HEAVY METAL

 

My official UK DVD of Heavy Metal (© Gerald Potterton/Guardian Trust Company/Canadian Film Development Corporation/Famous Players/Potterton Productions/Columbia Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

For reasons of storage space-saving and also for DVDs containing additional content not found on videos, some years back I began replacing much of my video collection with DVDs, except for ones whose movies are not available on DVD or which hold sentimental value for me. On 12 April 2023, despite now having it on DVD, I watched one of my movie videos from the latter category, because when I opened it I discovered that it still contained its original shop receipt, confirming that I had purchased it from Woolworths on 27 December 1997 in its traditional post-Christmas sale. Today, Woolworths is long gone, and so is the life that I was living then, still with my family all around, of which that humble little receipt is a poignant reminder.

And so, a little over 25 years later, I finally sat down and watched this video, which is of the early 1980s animated sci fi/fantasy anthology movie Heavy Metal (not to be confused with the Eddie Kidd motorbike-themed movie Riding High, which came out at much the same time and was retitled in some territories as Heavy Metal, and even featured a not too dissimilar cartoon cover on its video and accompanying paperback novelization).

Directed by Gerald Potterton, released in 1981 by Columbia Pictures, inspired by the long-running magazine Heavy Metal and its graphic art stories of sci fi and fantasy, and very Ralph Bakshian in its depictions of sex, nudity, and violence, Heavy Metal is nowadays widely deemed to be a cult classic, especially within the world of animation.

It consists of several separate segments, each with its own separate plot, voice cast, crew, and animation team, but linked by the presence in each one of a glowing green orb, the Loc-Nar, that speaks, claiming to be the sum of all evils, and revealing its devastating effects upon those who have sought to own it. Originally there were ten such segments, including the short 'Epilogue', but one of them, 'Neverwhere Land', was cut, to prevent the movie from running over its intended length.

There isn't enough space here to go into all the individual segments' plots – which range from a film noir-esque taxicab driver in a futuristic dystopian New York City inadvertently coming into a fortune due to the Loc-Nar's destruction of those who covet it ('Harry Canyon'), and a lonely teenage nerd who is transported to the exceedingly weird alien world of Neverwhere by the Loc-Nar but where he nonetheless becomes a happy hulking super-hero (voiced by John Candy) after rejecting the malign orb ('Den'), to a WW2 bomber pilot who is horrified to find that the Loc-Nar has transformed all of his crew into zombies ('B-17'), and a mute female warrior named Taarna astride a huge battle-bird avenging the destruction of a planet's peaceful scholar inhabitants by a barbaric horde of mutants engendered by the Loc-Nar ('Taarna') –  but suffice it to say that the cumulative effect is one that held my attention throughout.

The vivid animation is extremely good throughout, the alien worlds and entities varied in form and invariably colourful in appearance, and several classic Heavy Metal rock tracks accompany the stories, performed by the likes of Sammy Hagar, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, Nazareth, Journey, and Devo. It also includes a score by Elmer Bernstein, his first score for an animated movie.

My only gripe is that Taarna's spectacular-looking avian steed as depicted by acclaimed fantasy artist Chris Achilléos in publicity posters and video/DVD covers for this movie (see this present review's pictures) is, by contrast, far less spectacular within the actual movie itself, which was disappointing. The original Heavy Metal magazine story (entitled 'Arzach') upon which this animated Heavy Metal movie segment is based, conversely, was illustrated by the renowned French comic-strip artist/author Moebius (real name Jean Giraud), who also illustrated the Heavy Metal magazine story 'The Long Tomorrow', which in the movie became the 'Harry Canyon' segment. In addition, his artwork inspired the 1982 animated feature movie Time Masters (click here to read my review of it).

Unlike in the Ralph Bakshi mature-audience animated movies such as Fire and Ice (click here to read my review of it) and Wizards, there is little use of rotoscoping here in Heavy Metal (Taarna being the only notable exception, with Toronto model Carole Desbiens rotoscoped to create her). Consequently, the humanoid figures move in a less life-like, realistic manner, adopting a rather more fluid mode of movement as in traditional animation, but which I actually prefer to rotoscoping.

(Incidentally, if like me you're an animation fan, you'll recognize director Gerald Potterton's name, though his previous forays into animation involved projects very different from Heavy Metal. These included producing via his company Potterton's Productions the 1970s children's featurette classics The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince (both based upon Oscar Wilde short stories) plus The Little Mermaid (based upon the Hans Christian Anderson fairy story) – all three of which I loved as a youngster – and prior to those he had worked on The Beatles' full-length animated feature film Yellow Submarine.)

Some critics dismissed Heavy Metal as mindless pre-pubescent/adolescent fantasy or worse, but I enjoyed it, so what that makes me is anyone's guess, lol. Moreover, not only have I now discovered that there is a sequel movie, Heavy Metal 2000, but also I have found it on YouTube, where it is currently free to watch (click here), which is what I definitely plan to do, and in less than 25 years' time this time!

Also, in 2019 Season 1 (aka Volume 1) of a three-season, multi-episode TV show consisting of a reimagined, rebooted version of the original Heavy Metal movie, and entitled Love, Death & Robots, was released on Netflix. Season 2 followed in 2021, and Season 3 in 2022. The three seasons collectively yield 35 episodes, all stand-alone in terms of subject matter, and of varying lengths (6-21 minutes each).

If you'd like to watch on YouTube an official trailer for Heavy Metal, please click here; you can also watch most of its segments individually on there, as well as trailers for all three seasons of Love, Death & Robots.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The full cover of my official UK VHS sell-thru videocassette of Heavy Metal (© Gerald Potterton/Guardian Trust Company/Canadian Film Development Corporation/Famous Players/Potterton Productions/Columbia Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

TIME MASTERS (aka LES MAÎTRES DU TEMPS)

Publicity poster for the original version of Time Masters (© René Laloux/Tibor Hernádi/Image Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

One animated feature film that I've long wanted to watch but had never succeeded in tracking down (or so I thought...) was the Franco-Hungarian 1982 movie Les Maîtres du Temps, or Time Masters as it was entitled in the English-speaking world. Lately I've been seeking it out online in DVD format, and have found several foreign-language versions, with not only the original French audio option but also dubbings into Hungarian, Russian, and German - but not English, although most versions have English subtitles, which is better than nothing.

On 11 June 2020, I learnt that an American DVD of it has also been released, but again it has no English audio, only French, which seems odd, so I became resigned to having to make do with subtitles and intended to look out for the American version, which does at least have the English-language title and cover text. Happily, however, Fate kindly stepped in at this point, and in a most surprising, greatly-welcomed manner too.

As we all did back in the day, when I bought my first VCR (videocassette recorder) in the 1980s it was quite a novelty to record on blank videocassette tapes for personal viewing all manner of movies, documentaries, TV shows, etc. Inevitably, however, I never got around to viewing many of them, and they've been stored down through the many intervening years in those interlocking plastic videocassette drawers that used to be so abundant in shops everywhere. Even so, me being me, I did meticulously list exactly what was on each tape, and kept those listings with the tapes. Later on 11 June, I had a look at those listings, for the first time in a very long while, and was pleasantly surprised to find some films and shows that I not only had never watched but also had completely forgotten about - including Time Masters! However, the best was still to come.

When I promptly placed the tape containing Time Masters in my VCR and played it, I was amazed to find that it was an English-dubbed version! The lead character's voice was that of Ray Brooks, a popular English actor (his films include The Knack ...And How To Get It, reviewed by me here) who has also supplied all manner of voice-overs for TV advertisements, children's cartoons (e.g. Mr Benn), etc. Investigating this version, I discovered that it had been co-produced by the UK's BBC TV company, but I have not been able to find any mention online of it ever having been released in any home media format, which is very strange. All that I know is that the BBC screened it on television in the UK once in 1987 and again in 1991. So I'd been lucky enough to catch it and tape it during one of these TV showings. Needless to say, I lost no time at all in sitting back and watching for the first time ever this hitherto-undiscovered cinematic pearl that had been hidden in plain sight for so long within my videocassette collection.

Directed by René Laloux (with Tibor Hernádi as technical director) and based upon a 1958 sci-fi novel by Stefan Wul entitled L'Orphelin de Perdide ('The Orphan of Perdide'), Time Masters tells the story of how on the planet Perdide, far far away, a craft containing a small child and his parents crashes after being attacked by monstrous insects, killing the parents. The child, Piel, survives; and thanks to a communications device shaped like an American Football ball that Piel was given by his father just before he died, a spaceship piloted by his parents' friend Jaffar is able to communicate with him and advises him to stay hidden in a weird, coral-like forest, where he will be safe from the insects until Jaffar's spaceship, the Double Triangle 22, can reach him (it is currently very far away).

Publicity poster for the American version of Time Masters (© René Laloux/Tibor Hernádi/Image Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

To cut a very complex story short, the Double Triangle 22 stops en route on a planet where Jaffar's friend, an old man named Silbad, who had spent some time on Perdide and is therefore familiar with what to expect there, joins them to help rescue Piel, after which they journey on toward Perdide. Due to various complications, however, Jaffar also has to land first on another planet, Gamma 10, which is inhabited by identical faceless angel-like beings, and prevent himself from being transformed into one of them. Finally, however, the Double Triangle 22 approaches Perdide, only to be confronted by immensely advanced beings known as the Time Masters...

The climactic plot twist resulting from this meeting is very unexpected, albeit featuring the almost de rigueur time travel subplot that so often crops up in sci-fi movies, and yields, I felt, a somewhat sad ending.

My one issue with this English-dubbed version is that some of the voice actors spoke in a curiously expressionless monotone, more robotic than realistic. Overall, however, Time Masters is an engaging, engrossing film with beautifully strange animated layouts and designs based upon the exquisite artwork of the eminent French comic-book artist/author/designer Moebius (real name Jean Giraud, and whose work had also appeared a year earlier in the animated sci fi/fantasy movie Heavy Metal, reviewed by me here). In short, it is well worth watching, and the videocassette tape containing this unexpected, much-valued find is now ensconced with all of my other animation DVDs and videos.

Moreover, I have since discovered that (at least at the time of my writing this review) the full English-dubbed version of Time Masters can be viewed here for free on YouTube. Consequently, I'd advise any animation fan to make the most of this rare opportunity to watch this elusive version if you have chance to do so, because I am still unaware of its existence in any DVD or videocassette format, so if it vanishes off YouTube it may be very difficult to find anywhere again.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

A still from Time Masters depicting the faceless angel-like entities encountered by Jaffar on the planet Gamma 10 (© René Laloux/Tibor Hernádi/Image Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)