Ivan Reitman would later say (on the documentary featurette Imagining 'Heavy Metal' [1999]), "I think the Baby Boom generation... was just at that age where we were ready for a piece of animation that wasn't just focused on kids. Back in 1980, with the exception of Ralph Bakshi, no one had ever thought about making cartoons for adults that had a kind of outrageous quality." Reitman had been in pre-production on the Bill Murray comedy Stripes (1981), so he asked that film's scriptwriters, Len Blum and Dan Goldberg, to look through issues of Heavy Metal for stories to adapt to animation, and to come up with a linking story. The producers discovered that some of the magazine artists, such as Jean Giraud (aka Moebius), were not willing to have their work adapted. Blum and Goldberg were then tasked to write a few new Heavy Metal-like stories directly for the film.
In 1980 there were few studios capable of turning out a feature-length animated movie aside from Disney. Reitman realized that the logical approach to his anthology was to have small "boutique" animation studios work on different segments of the film, since distinct artistic styles were desired anyway. Also, the tight release date could only be met if the film were produced in several locations simultaneously. Most of the financing for Heavy Metal came from Canada, so Reitman hired Gerald Potterton, a veteran of several National Film Board of Canada animation projects, to supervise the final assembly as the film's director. However, each of the eight segments of the film had their own segment director, located at studios in London, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles.
The final segments of Heavy Metal range in length from two minutes to 23 minutes and include:
"Soft Landing" - a visually arresting opener based on a magazine story written by Dan O'Bannon, the scripter of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). It involves a 1959 Corvette being "driven" from low orbit to reentry into Earth's atmosphere.
"Grimaldi" was created as the framing story by Blum and Goldberg, in which an astronaut brings to Earth, and into his house, a glowing green orb called the Loc-Nar, which transfixes his daughter.
"Harry Canyon" is another Blum and Goldberg original, centering on Canyon, a cab driver in New York City in the year 2025.
"Den" was probably the most anticipated adaptation from the magazine; it was based on the serialized story by artist Richard Corben.
"Captain Sternn" was based on a magazine story by Bernie Wrightson. Set on a space station, it is a comedy depicting the trial of the pompous Captain Sternn, who tries to bribe a character witness named Hanover Fiste, with disastrous results.
"B-17" was also written by Dan O'Bannon and partially storyboarded by comics artist Mike Ploog. It is a grisly tale in the style of EC Comics about a WWII bomber crew being overcome by zombies.
"So Beautiful and So Dangerous" was based on a story by Angus McKie from the magazine; it begins on a grand and somber tone but soon turns to comedy as some Earthlings are sucked into a large spaceship operated by two "stoner" robots in the Cheech and Chong vein.
"Taarna" clocks in as the longest segment of the film at 23 minutes. Another Blum and Goldberg original, it involves the journey of a powerful warrior maiden who seeks revenge on a barbarian tribe who destroyed her peaceful city. This segment attempts to channel the work of Moebius from the magazine.
Given the nature of the production, it is not surprising that the animation quality varies greatly from segment to segment. Overall, while there are some uses of rotoscoping (that is, some degree of tracing of previously shot live-action footage in the creation of cartoon footage), there is a higher percentage of traditional character animation on view. One effect that is used in several instances was created by filming live-action props or backgrounds via high contrast black-and-white footage, then printing the resulting images to cels and painting them. This method was used to capture the Corvette in the opening sequence (a full sized car was used), the B-17 bomber (filmed as a 7-ft. long model), and the landscapes that Taarna flies over in the final segment. Other sequences used a costly variation of the multi-plane animation stand set-up that Disney had pioneered in the 1930s.
Knowing full well that the movie would be R-rated, the producers exploited to the hilt the magazine's penchant for violence and nudity. As some critics observed, the filmmakers tended toward a juvenile approach to the material, however - more exploitative than the magazine. The playing field was not level, either. The film does not shy away from full frontal animated female nudity, but becomes coy during the "Den" segment, and covers the male protagonist in a loincloth in stark contrast with the magazine depiction which featured full nudity.
Ivan Reitman had been friends with the Second City comedy troupe in Canada since the days of his earliest films, Foxy Lady (1971) and Cannibal Girls (1973). The voice talents he assembled for Heavy Metal included Stripes stars John Candy and Harold Ramis, as well as fellow Second City comics Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty. The film was rushed to completion because of an August release date insisted upon by distributor Columbia Pictures. (In the process the movie lost one segment, a virtuoso wordless piece called "Neverwhere," animated by Cornelius Cole III). Heavy Metal grossed nearly $20 Million in its first release, but it had a life beyond that on the Midnight Movie circuit.
In his review appearing in the genre magazine Cinefantastique (Volume 11, Number 4), Tim Lucas compared the film unfavorably to the magazine, calling it a "patchily-animated, muggingly-written screen edition." Of the design and animation, Lucas said, "Its look is constantly readjusting from that of the glossiest, air-brushed futurism to that of the stiffest Saturday morning mindrot imaginable - not only from story to story, but from scene to scene, from backgrounds to foregrounds." Of the much-anticipated "Den" segment, Lucas wrote that "sadly, Corben's scorchingly colorful, meticulously ripened imagery is represented by a nervous, sketchy animation that sucks all the identifying juice from his color schemes. The scripting is Gosh Wow from start to finish, with personality sacrificed to the seamy prurience of an immature mind." The reviewer has kinder words for the "Captain Sternn" segment, but finds little to commend for the remainder, and sums up: "While the stories exhibit an imagination at work somewhere, their content is too emotionally limited to be felt as anything but negative and unhealthy."
The use of a wide variety of rock artists from a number of different record labels led to a contractual nightmare when it came time to release Heavy Metal to the home video market. The soundtrack featured music by Devo, Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath and many others, apparently signed for theatrical release and a soundtrack LP, but nothing else. Music rights were tied up for years, and while the film continued to pop up on cable television and on the Midnight Movie circuit, it was not available for rental or purchase until 1996. Prior to the release, Columbia Pictures reissued the film for another theatrical run that same year.
Producer: Ivan Reitman
Director: Gerald Potterton
Screenplay: Dan Goldberg, Len Bloom (screenplay); Dan O'Bannon (story "Soft Landing" and "B-17"), Richard Corben (story "Den"), Bernie Wrightson (story "Captain Sternn"), Dan Goldberg, Len Bloom (story "Harry Canyon" and "Taarna"), Angus McKie (story "So Beautiful and So Dangerous")
Production Design: Michael Gross
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Film Editing: Ian Llande, Mick Manning, Gerald Tripp
Voice Cast: Rodger Bumpass, John Candy, Jackie Burroughs, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks, Martin Lavut, Marilyn Lightstone, Eugene Levy, Alice Playten, Harold Ramis, Susan Roman, August Schellenberg, Richard Romanus, John Vernon.
C-95m.
By John M. Miller
