Headbangers In Leather: Musing on Heavy Metal (1981)
"I have been a customer here for a long time and no one has ever spoken to me this way!"
A cloud of perfume your grandma would wear drifts off the lady and you think of mustard gas flooding a trench with vaporized death. You respond by pulling off the apron with your name tag and dropping it onto the conveyor, cheap off-red fabric laying limp over fabric softener, lunchmeat and a six pack of Mr. Pibb. You grab your leather from the back of the stool, the one that manager Larry says you can't sit in even though it was put there expressly for that purpose. The jacket is cracked black, the collar studded, the lapel marked with pins for Sabbath, Girlschool, Evil Dead. You slip it on like a second skin. Love me like a reptile.
You have five fingers on your left hand, each nail topped with cracked black polish and one finger tends to take command in these situations. It stands at attention so this surly asshole can see, and stands straighter still so that manager Larry can get a good look. He balks at the gesture as if he's the pope and doesn't stare at your ass like it's a bakery display window. Time to hit the liquor store.
Johnny's Liquors remains trapped in the seventies and you drink that up as heartily as the booze. Faux wood panel walls, yellowed linoleum floors and a Coors poster of Elvira aren't just selling points, they're the closest you get to warm and fuzzy. The cashier is cute and flirts fine but he's more Nikki Sixx than Lemmy. You blow him a kiss after paying for the bottle of Jack and he looks like someone just dumped a can of chowder into his pants.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig. You sink into the brown couch and the springs inside give a groan of agony. "Same man." Out comes the fine China aka your favorite Playboy "Disappearing Clothes" glass. The brunette on the glass preens for her centerfold as its filled. Grenadine at the bottom, whiskey in the middle and coke for color. Top with a maraschino cherry. Look at those tan lines. Without the whiskey it's called a Roy Rogers but that ventriloquist dummy looking-fucker was definitely cutting the sweetness with Rye. Now what to watch? Your eyes wander the particle board shelf on its last legs, weighed down by dead media. You find an easy answer.
"A shadow shall fall over the universe and evil will grow in its path...And death will come from the skies..." A convertible falls through the stars. A damsel strips down to her Frazetta-esque curves. A skull in a pilot's cap grins through rot, eye sockets filled with ethereal green. A Valkyrie separates an arrogant ghoul's head from his body with one swipe of a golden sword. You light up the joint you've been saving and the cherry glows like a devil's eye. Tight pants and lipstick, you're riding on the razors edge.
I got to see Heavy Metal at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater this past Thursday. I am bragging...It fucking ruled. It should be clear by now that I have a deep-seeded belief the Mahoning Drive-In possesses an inherent magic, but sometimes a little extra gets into the mix. The Drive-In season has started and it's been a very wet May. I left New Jersey through a torrential downpour, 0ne of those where it feels like you're running through the rinse portion of the car wash. I arrived in a somewhat moist Lehighton, Pennsylvania. Throw back some cheesy tots, crack a Pineapple Fanta, and turn up the Danzig track that the DJ is playing. Life is good. Cut to me leaning back in my green and white lawn chair, a shit-eating grin on my face as the titles roar into place at the center of the screen.
Heavy Metal is unapologetic. In today's day and age, I am viciously behind that notion. In a time where a movie can and is often mutilated beyond recognition due to extensive focus testing or as a reaction to politicized elements, there's power to conviction. The movie starts with an astronaut dropping out of space into earth's atmosphere. Is he cool? Not cooler than the malevolent Lovecraftian green orb that vaporizes him into nothingness. Said orb, the Loc-Nar, is our throughline to the tales in this anthology. Along the way we'll see it as a MacGuffin in a future noir (That inspired The Fifth Element), as a tool to resurrect the dead for flesh-tearing intent and as a bauble in a madcap comedy segment where aliens literally hoover up space cocaine. In the final tale, the Loc-Nar is undone at the hands of Taarna, possibly the most famous Valkyrie Mommy (Patent pending) in all of alternative pop culture.
As the movie went on the air cooled and a fog rolled into the drive-in. What was questing vapor thickened and the trajectory of the images from the projector onto the screen lent something surreal to the experience. Heavy Metal is full of babes with Frazetta curves and splashes animated gore on the screen with glee. One story is essentially an adolescent boy's power fantasy made flesh. However this movie knows what it is and while it loves the shred of the guitar and a swig of Jack, it also has that wry Lemmy smile that tells you not to take it too seriously.
I'm an unabashed sucker for the construction of the film and feel an anthology is always worth checking out. Even if you don't love all the segments, there's usually one that'll do the trick. Hell, Creepshow 2 is considered inferior to Creepshow and yet I would argue that "The Raft" segment may be the most infamous of all the stories in both films combined. The animation style of Heavy Metal varies and all of it is a testament to what these days feels like an art form in danger. I'll save you all the tangent about how an understanding of the sheer labor of rotoscoping relative to some dork using a few keystrokes to make an AI image of a live action Lobo makes me want to throw myself in front of a train. If you're reading this you already get it.
As an artistic achievement, Heavy Metal deserves every moment of its pop culture fame. Between the animation, the commitment to its style and the absolutely fantastic soundtrack, ( Youth is all about thinking how Ozzy fronted the best Sabbath, adulthood is about recognizing the brilliance of the Dio era) this movie is the distillation of the heavy metal ethos. Drink deep and raise your horns.
-Dr. Benny Graves
