Heavy Metal

A series of R-rated short stories featuring exceptional hand-drawn animation and a rocking soundtrack were unleashed to the world as the film Heavy Metal in 1981. While many say this film is not for everyone, it has aged well over time and become a cult classic. Join co-hosts Jon and Mark has they take the journey from the backseat of Harry Canyon's futuristic New York City cab all the way to Taarna's bar brawl during a Devo concert and beyond.

Are you prepared to face the sum of all evils?!

Transcript

Jon (00:00)
Tonight in the Rock and Roll Theatre. Beware, the sum of all evils has arrived. Heavy Metal, the movie.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Rock and Roll Theatre Podcast. My name is John, I'm joined by my brother and co-host Mark, where each week here we take a look at movies, music, pop culture, all sorts of fun stuff. And today, a bit of a departure for us, it's our very first animated feature, Heavy Metal.

Mark (00:34)
Heavy Metal was released on August 7th, 1981. It runs 90 minutes, rated R. This film is categorized as an adult animated science fantasy anthology film. It's quite a mouthful there. It was composed with a budget of $9.3 million and it generated $20.1 million at the box office.

So this movie strings together a series of animated shorts. Most of them are pretty violent and graphic in nature, but they definitely showcased well-done animation with some cool sci-fi elements and a soundtrack that is almost entirely nothing but hard rock by some of the biggest bands in the genre at the time.

Jon (01:22)
especially for the late 70s, early 80s, you got some pretty big names here. You have Black Sabbath, have a Pre-Van Halen Sammy Hagar, Stevie Nicks, Journey, member of the Eagles. We'll get into the soundtrack a little bit later, but there's a lot of big names on here, a lot of heavy hitters.

Mark (01:37)
The movie was adapted from the Heavy Metal magazine, which was an adaptation from the French magazine called Metal Hurlant. And that featured original comic style stories that had really elaborate artwork and very intense surreal themes involving stuff like outer space, robots, technology, the future, all kinds of things. This movie was made in Canada, but over 70 animators from over a dozen countries contributed their efforts.

It was directed by Gerald Potterton and produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogul. Ivan Reitman went on to produce many blockbuster films like Ghostbusters a few years later. The movie also features several high profile cast members like John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Harold Ramis who voiced multiple characters across some of the different segments. It's also worth noting here that due to some music licensing issues,

The film did not receive an official home video release until 1996, so 15 years later, despite its popularity on late night cable and on the bootleg VHS circuit in the late 80s.

Jon (02:51)
I can attest to his popularity on Late Night Cable, because that's where I first saw this movie way back when, in the mid-80s, and recorded onto VHS and had a copy in my youth. But quickly here, before we get to everything Heavy Metal related, if you haven't seen it in very long time or want to see it, hit pause. We're going to have spoilers galore ahead, so make sure you do that and come right back and join us. Also, you can do us a little favour. I know everybody asks, but it is important. If you could like, subscribe, comment, follow, wherever the case may be on whatever platform you listen to us, we'd really appreciate it.

We've noticed quite a few new listeners recently, so thank you very much for joining us. We have tons of episodes in our back catalog. Check them out. But for now, heavy metal.

We open heavy metal by hearing the song Raider Rider by the group Riggs. And a rocket ship is coming down from outer space and drops out a convertible car, a 1960s Corvette. It's going down to earth driven by an astronaut. It lands in the desert and begins to drive away. We see the credits for the film, a few big name actors, plus all the bands who will provide the soundtrack for us today.

Mark (03:53)
So what I'm thinking when I see this sequence, the animation looks really nice. You can tell that they use some rotoscoping techniques here, which always looks cool. Everything is hand drawn, which I'm a big fan of. I'm getting a pretty cool vibe overall just with this intro here. This segment is really short. It is classified in a lot of the write-ups and breakdowns for the film as its own story.

But I really want to point out that this is just an intro. It's quick. It's super fast, but it's good.

Jon (04:24)
I mean, for the time it was revolutionary, the style of animation. hadn't really seen too much like that up until this point. I can imagine in a movie theatre screen in the early 80s, this would have come off as really cool. It reminds me a lot to the early MTV graphics. I do believe some people call it the video toaster effect they kind of use. And it was used in videos like Money for Nothing, Sledgehammer, The Cars. There's probably a couple other ones I'm forgetting, but it's kind of a look that defines some early 80s videos. And I do believe this is the first time we're kind of seeing it.

Mark (04:53)
This leads us right into the next segment titled Grimaldi. So the astronaut Grimaldi arrives home where he is greeted by his daughter. He says he has something to show her and he has this large case with them. He opens this big case, we're not quite sure what's in it, maybe some sort of artifact, a piece of meteorite or something like that. He opens this case and a green crystal sphere rises out, this sort of big green marble.

And it lights up the room and ends up melting him. He dies. So that's pretty intense right off the bat. So then this green marble orb thing floats over to the terrified girl in the corner and identifies itself as the sum of all evils. So while looking into this orb that we learn is called the Lochner.

The girl sees how it influences societies throughout time and space. So what is going on here is that the Loc-Nar is acting as this string that ties the different short stories together. I also point out that like soft landing, this is another really super short segment, even though it is classified as its own story, but it really just feels like more of the intro. The cool burning death of the astronaut was also stand out for me.

Jon (06:15)
Yeah, that was really well done. So we're getting basically this setup here that the Loc-Nar is going to be the plot device that carries us through the whole thing. It's kind of a fairy tale type story setup like listen here, you come by the campfire little girl. We're going to tell you a bunch of stories. So that's what we're kind of set up and that's what we're heading into.

Mark (06:30)
So now we're ready to go into the first short story of the film. It's titled Harry Canyon. Some of the music that we hear in this segment, we hear Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Oyster Cult. We hear True Companion by Donald Fagan, Blue Lamp by Stevie Nicks, Open Arms by Journey, and Heartbeat by Riggs. So a lot of A1 groups contributing efforts in this very first short story that we have. So.

This is a futuristic story set in 2031 about a New York City cab driver named Harry Canyon. He's middle-aged, he's cynical, but he also has access to a lot of cool technology like a disintegrator ray gun in the backseat of his cab that he controls with his foot from the front. So the Loc-Nar was appearing at the Metropolitan Museum in downtown New York. There's a group of gangsters led by the lead villain named Rudnick, and they end up shooting someone at the museum.

when they were trying to get the Loc-Nar, there's some chaos and commotion. A woman runs out onto the street into Harry's cab, and it turns out that she's on the run from the gangsters because it was her father who discovered the Loc-Nar.

Jon (07:40)
Eventually Harry agrees to take her to Rudnick's thick exchange the Loc-Nar for cash which they will split Harry seems very excited about this idea, you know, he's finally gonna get a big payday in the very rough New York City of 2031 So the Loc-Nar ends up killing Rudnick as soon as he lays his eyes on it The woman takes the cash but then tries to double cross Harry from the back seat of the cab and what as usual Harry uses his ray gun laser to disintegrate her takes the cash from her throws her gun away. It's like hmm. I really liked her. She was cute but

You know, that's the way it goes.

Mark (08:13)
So yeah, this is my favorite short of the film for sure. It's number one for me out of the six that we have to go through. It has really cool animation. It even reminds me a lot of the different cartoons that were happening in the early to mid 80s like Star Wars, droids, that kind of vibe of a mix of technology and future worlds and future cityscapes. There's lots of interesting concepts going on here about the future.

but it still feels very urban and gritty, like a detective story. So it's like a really nice blend of the future, but it's still like, it feels real. I would love a full movie just about this world.

Jon (08:54)
completely agree. was also my favorite segment in the movie. And you're right, it could totally stand up on its own as a more fleshed out full story of just New York City circa 2031. I really like this one. I like the style of it. I liked how the how the backgrounds were drawn. We're really cool just showing all the urban decay and stuff. I love the punk rock seems to still be a thing in 2031. see some guys in mohawks and stuff hanging out. And the cops, however, are not very helpful as it the reputation that I guess New York City police sometimes have. And it seems to carry over into the

story as well. I also really like that in one of the backgrounds you see a poster for Jaws 7 playing in theatres. As of this recording in 2026 there are only four Jaws movies but we have about five years here though to get to that so who knows maybe by 2031 we'll be covering Jaws 7.

Mark (09:40)
Maybe.

Jon (09:44)
We move on to our second story here, which is entitled Den. And there's no actual music in this, which is the original score. So after a really top heavy first segment there with a lot of hit songs, we're kind of just going with background music on this one.

A science geek teenager, voiced by John Candy, finds a green meteorite near his house and adds it to his rock collection. During a lightning experiment, the orb hurls him into a new world of Neverwhere, where he transforms into a bodybuilder warrior type of guy, sort of like Hercules, you get the idea, called Den, an acronym for his Earth name, is David Ellis Norman. In this alternative world, he sees some bizarre rituals being performed on women in trouble, so with his new buff body, he jumps in to save her.

Mark (10:25)
Turns out the woman's name is Catherine and they end up running away together but they are eventually caught by these mutant guerrilla guards on behalf of this immortal man named Ard. Ard takes the woman and puts her under a sleeping spell inside of a glass case. So, Den agrees to go to the Queen and get the Loc-Nar so Ard will release the woman. He ends up getting caught, of course, but he escapes and he beats everybody up.

It turns out that Ard and the Queen end up fighting over the Loc-Nar, but it falls away through, it's on this sort of scepter kind of ornament stick and it falls down the steps. Den decides to do the same lightning bolt experiment that we saw earlier, and he zaps both of them into oblivion. At the end of this, Den decides to stay in Neverwhere with Catherine.

Jon (11:17)
Well why would he go back to Earth? He has this great buff body now and all these girls so I get why he wants to stay.

Mark (11:23)
Exactly. So for this short, I thought it was just okay. It's still good, but it's far from my favorite. I have it ranked fifth out of the six that we're going to go through. I found that the story was a little choppy. There's huge jumps from one thing to another. It's not that cohesive I found. And it's also a little bit too kind of dream world like for me. I prefer things that are a little bit more real.

And as you mentioned earlier, the music here, it's all part of the original score, which I think is good, but it really is missing one or two heavy hitting big name songs.

Jon (12:01)
I mean, after having so many in the first segment, I kind of figured this is what we're doing, and the soundtrack has a lot of songs on it. So I think you could have squeezed in one or two here for sure. I also ranked it fifth of the six segments. I didn't love it, but it does have that classic vibe of what Heavy Metal Magazine was. These fantasy stories, foreign worlds, bodybuilders, girls, that's the formula for Heavy Metal. And I do believe all these segments were lifted from actual stories that once appeared in Heavy Metal Magazine. So I could see

they went with this is just kind of this is the vibe of Heavy Metal Magazine.

Our next segment is entitled Captain Stern.

The music here for this one is a good one. We got Reach Out by Cheap Trick starting it off. So we're on a giant space station and there's this crooked captain, Captain Stern. He's on trial for a series of horrible crimes and one moving violation. His lawyer thinks he should just plead guilty, but Stern's confidently get off because he bribes the witnesses and one of them is named Hand Over Fist, which is a funny name. Fist takes the stand, turns on Stern, turns into a... and he's playing with the Loc-Nar in his hand while he's talking. And all of he turns into this giant hulk of a man, starts smacking

and everything, tears up the whole space station, running around trying to catch Stern. So Stern does pay him and he shrinks back to his normal size. He's like, ⁓ okay, well thanks, that's all I wanted was my money. But then Stern pulls a fast one on. He stands underneath a trap door, he yanks the trap door, sending fists into outer space, and basically his body burns up except for his hand, which is still holding on to a piece of the locknir.

Mark (13:26)
This is my least favorite of the different shorts. I have it ranked sixth out of the six. I don't find any of the characters likable. I don't like Captain Stern. I don't really like Hanover Fist. I don't really like the lawyer. The animation is still good. It's still cool. The background characters look super interesting and the spaceship itself looks really cool. But I found that it really has nothing to do with what's going on here. It's kind of short too. It's pretty light.

The music's good, I'll say that much.

Jon (13:58)
This was also my least favorite. We're three for three now in our rankings and we did not discuss this beforehand. That's just what it became. Also my least favorite, but it has kind of a Mad Magazine almostish sort of animation style to it. If you remember Mad Magazine, I do believe it still exists. I saw the supermarket today, actually. The hand over fist name is kind of funny. I always like a good pun like that. And like we both agree, the Cheap Trek song is pretty good. And it's always nice to hear Eugene Levy, Canadian actor known for a million things. It's always great to hear his voice.

Moving on to our next short scene here, this one is entitled B-17. And the music we hear is called Heavy Metal Taking a Ride by Don Felder. This is the first of two songs we're gonna hear called Heavy Metal in the movie, which is, why is this called Taking a Ride? I'm not sure. I digress.

We have a World War II B-17 bomber nicknamed the Pacific Pearl that's making a difficult bombing run and suffers heavy damage. All the crew except for the pilot and the copilot being killed with gunfire. The bomber is limping home, the copilot goes back to check on the crew. He finds nothing but dead bodies, but he notices the Loc-Nar trailing the plane. He informs the pilot, heads down to the cockpit where the Loc-Nar ramps itself into the plane and the dead crew members are turned into zombies.

the pilot parachutes away just in time. He lands on an island where he finds a graveyard of airplanes from various times, all sorts of different wrecked airplanes, and zombified airmen come out of the plane and start surrounding him, and he realizes this is my fate and this is where all the planes land up and he's about to become a zombie.

Mark (15:22)
I found this was a nice change of pace segment. has gritty animation, but it also has an intense vibe, like something dire is on the line here. I found it to be realistic, but trippy at the same time. It's kind of like a nightmare or something. I enjoyed it. I have it fourth out of the six though. So it's not in my top few, but I did enjoy it.

Jon (15:45)
I actually put it second. I really enjoyed it. I thought, like you said, a good change of pace. The World War II setting was a change. Pretty accurate to the era, too, like other, well, other, the Loc-Nar flying all over the place. But, you know, the bombers and bombing runs and all that sort of stuff. And you could feel the tension just ratcheting up as the scene went along and not knowing how it was gonna end. I really liked the ending. I thought it was cool.

Mark (16:06)
The next segment we have is called So Beautiful and So Dangerous. In terms of music, we got quite a few things going on here. Queen Bee by Grand Funk Railroad, I Must Be Dreamin' by Cheap Trick, Crazy, A Suitable Case for Treatment by Nazareth, All of You by Don Felder, Prefabricated by Trust, and the title track on the soundtrack, Heavy Metal by Sammy Hager. So a lot of big names on deck here.

In terms of this story, we see Dr. Anrak. This is a prominent scientist. He arrives at the Pentagon in Washington, DC for a meeting regarding mysterious mutations that are plaguing the United States. At the meeting, he tries to dismiss these occurrences. He sees the Lochner.

on top of a locket that is on the meeting stenographer named Gloria. He sees this, he goes nuts. It's the Lochner. But we see, we pan out of the room and we see this giant spaceship showing up over the Pentagon. It shoots down this tube and drills through the roof. It ends up sort of vacuuming up this Dr. Anrak character and by accident,

this woman, Gloria.

The ship's robot is irritated at Dr. Anrak because he's a malfunctioning android and he broke and he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do. But the robot's mood changes pretty drastically when it sees Gloria, this woman. So, with the help of the ship's alien pilots, Edzil and Zeke, the robot convinces Gloria to stay on board. The robot insists on having a relationship with her.

They sleep together.

It wants her to marry him. Meanwhile, Edsel and Zeke snort this giant amount of some sort of powdered drug. It's called plutonium nyborg. Then they end up flying home, but they, they zone out on the cosmos. They're too intoxicated to fly straight. They end up having a crash landing at some huge space station, but they are unharmed.

So in terms of this scene, I thought the animation looked amazing. It looks really good. This giant spaceship over the Pentagon looks incredible. It's a pretty funny story. It's got an upbeat vibe. It's not all doom and gloom here. It definitely has memorable characters.

The robot is very memorable. The two alien co-pilots are pretty much unforgettable once you see them. It also features the heavy metal signature song, which is sounding really, really good in this scene. I rank this one third for me.

Jon (19:05)
also put it third, and it is, you're right, the most memorable scene.

from my youth when I think of this movie I think of those two co-pilots doing drugs and actually that's kind of the thing that really stands out the most to of like the movie Heavy Metal I remember that and of course I remember the song Heavy Metal by Sammy Hagar and Sammy still plays this song to this very day I actually checked on Setlist FM as of the day we're recording here he played it last night at a show and he's 78 years old and the Red Rockers still out there giving it it was a good fun scene John Candy was great in it he voices the robot

And it was really funny seeing too where Gloria is insisting he changes religions in order to marry her and he actually agrees. So the robot is now Jewish.

then we move on to our final main story here in the movie Heavy Metal. This one's called Taarna and we got some music going here. Maybe actually some actual heavy metal music going on. We have E-5150 by Black Sabbath, The Mob Rules by Black Sabbath, and something that's very not metal through Being Cool by Devo.

So we start this one off with the Loch Nahr is now the size of a giant meteor. It crashed into a volcano on another world and draws this large crowd of curious people. They begin to climb the volcano, all of a erupts in green slime covering everyone. I mean, why would you go into the volcano with the Loch Nahr just landed in? Okay, so they move into an evil army, of course, looking like barbarians. The mutants subsequently attack a nearby city of peaceful people, scholars,

those city leaders mentally summoned the Tarakians, a once powerful yet now declining warrior race, for whom they had a pact with, but the city falls before the call can be answered.

Mark (20:42)
So now we meet Taarna, the last of the Tarakians, who is the one who receives this summons.

So, Taarna needs to ritually prepare herself. She gets into her costume, her getup, her body armor. She gets her sword. This takes quite a while. After she's done all that, she gets on her pterodactyl-style dinosaur chicken-bird to fly over to the city. But then she only finds dead people. There's not much happening in the city. She's too late. Anyway, she is determined to avenge them. So she begins going on the hunt for their murderers.

and she encounters a small band of mutant barbarians. She actually stops at a bar. She goes into the bar and everyone in there is giving her the evil eye like something bad's about to go down. But before something bad goes down, we see a really cool looking futuristic rock band rocking out. It's Devo. Devo are in the bar playing a song. Pretty cool. So, Taarna, of course, takes out her sword, kills a few mutants, why not?

and then travels towards the main mutant camp, but gets captured after flying into a giant rope net. With all the cool technology going on here, all the out there futuristic concepts, it's still a rope net that gets it done.

Jon (22:04)
The big net is big trouble for Tarana because they capture her and they throw her to a pit and start beating on her until she's unconscious. Then her pet birds tries to make the save, but they also they attack it too. So it's two for two. Things are not going well. The mutant leader decides it's time for a duel to the death and he does wound her, but she manages to kill him. So now they're like, OK, we've had enough of this. This is my final stand, my final fight. So they decide basically to fly into the Loc-Nar in the volcano.

As they approach though, the Loc-Nar is trying to warm her off, claiming that sacrificing herself would be futile. But she doesn't care. She unleashes the power embedded in her sword, dies in the volcano, destroying the Loc-Nar in theory once and for all.

Mark (22:45)
I really liked this scene. I had it ranked second for me. I think it's an iconic one. It's actually original to the movie, so this is not one of the ones from the original comic book. It was made just for the movie. I thought it was a pretty good story. Again, we have amazing animation here. It's, if you see this, you won't forget it. I remember seeing it on late night cable as a kid and yeah, it stands out for sure. It is longer than the other shorts too, so there's more going on here.

Jon (22:57)
okay.

Mark (23:16)
The main title poster, of course, is based on this segment and this character. I gotta say, though, after watching other animated shorts back in the day, like MTV's Aeon Flux, that has got to be a ripoff of Taarna big time. And ⁓ yeah, iconic.

Jon (23:35)
Also, She-Ra, the Master's Universe, ripped that off completely for a more PG version of her. That's She-Ra. And even to put the lightning hitting the sword a certain way, like, that's like from the Master's Universe. They obviously copied that one, too. It's also, I know noticed here in my research for the film or for podcast today, it's a cosplay favorite still to this day that girls like dressing up as her. And good for them. And she's a powerful female warrior. So cool costume. And we do hear two Black Sabbath songs in this segment, too. However, the Ronnie James Dio version fronted of Black

Sabbath, not the Ozzy Osbourne one. And there's a different kind of graphic style for some of the fight scenes. It looks kind of cool. It looks a little bit different. I mean, I really like to try to mix up the animation styles all throughout the film. So there are little things here and there like, OK, that's different to catch your attention. And of course, to me, one of the best funniest moments I'd totally forgotten about from watching this movie in the 80s is that not only is it a band in the bar, it's actually Devo. They the animated Devo into the movie. So I thought that was a really cool moment.

I gave this one a four, but now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should have bumped that up to maybe a three or even a two. So yeah, a decent segment. I enjoyed it.

Mark (24:39)
we're at the epilogue. So the story is ending, the Loc-Nar that was terrorizing this girl in the home, it begins to destabilize, it starts breaking up. The girl runs away, she runs outside. Then the Loc-Nar explodes, it shoots out giant green beams of light everywhere and boom! It destroys the house in the process. So we actually see that scene. It turns out that Taarna's reborn

Pterodactyl bird chicken dinosaur is outside as well. So the girl finds this and is pretty happy Gets on it and flies away We then see on her neck the sign of the Tarakian so it is revealed that Taarna's soul has been Reincarnated in this girl and it transformed her into a new Tarakian. So that's pretty cool. It's a nice ending I guess it makes sense as to why this green orb was sort of

Cornering this girl because I guess it has the power to become she had the power to become the next Tarakian I guess the idea here. So that's kind of nice how everything ties together and yeah, it's a pretty good ending

Jon (25:52)
She was preordained to defeat the sum of all evils, I guess. Yeah, it was a cool ending. It tied everything together nicely. One cool thing about this scene is when they blow up the mansion that the little girl's been cowering in from the Loch Nair here and all these stories, they were gonna make, I guess, different style, sort of cooler ending. But they ran out of money and time, and this was the last thing they had to finish up. So that's actually a real house blowing up, like a model little wooden house that they blew up instead. So kind of cool that that's the only thing in the movie that wasn't animated was that last explosion.

So that ends our journey into the world of heavy metal.

Mark (26:28)
Let's take a look at the official soundtrack for Heavy Metal. So this is a rock stage and screen album that was released in 1981 on LP, but it did not actually come out on CD until 1995 for various legal reasons around the rights of the song.

This is why the movie did not make it to a home media release on VHS. So it was actually Kevin Eastman, one of the writers of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, who actually bought the publishing rights of Heavy Metal Magazine in 1992. And then he finally was able to reach a settlement with the music copyright holders and actually get this out on CD along with the home copy of the movie. So that's what happened there in terms of some legal troubles. Now.

Let's get into each song that we have here.

We start off with the title track, Sammy Hagar, Heavy Metal.

Jon (27:27)
one of Sammy's most well-known and well-loved anthems, Heavy Metal. Great song from Sammy, early 80s Sammy before he joined Van Halen. And this song is good. It has a really Led Zeppelin kind of feel to it, sort of a blues riff to start it all off, a really sped up chorus, well done, easy to sing along to. It's a well-crafted song. It's still one of his best works for sure.

I can see why they use this as the vehicle, the song to drive this movie.

Mark (27:55)
I think it's one of the best. It's fast, it's upbeat, it's heavy, hits home. Second song is Riggs, Heartbeat.

Jon (28:01)
Exactly.

Riggs would be Jerry Riggs, who's a well-traveled, well-known musician from the 70s and 80s, there's kind of an ACDC feel to this one, maybe a little bit like Highway to Hell. this sounds really familiar, even though I don't know it that well. It just has that just familiar late 70s, early 80s rock sound to it. there's also in the drums, there's a cool kind of phaser effect. There's like a drum bridge part here. And there's kind of a cool phaser effect on the drums, which I found was neat.

Mark (28:29)
Next up, have not necessarily a metal band, but we have Devo with Working in the Coal Mine.

Jon (28:35)
which is a song they use for the credits to end the movie. And like we mentioned earlier, Cartoon Devo are in the movie, which is kind of cool. But you're right, this is an odd choice for a movie called Heavy Metal. And we're gonna kind of see this as the soundtrack plays out. they're known as an avant-garde art group from Ohio, not so much metal. And I realized that I need to get this out of the way before we keep finishing the soundtrack here is when we think of Heavy Metal these days, we think of Metallica Slayer, Iron Maiden, things like that. Those bands quite hadn't made it yet into the zeitgeist.

was only maybe you know a couple years before they would so by the time most of us were seeing this movie on cable we had a definite clear vision or ahead of what heavy metal is so we saw heavy metal the movie we're like okay and then we have Devo in it it's it's it's a little weird it's a little doesn't quite line up with what the genre is

Mark (29:22)
think this would make sense a little bit later in the album, like maybe towards the end. Having a third is maybe an odd spot for it. Anyway.

Jon (29:30)
Definitely

a choice. A choice was made.

Mark (29:32)
Next

up, Blue Oyster Cult, veteran of the psychic wars.

Jon (29:37)
Of course, Blue Easter car, most known for their song Don't Fear the Reaper. But this is the same type of thing, a rather long song, kind of prog rock esque style vibe to it. A lot of keyboards in it, a lot of keyboard solos. Prog rock has never been my thing. But I think it fits into a fantasy world like heavy metal is. It's a good choice.

Mark (29:59)
cheap trick with Reach Out.

Jon (30:02)
This might be my favorite track on the soundtrack, actually. I do like Cheap Trick, I've liked them for a long time. This song really kind of bridges the 70s rock sound, but also sounds a little bit 80s too, as well, which we kind of know as 80s rock and 80s pop music. There's elements starting to creep in there that I see. It's not their most famous song, it's not I Want You to Want Me or Surrender, but it's still a very familiar sound. You know it's Cheap Trick as soon as you hear it. It's got that glam vibe to it as well, kind of like sweet or something like that. Vocals are really good on it, and it's probably

maybe the best thing on the soundtrack in my opinion.

Mark (30:33)
I thought this was a really strong one. It's clearly identifiable in the film. It sounds good. It's fast. It's upbeat. A lot of bands I like, a lot of punk bands I like, they always cover Surrender. I would really like one of the bands that I like to cover this one, Reach Out. Sounds pretty good.

Jon (30:49)
That's a really good point. I didn't think of that. That would make an excellent cover. Bands, if you're out there, think about it.

Mark (30:56)
Next up, Don Felder, the other heavy metal in brackets, taking a ride.

Jon (31:02)
I have no idea why this is not called taking a ride or take a ride because there's nothing heavy about this song. Don Felder, of course, is a member of the Eagles. He's on tour in Canada later this month. It's not heavy at all. It's five minutes long, unacceptably long. I don't know. Was he doing some soundtrack work with some extra money? I'm thinking he might be the reason why the soundtrack wasn't released for years because Eagles famously fought each other and everyone over money for many, many years before reforming

This is definitely more of a pop song. I don't know why it's called what it's called, but hey, there it is. I'd take Sammy over this one any day.

Mark (31:40)
Next is Donald Fagan, True Companion.

Jon (31:44)
Another solo artist from a group that's much more well known, he's in Steely Dan, of course. And this song is, I don't know, it kind of an AM radio rock type of song. ⁓ There's no vocals until about three minutes and 45 seconds in in a five minute song. So I didn't find it as very energetic or just kind of confusing. ⁓ Not a fan of it.

Mark (32:08)
Nazareth, crazy in brackets, a suitable case for treatment.

Jon (32:14)
Nazareth been around since the early 70s and still around today I did a show DJ opening up for them at a casino last year So the 70s rock group is still around this song is a very basic just classic rock structure Almost remind me of like some like Rick Derringer someone like that those types of riffs So it fits right into what's going on in the heavy metal world

Mark (32:35)
Riggs Radar Rider.

Jon (32:38)
This is the one that opens the movie. It's kind of got like a real 80s kind cop chase scene soundtrack vibes to it. Feels like a movie song. So it fits, it works, and a good thing to open the movie with.

Mark (32:50)
Journey Open Arms

Jon (32:53)
Huge huge hit this is probably the biggest song on the record to be honest humongous hit for Journey of course open arms Don't stop believing the biggest songs for Journey and it's ballad though It's it's kind of more of a I would play us at a wedding type of song Not so much heavy metal see those journeys if you look at journeys album covers from the early 80s You would think they're a metal band, but if you threw the record on you'd be disappointed

Mark (33:20)
Grand Funk Railroad, Queen Bee.

Jon (33:23)
Another similar 70s band trying to get more of a of an 80s sound to them as well. Almost like when like Starship or Jefferson Airplane, Starship, all those transforms that those bands took. This Grand Funk Railroad gives me a similar vibe of like, they're trying something different here. They're trying to sound more modern than what I pictured this band sounding like. I did not like the lyrics at all to this song. That's enough said about that.

Mark (33:48)
Sheep Trick are back. This time we have I Must Be Dreaming.

Jon (33:55)
It has this weird breathing intro where it's basically the sound of someone breathing. It's a very chaotic song. I would call it like kitchen sink type production. They threw everything they could into this song, all sorts of different effects and what have you. I like Cheap Trick, so I liked it.

Mark (34:10)
Next up we have Black Sabbath with The Mob Rules. It should be noted that this is an early demo version of the song.

Jon (34:20)
okay. didn't I mean, I know the song. I didn't realize that. I would say this is the only true metal song on this album. And even at that, it's not one of Black Sabbath's best songs. It's Ronnie James Doe, who's an amazing singer and a great talent. But I mean, I think we all associate Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne. And right around that time, Ozzy's solo career was starting to take off. I'm surprised they didn't have like Bark at the Moon or Die of a Madman or something in this movie. But I'm sure at that point, Sabbath and Ozzy were at war with each other, so they weren't going to be on the same

soundtrack at all. It has a good Tony Iommi riff. He's known for his killer monster crushing riffs. And this is a good one too. I think for the Ronnie James Dio era of Black Sabbath, this and the song from the Shining soundtrack are two big highlights for me. There's a lot that I didn't like out of that era of Black Sabbath. It kind of sounds like like a little bit like you know some stuff Ozzy was doing as well at the time. So overall, I liked it.

Mark (35:16)
Don Felder is back, this time all of you.

Jon (35:21)
We have more easy listening from Dawn at track 14 here on the album. I imagine anyone who bought the heavy metal and thought it was a metal album, skip this song. ⁓ I made it through the whole thing for the podcast, for you guys, for the listeners. I listened to the whole song, but I won't be listening to it again, that's for sure.

Mark (35:37)
We're almost at the end. Second to last, we have Trust with Prefabricated. This is actually an English language version of their song, Préfabrique, because they're a French band.

Jon (35:53)
Okay, when I saw the soundtrack, let's see, I'm like.

Trust I'm like is that the band I'm thinking of French almost punk band from the 80s from France and yep sure enough it is but it's just translating to English most people would know this band in North America for the band Anthrax who covered their song Antisocial in the 80s and they play Antisocial at every show to this day I saw Anthrax two weeks ago. think was the third or fourth song on the setlist So that's how I kind of got to know them, but I know a bit about their discography and I have listened to them before so it's kind of it's kind of odd

to

have this ⁓ Parisian political band on this soundtrack. But I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in this soundtrack. So I guess it fits in in its own weird way. But I was glad it was there. think I think it's a cool song and a good entry to the soundtrack.

Mark (36:35)
I thought it's a good song, it's pretty fast, it's upbeat, it almost kind of reminded me a little bit like The Damned or some early European punk from the late 70s.

Jon (36:43)
Yeah, I mean, they're kind of part of that scene. I mean, I don't know too many bands from France from that era that sang in French, but I definitely had heard of Trust long before, we decided to cover this today on the podcast.

Mark (36:54)
Last song, Stevie Nicks, Blue Lamp.

Jon (36:59)
It kind has this, you know, ⁓ slow easy rock sound to it. Reminds me of some of this, like even that Canadian like patio lantern style rock. It yet again doesn't really fit the mood of the movie or the soundtrack. I think it was in very briefly in the movie but Stevie, she's always going have a great voice. She's always going to be a good singer. every track she has is usually, has some merit to it just because her vocal styles are so good. an odd choice to end the album. I think maybe Truss should have ended the album instead.

Mark (37:24)
One of the things I wanna mention about the soundtrack is its overall production. It sounds really cohesive. It doesn't sound like a bunch of singles thrown together. It does sound like one cohesive piece in terms of its production. So that's always nice to hear. It does have kind of that early 80s, high treble cassette kind of feel to it, but everything sounds pretty smooth overall.

Jon (37:49)
I'm assuming it must have been all mastered at the same rate, because you're right, it does sound like that. And it doesn't so much sound like a mixed tape. this is a soundtrack, these songs are supposed to fit a mood. And in most cases, except for the ones I mentioned, ⁓ I would say 12, 13 of the tracks really kind of fit the role of what they're designed to do. So it's a very cohesive work and definitely a strong soundtrack.

Mark (38:10)
The singles from the album were Working in the Coal Mine by Devo, Reach Out and I Must Be Dreamin' by Cheap Trick, and the heavy metal in brackets Taking a Ride and All of You by Don Felder.

Jon (38:25)
Heavy Metal by Sammy wasn't released as a single? Huh.

Mark (38:29)
It's also worth noting that the album went certified platinum in both Canada and the United States.

We're not done there. There's also an official score that came out for Heavy Metal by the composer Elmer Bernstein. So this is a stage and screen score that came out in 1981. Its tracks are all of the instrumentals that we hear through the different pieces like Den, some of the different sequences for Taarna, some of the flying around scenes and the fights with the barbarians, that type of thing. I listened to it. It's cool.

It does kind of have that 80s cinema vibe to it almost sort of like stuff you might hear in some of I'm in Ivan Reitman's later films like Ghostbusters or stuff you'd hear in the late 80s early 90s even some family comedy style movies like the kind of happy background music or Quiet sort of outro pieces The cover is really cool

Jon (39:32)
I this being a thing, the original score soundtracks, a bunch of movies had them, not just Heavy Metal. Star Wars of course had them, Indiana Jones, ⁓ Conan the Barbarian, there's probably a ton more I'm forgetting. might be seen a little bit as a cash grab of like, okay, you already recorded the music for the movie, so we're gonna slap the Star Wars logo on it, and Star Wars fans will buy it. I think think an original score you'd maybe listen to once, I don't think you'd throw it on just in the background.

soundtracks were definitely a thing.

Mark (40:06)
Looking at the film's critical reception, right now Heavy Metal has a score of 66 % on its tomato meter and 67 % on its popcorn meter on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 6.6 rating out of 10 on Internet Movie Database. I find its scoring pretty consistent across different platforms. It seems like there's lots of people who love it, but there's also a fair amount of people who really dislike this movie.

Jon (40:36)
It's definitely the probably the most even score we've seen yet here in the theatre. 66, 67 and six out of six out of 10. So yeah, we're right here. All the metrics are right in the exact same spot.

But for everything we look at here in the theatre, there's always a hater out there. There's always somebody who is not having it. And each time we record here, my brother, Scours Internet, finds the one star review of the week. So Mark, what do you got for us this week?

Mark (41:01)
We have a review from the Internet Movie Database. is from Jay Darkley on November 8th, 2006. The score is one out of 10. The title of the review is Worst Animated Film Ever. I'll do my best to read it with grammatical errors included.

This movie is bad in every way conceivable. It's a adult-oriented yet approached in a very immature manner. The animation is anywhere from sketchy to stiff and dead. The plots in each of the stories only serve the singular purpose of indulging in whatever immoral and ridiculous themes that the writers thought of. The film as a whole is just shallow and mindless.

like living out some immature adolescent comic book geek's dream.

You don't sit through this film. You trudge painfully through it. For a film that requires no thought whatsoever, this movie causes your head to hurt too much. Why waste your time with it? There are better adult-oriented animated films from the era. See those. 26 people have found this helpful. 45 thumbs down.

Jon (42:25)
What did he think he was going to get? The movie is called heavy metal. The poster is a girl in a bikini riding a dinosaur. Was he expecting some I don't know what super serious take on life or politics or religion or something. I mean, the movie is called heavy metal. The magazine is what it is. This is the kind of movie it is. ⁓ Skip it you don't like that sort of stuff.

Mark (42:46)
Looking at The Lasting Legacy of Heavy Metal, obviously it's an iconic 1980s animated movie. If you've ever seen it, in any capacity, even just little bits and pieces of it on late night TV, you'll remember it for sure.

It's lasted over time as a cult classic, so it does have some modern-day popularity and fans, that's for sure. I'd like to call out the strength of the soundtrack again. You have a lot of big names on there. Many of those songs were also original for the film. The title and obviously the main image of Taarna with the sword on top of the pterodactyl-style bird, those are instantly recognizable anywhere. I'll also point out that there is a sequel.

Heavy Metal 2000, not doing so hot in terms of recognition or reviews. Not sure if we'll look at that one in the future, maybe.

Jon (43:36)
If you'd like the Rock and Roll Theatre podcast to tackle Heavy Metal 2000, get a hold of us, make some comments. If there's enough of them, we might, but for now, I don't think it's on our list. I think tackling this one was enough for us.

Overall, I remember I remembered watching in the 80s as a child I remember taping it off the off the television and having a VHS copy of it I hadn't seen it easily over 30 years, but we started preparing for this episode I rewatched it of course several times I was surprised how many things like yeah, I remember that I remember that yeah, I remember that so it definitely does have its place in 80s pop culture it's probably the first like non Disney animated thing I really ever watched that wasn't just a straight-up cartoon from the era so I think that kind of

You know if you're into those types of films and that sort of thing This is a an anime movie You should probably watch just for this different styles of animation and to see where the art was at in the early 80s I mean, of course today it's a lot more a lot more going on in that world But even for them, I think it was pretty well done and pretty cool Some of the segments though were just what they were kind of hokey and not my vibe at all But also like my brother said the soundtrack is very strong for this. You have a lot of big artists from that era

a lot of really good tunes. It wasn't just B stuff, filler stuff, this is leftover from a demo. They even open arms a Journey on this. That album's probably sold a couple million copies on its own. So that's pretty impressive they were able to pull this all off. So yeah, if you're into cult movies, if you're into that sort of thing and you're a music lover, I'd give this one a watch.

Well, thank you very much for joining us again in the Rock and Roll Theatre tonight. Just a quick, quick thing before you go. If you could like, subscribe, follow, download, whatever the case may be, wherever you are, whatever streaming platform you like. I know people get tired of hearing these pleas, but it really does help out small independent podcasts like us. But until the next time, the theatre is closed.