Why Heavy Metal (1981) Still Blasts Minds Decades Later—And What Your Zodiac Sign Has to Do With It
Added on May 22, 2025 inEntertainment News Cards, Movie News Cards
Popular
Numerology Meets Netflix: Get Your Daily Dose of Cosmic Cinema Suggestions Powered By Our AI Astrologer. Find The Show Or Movie You Were Meant To See!
Then Join Our FREE Newsletter To Watch Your Choice Of Movies And Shows For FREE Plus Get The Latest Entertainment News And Updates!
If the planets lined up just right to throw a cosmic, wild, and wickedly sexy head trip your way, it’d probably look a lot like Heavy Metal — that 1981 cult animated flick that’s as much a freaky anthology sci-fi fever dream as it is a rocking soundtrack assault on your eardrums. With Mercury currently doing its usual retrograde mischief, what better time to revisit a movie that was itself trapped in a licensing nightmare before finally hitting cult classic status 44 years later? I mean, this isn’t your typical Saturday morning cartoon – it’s raw, raunchy, and unapologetically adult, weaving together stories about a green orb described as the “sum of all evils,” zombies, alien abductions, and a post-apocalyptic future — all with an ’80s flair that simultaneously melts faces and raises eyebrows today.
But here’s the million-dollar question as that fiery Mars keeps shaking things up in your sign: Does Heavy Metal still slay, or has it become a relic best left collecting cosmic dust? We’re diving deep into the sex, the sleaze, the gore, and the groovy score to see if this animated wild child holds up or just howls at the moon from the past. Buckle up — it’s gonna be one heck of a midnight ride.
Adult animation isn’t something that gets talked about enough. Paving the way for today’s movie were things like Fritz the Cat, Lord of the Rings which is not expressly adult of course, and Wizards. Let us know if we should talk about Wizards in some form by the way. Other movies that firmly tie into a similar vein of Heavy Metal are American Pop from the same year and Fire and Ice from a couple years later. While a bunch of the animated movies listed or even not listed fall under the sex comedy, fantasy, or recreation of modern life, Heavy Metal is something else entirely. It’s an anthology sci-fi, horror, comedy, action, fantasy that has a rocking soundtrack and earns its hard R rating. It was held back from being on video for a while due to licensing issues but has become an endearing cult classic 44 years later. What that begs us to ask though is does Heavy Metal stand the test of time? Get your one-way ticket to midnight as we find out.
The Plot
Heavy Metal isn’t just the movie topic of today’s video essay or even a style of music. Heavy Metal was a magazine that had a hell of a run. First from 1977 to 1990, then again from 92 to 2023 with hopes that it will rise again. While it did slow down from monthly to bi-monthly to quarterly, it was a damn institution and found a way to get around the vaunted comics code. It was able to have as much sex and nudity and language as it wanted to because instead of being just a comic book like the old EC horror comics earlier in the century, it ran itself as a magazine that just happened to house the comics. In addition to giving fans of sci-fi and cyberpunk their fill of illustrated sleaze and violence, it also started out as a translated publishing of a French magazine called Metal Hurlant that introduced American audiences to a huge number of French artists.
Ivan Reitman was a fan of the magazine and secured a deal with Columbia Pictures to get a film off the ground. While a lot of the previous adult animated features followed just one story, Heavy Metal would be an anthology movie that adapted several stories directly from the magazine as well as a few original ones in the style of the other stories included. Like all anthology movies, there would be a framing story that linked all the other portions together and the movie also included an opening credits sequence. Animated movies take a lot longer than you’d think and are in production for some time typically, but Heavy Metal worked with a few different studios concurrently which helped move the production time up quite a bit. The original idea for the framing story was originally based on Arzach which was featured in the French version of the magazine but creator Jean Giraud, also known as Mobius, was not pleased with how it was looking so the green orb and Taarna were created instead.
The list of animators and creators is staggering, and many segments were re-written both to branch the stories into each other but also for creative purposes. Reitman was even involved in a lawsuit that was settled out of court when the opening sequence took too long. The overall director chosen by Reitman for the project ended up being Gerald Potterton and he oversaw another 9 directors. Potterton only has this movie as a major credit for direction but he had a legacy far before that with being the animator on Yellow Submarine for The Beatles. Some of the other names that directed segments were John Bruno who has done many visual effects for James Cameron films, Jimmy Murakami who also directed the powerhouse Where the Wind Blows in 1986, and Jack Stokes who directed the Beatles animated series among others.
Among the 6 writers on the movie are channel favorite Dan O’Bannon who I think I’ve now covered everything of his except Dark Star, Daniel Goldberg who gave us Meatballs and Stripes, and Bernie Wrightson who created the character of Swamp Thing. The last piece of the puzzle would be voice recording. Ya know, the people who are to be directed and reading the screenplays written. Ivan Reitman was able to bring with him some of the cast members of his other 1981 release in Stripes so we would get the vocal stylings of John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis, and even their SCTV pal Eugene Levy among others and they would voice multiple roles for the most part. John Vernon, Don Francks, Jackie Burroughs, and Susan Roman also add character voices.
The stories all revolve around a green orb that varies in size but is also known as the sum of all evils. We see a cab driver get caught up in a mob theft of an artifact, a nerdy teenager get sent to a faraway land with some physical upgrades, a courtroom farce, a WWII zombie attack, an alien abduction story, and an uprising in a post-apocalyptic future. There is also an opening credit sequence and a wraparound framing story that shows the sum of all evils telling a girl all these stories before he claims to destroy her. The movie was released on August 7th, 1981, and made a solid return with just over 20 million on its 9-million-dollar budget. Its reviews were mixed with all of the talking points being around how juvenile it was, for better and for worse. It played midnight shows and had a strong showing on laser disc but missed out on other home releases for a while due to rights issues. It had a sequel in 2000 and while it had multiple attempted reboots, Love Death and Robots was actually originally Heavy Metal, so we did get something after 35 years.
Signs of the Time
First and foremost, let’s talk about the very nature of anthology films. While I think this one is pretty close to the cream of the crop with things like 1972’s Tales from the Crypt and 1982’s Creepshow, it’s still a little uneven and that’s just how anthology flicks work. Everyone is going to have their favorite and everyone is going to have the one they want to skip or don’t absolutely love. Looking at the voice actors is also a dead giveaway of the time with members of SCTV all working together on this very Canadian production and even many of the actors who were in Stripes overlapping in this other Ivan Reitman production. Two story elements that are very relevant here are how we viewed the future to look like with my favorite being a billboard for Jaws 7 when only Jaws 1 and 2 existed. You have run down parts of the city and hovering cars with death ray lasers.
All this in the far-off year of 2031, ya know, 6 years from now. Gulp. The other thing that stands out is the sexy but not functional armor that is now a meta joke in video games or comedy but very much just the way animators of these types of stories did things. Taarna looks incredibly sexy but she’s not blocking a strong gust of wind let alone weapons. Finally, the elements that certainly date Heavy Metal, but in the most endearing way are the MTV ass opening credits with the rotoscoped astronaut driving to his home, the loaded soundtrack, and the animation style or styles as it were with the different animation houses working on the project concurrently.
Holds up
About those animations styles and that soundtrack. They are just as great today as they were 44 years ago. Cheap Trick, Don Henley, Sammy Hagar, Devo, Don Felder, Black Sabbath, and the rest all give the movie their tunes that fit perfectly in the stories they are used in. It’s one of the few soundtracks that I use to write to as much as I rock out in my car to. The animation, while clearly different from story to story all has character and makes each story feel unique and fun. The dialogue and voice acting are all top notch and credit to the actors giving different nuances with their characters. Do all the characters that John Candy voiced sound like John Candy? Of course! But they are all distinct characters too and some of the humor and one liners are great.
The rhyming trilogy of gore, score, and horror all ring true with rewatches as well. The score shifts not only between the wonderful song choices but also is appropriate for whatever is going on on screen with comedy, action, or horror. While there isn’t a ton of horror to be had, mostly in the B-17 story, it hits hard and comes out of nowhere. It’s the best example of these vignettes often feeling like old stories out of EC comics lines Shock and Suspense or their horror and sci-fi fare. The gore is substantial and follows the feel of the comic with not shying away from sex and violence. People tend to melt or get shot with bullets, lasers, and arrows while we as the audience are not spared any of the details, another call back to the loose scruples of the original magazine. The movie is also a coming-of-age movie for its audience in stages. My brother would show me the B-17 horror short first and slowly let me into more and more as I got older. It’s definitely not a kid’s animated movie but that doesn’t mean it can’t be filtered out little by little. Finally, the sleaze is an unhinged blast with plenty to ogle on both sides but…
What doesn’t hold up
The sleaze could also be seen as problematic at times or at the very least something you wouldn’t see anymore. While there are overly buff men, the nudity ratio and body types for women are far more ridiculous than men. I don’t have a problem with it personally but guarantee it would raise eyebrows similar to something like Sausage Party, if not worse. There are also some gaps here and there, first in some of the animation, particularly the first story, and also in some of the humor which wasn’t funny then and isn’t funny now. One thing that I was going to have issue with is the exploding house at the end but apparently it was going to be rotoscoped, but they ran out of time and money. While it doesn’t look good, I’ll give them a pass. My last issue really is just that the main villain isn’t that intimidating and the framing story just kind of falls flat and feels unnecessary. Even the last story feeling overlong is better than the little girl talking to the sum of all evil, cool voice and all.
Verdict
I tried to go into this movie with zero rose tinted glasses as you can see by my attempt to explain what doesn’t hold up. While I think some of the criticism is valid, the movie is just so damn cool and unique. Its still just fun to watch and all of the music and special features work great with the newly minted 4K disc. The attempted revivals from David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro, Zack Snyder, and Robert Rodriguez never came to fruition and even its spiritual successor and actual sequel just don’t do it justice. Heavy Metal is a one-of-a-kind experience that is simple in its execution and complex in its enjoyment. Heavy Metal more than stands the test of time.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
 Still Blasts Minds Decades Later—And What Your Zodiac Sign Has to Do With It', 'https%3A%2F%2Ficonoclasmic.com%2Fwhy-heavy-metal-1981-still-blasts-minds-decades-later-and-what-your-zodiac-sign-has-to-do-with-it%2F')){kind=link}