Louder and nastier than ever!
Move over, Walt Disney, for a wild and wicked animated adventure. Based upon the successful comic book series of the same title, "Heavy Metal" is unlike any other animated motion picture that has ever been released. With Ivan Reitman producing and Gerald Potterton directing from a screenplay writen by Dan Goldberg and Len Blum, the work was expedited by having several animation houses working simultaneously on different segments, including CinéGroupe and Atkinson Film-Arts. The end result is a fabulous cohesive selection of varied animated pieces all tied together within a central theme; the individual stories are connected together by the presence of a green glowing sphere called the Loc-Nar. The individual segments are as follows: "Soft Landing", "Grimaldi", "Harry Canyon", "Den", "Captain Sternn", "B-17", "So Beautiful And So Dangerous" and "Taarna". The characters were voiced by actors such as John Vernon, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis and John Candy. The soundtrack score was composed by the legendary Elmer Bernstein, conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. There was also an additional soundtrack released that featured songs by some of the top rock artists of the time: Riggs, Blue Oyster Cult, Donald Fagen, Stevie Nicks, Journey, Cheap Trick, Don Felder, Grand Funk Railroad, Nazareth, Trust, Black Sabbath and Devo. Among the songs included: Devo's reworking of the Lee Dorsey hit "Working In The Coal Mine", Sammy Hagar's track "Heavy Metal" from his "Standing Hampton" album and the classic Journey ballad "Open Arms". There were many animation specialists that were recruited from all over the world to contribute their talents to this production. The film uses the rotoscoping technique of animation in several shots. This process consists of shooting models and actors, then tracing the shot onto film for animation purposes. The B-17 bomber was shot using a 10-foot replica, which was then animated. Additionally Taarna the Taarakian was rotoscoped, using Toronto model Carole Desbiens as a model for the animated character. The shot of the exploding house at the end of the Grimaldi sequence was originally to be rotoscoped, but as the film's release date had been moved up from October/November to August 7, 1981, a lack of time prevented this. This remains as the only non-animated sequence in the film. "Heavy Metal" stands as a fine animated feature of the early 80s.Read full review
