Review: Heavy Metal 4K Blu-ray

So, if you’re a fan of animation, 80’s animation, and especially some really messed up animation from the 80’s, you know Heavy Metal. If you are a fan of comic magazines with an old school feel, dating back decades, you really know Heavy Metal. You will know from the covers where you will see: women who make hour glasses look like planks, crazy looking demons, fiery hellscapes with demons fighting angels, and all of this stereotypical imagery that the genre adopted when the magazine went the 70’s version of viral. South Park’s “Major Boobage” brought it back into the mainstream for a season.

How does Heavy Metal (the movie) hold up today? Well…

I’m not going to mince words. Heavy Metal still holds up today just based on the content within. Meaning, if you like the music, imagery, or story, Heavy Metal is still a movie for you 41 years later. However, the problem here lies in the transition from 80’s VHS and betamax release to 4K UltraHD. The translation across technological gaps isn’t there from a production standpoint. There comes to a point where companies need to ask themselves “Is releasing this really worth it?”

Of course, the die-hards will love it. But the fact still remains, that I’ve seen Dragon Ball Z handled with more care for their Blu-Ray releases than I have with Heavy Metal. It saddens me because this is a cultural milestone for the entire heavy metal community. You can only get so much out of a movie where the original format is meant for 480i and not 4K.

The video quality isn’t the only problem here. The audio is not mixed well, at all. When you hear the soundtrack, it’s all in. It rocks. However, the dialogue is awful. If you’re trying to follow along to what’s being said while either sound effects or music is playing, either pay real close attention, or turn on the subtitles. Otherwise, just enjoy the show.

There isn’t all piss and vinegar in regards to this release of Heavy Metal. Underneath the grainy movie, you can tell that the animation blew anything away that came out in the 1970’s through even the early 1990’s. I would put up the quality of Heavy Metal against anything Disney and Don Bluth were releasing between that time, including The Black Cauldron and The Secret of Nimh. Also, I’ll put the quality of the female form in Heavy Metal against anything and everything from the dark side of Japan, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

The voice actiing of John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Harold Ramis top a cast that is just extraordinary. There isn’t much to say otherwise. The performances lended heft and credence to the story, especially with John Candy playing the internal monologue of the barbarian in “Dan.” Eugene Levy as the nefarious Captain Sternn was impeccable. Also, if you watch “Captain Sternn,” you’ll notice the voice of Squidward from Spongebob if listen to the character Hanover Fiste. There is so much going on through each of the stories, that it surprises me there’s so much fluidity going from story to story.

And that’s where the master class comes in. If you’re following along, you know that every story has one common thread: the glowy, green orb named the Loc-Nar. It’s travels are far and vast, and it’s evil knows no bounds. This tiny little ball of anarchistic destruction is woven in deep to some of the plots, like “Den,” and barely matters like with “Captain Sternn.”

That said, we get THE SONG from “Major Boobage,” “Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride)”, which is a lead-in to a war story World War II era story “B-17.” This has to be one of the more grotesque stories so far, with the shots into the head, disemboweled bodies, and the horrors of the dead on the plane. Once the pilot bails, it turns into what feels like a game of “Zombies” in Call of Duty. Also, throw in Harold Ramis playing a cocaine snorting alien, and bringing John Candy coming back as an alien robot having sex with an Earth woman in “So Beautiful and So Dangerous.” The castings and characters throughout Heavy Metal is obscenely good, and well worth the watch.

There is one featurette that’s a look back from both cast and crew of the original Heavy Metal as well as celebrities giving their thoughts and feelings of watching the movie. Producer Ivan Reitman gives a lot of insight in the short time he was able to explain, like animating on glass as opposed to translucent cels. Listening to Reitman talk about the actors involved, like Candy and Levy, just showed how much respect the crew had for them while they were making the movie.

All in all, asking whether buying Heavy Metal on a 4K UHD release is a question with more than one possible answer. I can’t feasibly say that buying this as a 4K release is worth the $35 on Amazon if you already own it on another format, or if you’ve seen it within the last 10 or so years. It isn’t worth it. The actual print of the movie wasn’t touched up in any way except to stretch and distort a picture quality that has been obsolete for decades now. The mix on the audio is atrocious, and it just doesn’t feel like the love needed for a rerelease like this was given like it should have.

However, and this is a gigantic “however,” If you’re like me and both don’t own Heavy Metal, as well as haven’t seen this in what feels like forever, go on and buy it. If you’re able to get through the bad mix and the grainy video, the story will carry you through to the end, it’s that well written. If Sony gave Heavy Metal the Dragon Ball Z treatment Funimation gave out, the animation of Heavy Metal would stick out as a monument to not only 80’s culture and animation, but animation in general. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the love that Heavy Metal deserved for a better re-release.