Heavy Metal  (1981)
Columbia TriStar Home Video

Length:        90 mins.
Rated:          R
Languages:English
Subtitles:    English, Spanish, Portuguese
Format:       Anamorphic Widescreen
Extras:        Audio Commentaries
                     Rough Cut
                     Deleted Scenes
                     Featurette, Galleries and much more

In the early 80s, the animated feature film “Heavy Metal” became in instant cult classic upon its release to theaters. Combining flashy imagery with a lot of violence and gratuitous sex, the film was the animated version of the comic book series of the same name and an easy to digest feast for pubescent boys with rock music influences and heroic dreams about a glorified adulthood filled with raunchy sex, drugs and rock and roll. The film completely captured and epitomized all the stereotypes of the generation and is now brought to DVD as a special edition by Columbia TriStar Home Video.

Loc-Nar, each one of them telling a little story how Evil won over Good. Each of these stories involves some sort of a big-busted babe, lots of violence and blood and of course the rock music for which the film has become so famous for - although strangely not a note of Heavy Metal is to be heard anywhere in the film.

As mentioned before, each for the segments carries a different artistic and narrative style, ranging from very slick looking traditional animation, over Anime, all the way to gritty, French-comic styles as often found in modern comic books. Some of the

Despite the often found nomenclature “adult comic” or “mature themed” with comic books like “Heavy Metal”, I am purposely avoiding these terms. The comics and the film have little to do with real mature contents. After all, it would be pretty sad if all materials that cater to grown-up audiences inevitably featured incessant gore and gratuitous sex. These are more symptoms of an oversexed pubescent boyhood that become R-rated through their artificial explicitness but not through the nature of their actual content. On top of it, the film has nothing to do with actual “Heavy Metal” - the music - or its lifestyle at all, as

“Heavy Metal” is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio that seems to be 1.78:1 on this release from Columbia TriStar Home Video, in a transfer that is 16x9 enhanced.
Quite a bit of film grain is evident throughout the film’s presentation however. Slight ringing artifacts are evident in some of the film’s scenes, but their occurrence is mostly depending on the graphical style at any given time. Some of the images simply compress much better than others, while others yet hide these artifacts much better than others. Given the amount of noise in the overall picture, these artifacts are also slightly exaggerated though the noise.

The disc contains two soundtracks, the original 2-channel surround mix, as well as a 5.1 channel Dolby Digital re-mix. Interestingly, I clearly preferred the original mix over the newly redone 5.1 track, mostly because it puts more emphasis on the music and because it sounds more balanced.
The 5.1 mix keeps the music mostly in the front channels where it is easily drowned out by the wild effects from all the discrete channels. The stereo mix on the other hand is much tighter and simply feels more authentic.
The film also contains a running commentary-like feature. Heavy Metal historian Carl

Columbia’s release of this film is a fine example of a great special edition with tons of supplements to support the actual feature film. You will clearly have to make some time to go through all the materials, because they are rich and plentiful, inviting the viewer to keep exploring them more and more while spending hours in front of the screen.

Apart from the film itself you will find a complete rough cut of the movie as well. This rough cut consists of story boards, early animation sequences, all prepared to create the entire flow of the film, as it turned out in the end. It’s practically the same film all over

The release also contains deleted scenes, including complete story segments that didn’t make it into the final film due to running-length constraints. These deleted scenes are fun to watch, although it is quite easy to see why they were chosen not be part of the final film after all. In a section called “Artwork Of Heavy Metal” you can take a look at various key scenes from the film in various development stages. From simply pencil drawings and sketches all the way to the fully layered animation cels. Many of these scenes are actually animated as you can browse through the different development stages.

A Production Photo Gallery is also part of the disc, showing images from some of the photo shoots that were used as rotoscoping references for the film. To round up the section, you will also find a large number of covers from the “Heavy Metal” comic book series, as well as other “Heavy Metal” related artwork on the disc, ranging from 1977 all the way to today’s issues.

A 35-minute documentary called “Imagining Heavy Metal” is also part of this superb DVD, giving you interviews with all the key people behind the production of the film. From the

While I am not a particular fan of “Heavy Metal”, I found the special edition that Columbia is presenting us here very impressive. It is the material and the selection of materials that I am sure will have fans salivating. The film itself has certainly never looked better and the supplements offer hours of entertainment. There can be no doubt that this was a very ambitious project and the result clearly pays off. This release is an instant must-buy item for every fan of the movie that will satisfy even the most discriminating collector.