy Metal has some great thought provoking stories that have nothing to do with violence or its counterpart.
If they had only gotten Moebius involved in Heavy Metal 2000, all could have been forgiven for the original but what they did only assured that Heavy Metal would never be viable as animation again.
Oh yeah, this movie had animated penis in it. Watch the scene where the guy falls into the inky green void for an example. That makes it value for girls even higher than for boys!
Seriously, since girls don't have to go to the same lengths to see man 'boobage', they don't hold up fare of dubious quality such as the Gidget movies as true classics. No, they could just look at a Lass Mag poster of some teen heart throb in a wet t-shirt or no shirt if they really wanted to, not that it would give them the thrill of acquiring forbidden knowledge that the lads get from 'rediscovering' something that most people saw as a baby on a regular basis (but not attached to their mothers this time).
What little value it had besides that would have been lost had Disney not become synonymous with both animation and virtual puritanism. If Uncie Walt had made some PG-13 or R-rated movies himself, there wouldn't have been anything for the makers of Heavy Metal to rebel against.
It's a real shame, though. Heavy Metal has some great thought provoking stories that have nothing to do with violence or its counterpart.
If they had only gotten Moebius involved in Heavy Metal 2000, all could have been forgiven for the original but what they did only assured that Heavy Metal would never be viable as animation again.
Oh yeah, this movie had animated penis in it. Watch the scene where the guy falls into the inky green void for an example. That makes it value for girls even higher than for boys!
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHA!
HAPPY NEW YEAR BOB! You just made mine awesome!
So it's great to have corroborating opinion on this one: I went on an old-school Adult Animation trip (or as the video store labeled its section, "Cartoons for Big Kids") a couple years ago which started with Ralph Bakshi's Wizards and a little Nelvana gem called Rock & Rule, and it ended quickly with Heavy Metal. Nothing worse than watching a film called Heavy Metal and listening to Journey's love ballad and fucking Steely Dan. Yea, Aja's great, if you love sitting around sipping wine and contemplating your mid-life crisis, not so much saving the fucking universe and seeing lots of tits.
BTW, Rock & Rule is awesome and I'll tell you why: music by Cheap Trick, Blondie, Lou Reed, and the finale is an awesome duet by Debbie Harry and Robin Zander. And it's about rat-people starting a punk band and being corrupted by an evil force voiced by Lou Reed. Also, instead of Heavy Metal's tits you get lots of futuristic drug use. God fucking damn is it cheap and shitty and mind-blowingly awesome.
HAPPY NEW YEAR BOB! You just made mine awesome!
So it's great to have corroborating opinion on this one: I went on an old-school Adult Animation trip (or as the video store labeled its section, "Cartoons for Big Kids") a couple years ago which started with Ralph Bakshi's Wizards and a little Nelvana gem called Rock & Rule, and it ended quickly with Heavy Metal. Nothing worse than watching a film called Heavy Metal and listening to Journey's love ballad and fucking Steely Dan. Yea, Aja's great, if you love sitting around sipping wine and contemplating your mid-life crisis, not so much saving the fucking universe and seeing lots of tits.
BTW, Rock & Rule is awesome and I'll tell you why: music by Cheap Trick, Blondie, Lou Reed, and the finale is an awesome duet by Debbie Harry and Robin Zander. And it's about rat-people starting a punk band and being corrupted by an evil force voiced by Lou Reed. Also, instead of Heavy Metal's tits you get lots of futuristic drug use. God fucking damn is it cheap and shitty and mind-blowingly awesome.
Sweet. One of my all time fav's getting a review out of the blue all of the sudden. New Years no less. Heavy Metal FTW.
Now an interesting comparison would be the original with Heavy Metal 2. Why is one a movie for the ages and another... not so much, in fact nowhere close.
The original and the magazine reach deep within, even if on the surface it is a shaky production.
Now, if they could only make a good computer game.
Now an interesting comparison would be the original with Heavy Metal 2. Why is one a movie for the ages and another... not so much, in fact nowhere close.
The original and the magazine reach deep within, even if on the surface it is a shaky production.
Now, if they could only make a good computer game.
gee thanks alot bob , now i'm really depressed ,reminding me that i'm old ... lol saw heavy metal on new years eve along with blade runner , it's my new years tradition because i'm on call and can't party... yeah the boobs part is funny , i remember doing that too ... todays kids got it made
I would just like to say everyone should see the Heavy Metal movies. The stories were original and unique compared to the same plots, actors playing to same type of roles in genre films and basically everything else Hollywood spews out nowadays. Plus Heavy Metal had everything a scifi (not SYFY that's just stupid) junkie wanted in a movie; violence, gore/blood, robot sex, and of course BOOBS!
Robot sex! WOW, you just made my day!Hitman897119 said:
Off topic: Bob makes a reference around 4:47 about a comic part in heavy metal that resembles one in Futarama and an other cartoon which name I can't manage to catch! What is it named and in which year was it made? It looks really interesting from the picture + I would like to try and see it.
I shall remain grateful to whomever gives me an answer(or enought info) to help me.
fortunately for me I was born in 1990. 
this means that i have always (almost anyway) had access to the net. Sorry Bob I can't even imagine what a world without google pictures would be like for a 10 - 12 year-old boy.
this means that i have always (almost anyway) had access to the net. Sorry Bob I can't even imagine what a world without google pictures would be like for a 10 - 12 year-old boy. 
MovieBob said:I've really gotta start remembering to put a "for those of us growing up in the U.S." on these nostalgia trips... the fact that I've got an international viewership still blows my friggin' mind...Jamash said:
I remember hearing about the casual cheesecake in the tabs from British friends way back in the day, and half the time I figured they were makin' it up...
And the classic question of "Why do the old people who run things in the US hate boobies?" comes out. I have a theory that I wrote in my Dr. Strangelove analysis for my high school history class but it is kinda long and I don't feel like posting it.
Even as a 30-something myself, having that backdrop of the Heavy Metal magazine explained help me to understand why it had such a disjointed train wreck of a plot. Half the episodes I saw, I'm like, "WTF does this have to do with that big killer orb thingy?" Sure, it's supposed to be a collection of various evils that the orb has propagated over the millenia, but it's not very compellingly communicated. The whole movie plays out like a clip show.
But then, we're talking a 1981 movie. If you're 30, it was released when you were about 1 year old. So this movie is even older than you might think, any 35 year-old thinking back to the days when they were adolescents foraging for porn at the urgings of hormones should realize what they were really doing was scrounging for a decade-old movie that they hoped the adults had forgotten.
I never did get to see an uncensored version of it. But then, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I'm sure I've seen Hentai that was about 50 times more explicit. Really, looking back at Heavy Metal, it seems like it was much more of a stoner movie, the music was mostly stoner music and it comes down to psychedelic drug use more than once.
[Whoops, didn't expect that youtube link would actually have some nudity. Removed link to establish there's drug use.]
But then, we're talking a 1981 movie. If you're 30, it was released when you were about 1 year old. So this movie is even older than you might think, any 35 year-old thinking back to the days when they were adolescents foraging for porn at the urgings of hormones should realize what they were really doing was scrounging for a decade-old movie that they hoped the adults had forgotten.
I never did get to see an uncensored version of it. But then, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I'm sure I've seen Hentai that was about 50 times more explicit. Really, looking back at Heavy Metal, it seems like it was much more of a stoner movie, the music was mostly stoner music and it comes down to psychedelic drug use more than once.
[Whoops, didn't expect that youtube link would actually have some nudity. Removed link to establish there's drug use.]
I remember watching squiggly boobs on those naughty cable channels my parents didn't pay for. If you were lucky, the picture would come out mostly clear for a few seconds at a time, and then you just had to try to ignore the green and pink color distortions. If you were unlucky, you'd have to hope the boob happened to fall within that narrow stripe at the edge of the screen that was clear.
Bob, don't forget this period you're talking about was also the height of AIDS awareness, and (at least at my school) they were cramming the fear of date rape and sexual harassment accusations into our heads every chance they got. I'll take my disease-free and jail-free cartoon boobs now, please.
Bob, don't forget this period you're talking about was also the height of AIDS awareness, and (at least at my school) they were cramming the fear of date rape and sexual harassment accusations into our heads every chance they got. I'll take my disease-free and jail-free cartoon boobs now, please.
"thirty something movie geeks like me"
"What else was made in 1981: ME"
Well, also being made in 1981 and not yet being "thirty something" have you personally fucked with the space time continuum or are you just talking bollocks (as they say 'round 'ere) like most of your movie reviews?
You're not yahtzee for movies, but the trilby down and step away from the vcr..
"What else was made in 1981: ME"
Well, also being made in 1981 and not yet being "thirty something" have you personally fucked with the space time continuum or are you just talking bollocks (as they say 'round 'ere) like most of your movie reviews?
You're not yahtzee for movies, but the trilby down and step away from the vcr..