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I remember as a boy being fascinated by the magazine Heavy Metal, largely because my favorite movie of all time (and still my favorite movie) was created by the artists and story writers who created its pages. Alien featured the artistry of Moebius, Giger and hot Star Wars production designer Ron Cobb all of whom had involvement with the mag. The stories were, and still are, ahead of most science fiction/fantasy tales of the time. The colors and the surreal, bleak, sexual imagery was hypnotic in its layout. Alien is a movie that would best be described, by intent of Director Ridley Scott, as a Heavy Metal comic come to life.

Heavy Metal published a run of the story of Alien in comic form in it’s pages over several issues in 1979 when the movie came out, sponsored the making of book (The Book of Alien), and a graphic novel version of the movie. Heavy Metal was the chief inspiration for the design of Blade Runner, Outland, and even the Matrix movies. Forget anime, Heavy Metal did it first, and because it was always more fun than thought-inducing, did it better. I would dare to say that most anime is inspired by Heavy Metal as well.

What a s immediately excited to see it, but given the stamp of disapproval from my mother. My father wanted to take me to see it, but was too afraid of the backlash of my mom. Completely tame compared to the magazine (which I had already snuck peeks into when convenience store owners weren’t around), the movie has it’s silly B-movie thing going for it, but also has some of the best story design and animation ever hand-drawn for a motion picture. The music by legendary Elmer Bernstein and a virtual who’s who of early 80’s hard rock flesh the experience out perfectly. Most movies with rock music become dated by it; Heavy Metal relishes in being dated already.

The movie is produced by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Stripes), and features the vocal talent of practically the entire SCTV ensemble (John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis), all of which are very funny and in top form throughout. They keep the film from feeling too dark in all the right places.

The story is about a green ball called the Loc-Nar that is basically the nexus of all evil in the universe being brought home to a little girl by her space archaeologist, unassuming father as a gift. The ball dispatches the father in one of the films grizzly animated deaths and proceeds to boast to the little girl about how evil he is before its intent to kill her. These boastings are done through other stories, all lifted from the pages of the magazine in a more condensed, non xxx-rated, and less serious fashion.

I won’t give away the movie’s clever ending, but it is a highly satisfactory one. Much of the comedy disappears in the third act in favor of being more true to the magazine, and this is where the movie shines. This isn’t a knock to the comedy! All in all, it’s both flavors that create the robust, satisfying mixture that is Heavy Metal.

Bernstein’s score is not only the best score he has ever composed, it’s one of the best scores for a science fiction/fantasy picture ever conceived.

Parts of the score for the last segment were rejected from another movie (“Saturn 3”), and it’s a good thing; it’s a much better fit here. His score paints the sonic canvas with an epic, swash-buckling, and emotional hue of sound.

The rock music? It’s the very reason I got into Metal. Say what you want about Sammy Hagar, but the title track, along with the equally bombastic “Mob Rules” by the then Dio-led Black Sabbath still nearly kick the living hell out of most metal, and even thrash today. It’s just too fantastic. The title track is nearly as perfect a cue for a movie as Queen’s Flash Gordon or a John Williams Superman theme. Unfortunately, it’s not used over the opening credits, but the opening credits are still fantastic in their own right.

I must add that Dan, My Wife and I all got to meet the very nice John Bruno at a Tulsa Star Trek convention. He was so nice; he offered another friend of mine a job to come work with him. Mr. Bruno was the Oscar winning effects coordinator of all of James Cameron’s films, from T2 to The Abyss. He had just recently finished directorial duties on the disappointing Jamie Lee Curtis sci-fi flop “Virus.” He also directed the TD-3D ride for Universal (I did not know this at the time), and is the director of the Taarna episode of Heavy Metal. I found this out later watching the special edition THX DVD that was released shortly after. If I had known this at the time, I would have flipped! He talked to us personally for over an hour, and was just a great, fantastic, friendly man.