"HEAVY METAL

• 1981 - ANIMATED ANTHOLOGY...R Rating...COLOR/90 Minutes

• DIRECTOR: Gerald Potterton

• VOICES OF: Richard Romanus, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, John Vernon

• This fine "party platter", from the creative geniuses at HEAVY METAL magazine, is irreverent, adult, and enjoyable. Each sample on this tasty tray was originally presented , in toto, within the pages of the finest fantasy portfolio ever created. Originally, this magazine, (titled "METAL HURLANT"), came to us from France via the same publishers that gave us that wonderful humor magazine, NATIONAL LAMPOON. (The emphasis here, is on "Adult Sci-Fi", and this magazine is not for everyone! For those of us that like this sort of thing, "HM" is by far the best!)

• METAL HURLANT's style is accurately reproduced in this film. Each of the creative, colorful, and macabre segments is tied to a larger "wrap-around" tale about a possessed meteor, which by chance happens to enter the lives of several diverse characters. It's immense evil manages to infect, or at least affect its victim's lives in a myriad of ways.

• Each vignette can stand alone, and the meteor connection is not paramount to the storyline spun by some of the world's most creative artists and writers. Rich Corben, Moebius, and Bernie Wrightson, to name but a few.

• The first vignette about a futuristic cab-driver named "Harry Canyon", is my personal favorite, but the others are also enjoyable.

• I went to great lengths in the eighties to obtain a copy of this funfare. For many years, this film was unavailable due to copyright litigations. Fortunately, during the last decade, it was finally released for public consumption.