Heavy Metal - The Motion Picture

So I first saw this when I was seven years old.  It was on HBO during the annual family reunion & beach vacation at Myrtle Beach.  All of the cousins & my brothers were trying to figure out a way to get to watch it & something happened where one aunt & uncle were at another aunt & uncle’s hotel room & everyone gathered there to watch, but I was five years younger than the youngest of that group of cousins so I ended up for some reason watching it while my parents were in the next room drinking their liquor drinks.  Anyway, the animation totally blew me away (the best looking cartoon I had probably seen up to that point was probably Starblazers as we didn’t have cable at home & the animation explosion of 1983 hadn’t yet happened) & as a Star Wars fan the sci-fi had an immediate appeal.  The nudity & language & violence didn’t strike me as odd or unusual or exciting, just factual.  The next time I saw it I was 16 & amongst the guys in my age range the movie had reached this cult status as a weird childhood memory (it seemed like every one had managed to see it as a kid that summer of 1982) & it was on one night at 3am & my buddy Jason recorded it & I got to see it again.  I was pretty shocked by the volume of nudity that time out & even more shocked by the volume of John Candy doing the voices.  So that takes me up until pretty recently with the movie.

So yesterday I saw Heavy Metal 2000 & thought it was pretty bad.  So I decided to watch the original.  The animation quality I think is still pretty awesome, I’d be willing to put it up against Akira or Avatar or whatever - while not the most computer clean cutting edge it has a style of its own that really works.  The nudity in it for me is weird because the boobs in it look like water balloons about to explode more than actual breasts.  But the short stories of it work really well.  15 minute chunks of self-contained loosely connected stories with little characterization is pretty ideal for sci-fi to me.  All of the segments are great with sections that are film noir, sword & sorcery, Twilight Zone-y, post apocalyptic, & just plain fun.  Of course one of the movies claims to fame is its soundtrack & I think the way the music is put in here is pretty awesome.  So many times I see movies where the music volume is blaring & it all just sits right in this & cuts in & out well.  I mean, clearly this movie is mainly made for pubescent boys into sci-fi, but I stand by it as a good movie & am shocked by how well it stands for being 30 years old & part of my childhood.