Heavy Metal (1981 film)

The Loc-Nar menaces a girl in Heavy Metal (1981 film)...

Summary

"Columbia Pictures takes you beyond the future into a universe you've never seen before. A universe of mystery. A universe of magic. A universe of sexual fantasies. A universe of awesome good. A universe of terrifying evil. A step beyond science fiction." A glowing green orb which embodies ultimate evil terrorizes a young girl with an anthology of bizarre and fantastic stories of dark fantasy and horror.

Details

• Release Date: 1981
• Country/Language: Canada, English
• Genres/Technical: Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, animated, anthology, musical
• Setting: Dreamlands, Weird World War, Cthulhu Icarus, and others
• Runtime: 1 hr 26 min
• Starring: (various)
• Director: Gerald Potterton (and various others)
• Writer: Dan O'Bannon (and various others)
• Producer/Production Co: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Guardian Trust Company, Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC)
• View Trailer: (Not Work-Safe), (TV Trailer)
• TVTropes: (link)
• IMDB Page: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: R (animated Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, Sexual Situations, and Profanity)

The film is loaded with enough animated sex and nudity that it has always been difficult to edit the film to meet the demands of network television broadcast standards and practices; the segment "Den" is typically removed altogether because attempting to remove its omnipresent nudity would have rendered anything left of that segment unwatchable.

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)

The invasive, corrupting influence of the green, glowing "Loc-Nar" sphere as it travels through time and space might be loosely compared to "The Colour Out of Space (fiction)", the stories generally seem to take place in a sort of sci-fi/fantasy Dreamlands setting, at least one story appears to be a pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter stories and Robert E. Howard's Conan and Bran Mak Morn, etc., and some of the better stories are a nice mix of horror, fantasy, and/or science fiction, though the film as a whole is a little bit too schlocky, over-the-top, and rule-of-cool to ever end up feeling like a Lovecraftian pastiche in any but the loosest sense.

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• (review needed)

Synopsis (SPOILERS)

• "Soft Landing" ("Grimaldi") - Wrap-around segment which begins with an astronaut riding through Earth's atmosphere in a classic convertible, soft-landing, and speeding to his house, to deliver a mysterious artifact to his daughter for her birthday; the artifact, a green, glowing sphere called the "Loc-Nar", immediately melts the astronaut before his daughter's eyes, and then terrorizes the girl with visions of the other stories from the anthology.
• "Harry Canyon" - A cyberpunk-noir detective story in which a femme-fatale archaeologist's daughter hires a cab driver to help her protect the Loc-Nar from a gang of thugs.
• "Den" - About a skinny nerd who travels to the Dreamlands, where he takes the form of a mighty barbarian-king who hacks-and-slashes his way through kingdoms ruled by witch-queens and decadent sorcerer-princes to save a girl from sacrifice to the Loc-Nar.
• "Captain Sternn" - A smug star-ship captain on trial for his many crimes against humanity (and inhumanity) turns to geeky character witness Hanover Fiste to get him out of trouble, not realizing that Fiste has found the Loc-Nar; Fiste mutates into a hideous ogre, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake as he pursues Sternn from the courtroom to a double-twist-ending.
• "B-17" - In what is often regarded as the scariest and best segment of the anthology, a WW-II bomber, shot to pieces during its latest bombing run, encounters the Loc-Nar while struggling to remain airborne for its return trip; the Loc-Nar raises the dead crew as undead monsters, and forces the survivors to crash in a surreal and nightmarish haunted warplane's graveyard....
• "So Beautiful, So Dangerous" - a forgettable comic relief segment involving a UFO crewed by stoner androids and aliens and the sexy Earth secretary they abduct to join their sex-and-drug-fueled space party.
• "Taarna" - The last of a race of leather-clad, sword-wielding, giant-bird-riding warrior nuns tasked as Defenders of a fantasy world by sacred pact, is called upon to take vengeance upon a sadistic army raised and mutated by the Loc-Nar....
• "Epilogue" - After Taarna defeats the mutant army and destroys the Loc-Nar, the wrap-around segment concludes with the Loc-Nar shattering, and the astronaut's daughter becoming the next Defender, riding off to the Dreamlands on Taarna's bird....

Notes

Comments, Trivia, Dedication

• Named for the fantasy magazine of the same name.
• Features a hard-rock soundtrack provided by Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Journey, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, Devo, Grand Funk Railroad, and others....

Associated Mythos Elements

• TO DO
• artifact: Loc-Nar (compare very loosely to the Colour Out of Space)
• fiction: the segment "Den" appears to have been inspired by the fantasy work of Robert E. Howard and (especially) Edgar Rice Burroughs
• setting: Dreamlands, Cthulhu Icarus, Weird World War
• name-dropping:
  • As in the magazine, the evil emanation Den battles is called "Ulultc" - a variation on the name of Cthulhu spelled backwards...