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MOVIES / ON DVD / HEAVY METAL
Heavy Metal

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Heavy Metal (1981)

61%
N/A
75%
N/A
N/A
N/A
61 %
Reviews Counted: 23 Fresh: 14  Rotten:9 Average Rating: 5.7/10
 
Consensus: Heavy Metal makes up for its flaws with eye-popping animation. It's sexist, juvenile, and dated, but Heavy Metal makes up for its flaws with eye-popping animation and a classic, smartly used soundtrack. more
 
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Synopsis:
This unique collection of six animated stories combines science fiction with fantasy, horror, comedy, sex and rock music. The segments include "Harry Canyon" and "Den." In the first, a New York City cab driver gets mixed up with a beautiful femme fatale. Although he's become so hardened... [More]
This unique collection of six animated stories combines science fiction with fantasy, horror, comedy, sex and rock music. The segments include "Harry Canyon" and "Den." In the first, a New York City cab driver gets mixed up with a beautiful femme fatale. Although he's become so hardened that he keeps a death ray in his car to kill troublesome riders, he lets his guard down long enough to fall for his latest passenger... and it could cost him his life. In "Den," a nerdy student travels to another planet and transforms into a macho stud with incredible strength. While fighting villains, beautiful women throw themselves at him. Other stories in this anthology feature the exploits of a beautiful female warrior, pilots fighting off a creature from another world, and a Pentagon secretary who gets captured by an alien. There's also one off-the-wall segment played purely for comic effect. The stories are all linked by sequences featuring a fiendish green meteorite that claims to be the cause of evil throughout the world. [Less]

Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy

Starring: John Candy, Eugene Levy, Richard Romanus, Harold Ramis, John Vernon

Director: Gerald Potterton
Producer: Ivan Reitman
Screenwriter: Len Blum, Daniel Goldberg
Composer: Elmer Bernstein
Story: Dan O'Bannon

DVD Info

Release:

Oct 25, 2005

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Note: This release is in the UMD format for Sony PSP players only.
  • Anamorphic - 1.85

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital 2.0 - English, French, Spanish, German, Italian
  • Subtitles - English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Italian, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindu, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Thai - Optional

Buy It On DVD

Reviews

 
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1 - 20 (sorted by date)
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Ratings Image

You have to conclude that its makers should have got out more.

Full Review | Comment
03/10/08 03:16 PM
Channel 4 Film
Ratings Image

...An unabashed crowd-pleaser. Whenever possible, it goes for the fight scene, the sex joke, the jiggly breasts...

Full Review | Comment
09/17/07 06:38 PM
Rob Gonsalves
eFilmCritic.com
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It's a mixed bag, but successful in a mindless, adolescent way.

Full Review | Comment
04/16/07 07:34 PM
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Ratings Image

Some of the animation is first-rate, particularly in the more modest comedy segments, and even the heavy set pieces have greater flash and dazzle than anything Ralph Bakshi mustered around the same period.

Full Review | Comment
04/16/07 07:32 PM
Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image

Fantasies that are gratuitously sexist and Fascist (macho whoring and warmongering), and whose roots reach all the way back to post-hippie paranoia, feed the tangled plot-lines of a movie that... should disappoint even the teenage wet-dreamers.

Full Review | Comment
02/09/06 03:16 AM
Derek Adams
Time Out
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No review available.

| Comment
10/26/05 11:23 AM
Robert Roten
Laramie Movie Scope
Ratings Image

Anyone from the era will love it, while everyone else simply won't get it at all.

Full Review | Comment
07/25/05 03:27 AM
Christopher Null
Filmcritic.com
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No review available.

| Comment
07/15/05 06:05 AM
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
Ratings Image

Heavy Metal has been animated with great verve, and scored very well, with music much less ear-splitting than the title would suggest.

Full Review | Comment
08/30/04 10:16 PM
Janet Maslin
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
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No review available.

| Comment
02/20/04 12:36 PM
Carol Cling
Las Vegas Review-Journal
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No review available.

| Comment
01/12/04 03:07 PM
Bill Chambers
Film Freak Central
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No review available.

| Comment
07/18/03 07:24 AM
Jon Niccum
Lawrence Journal-World
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Heavy Metal despite all of its flaws and anacrhonisms, nevertheless represents something of a refreshment in today's sterile climate.

Full Review | Comment
05/14/03 11:30 AM
Dragan Antulov
rec.arts.movies.reviews
Ratings Image

A bit of a mixed bag. Some eye popping animation, chock full of nudity, gore, and alien landscapes. The classic soundtrack is what makes it most worthwhile when the stories fall flat

| Comment
03/21/03 09:04 PM
Brian Mckay
eFilmCritic.com
Ratings Image

No review available.

| Comment
03/11/03 08:07 PM
Joshua Tanzer
Offoffoff
Ratings Image

Wild animation, tons of blaring rock music, and fanboy wish fulfillment fantasies of the freakiest order. Good campy fun.

| Comment
07/26/02 12:10 AM
Scott Weinberg
eFilmCritic.com
Ratings Image

...visually stunning some of the time and stunningly juvenile the rest.

Full Review | Comment
04/08/01 04:22 PM
John J. Puccio
DVDTown.com
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A wildly sophomoric and stupid cartoon celebrating gore, rape and bad music.

Full Review | Comment
01/01/00 12:00 AM
Barry Walters
San Francisco Examiner
Ratings Image

Asked if I wanted to see it again, I figured, why not? I would have remembered if it was really bad. But memory does play tricks.

| Comment
01/01/00 12:00 AM
Bruce Reid
Film.com
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image

This is simply exploitation on a very juvenile level.

Full Review | Comment
01/01/00 12:00 AM
Chris Hicks
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
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• Heavy Metal at Rotten Tomatoes
• Heavy Metal at IGN
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