Heavy Metal: The Cult Movie That Refuses to Die

If you were a teenager in the early ’80s, reading Starlog and listening to heavy rock, there was pretty much no way you were going to miss Heavy Metal. I can still picture it. You are sitting in a dark theater in the summer of 1981, probably with a tub of popcorn in your lap, while the screen explodes with wild sci-fi action, glowing green space magic and enough heavy metal riffs to shake the seats. That was the promise of Heavy Metal, a movie that became a midnight-movie legend and one of Canada’s most successful animated films. It was an attempt to take the glorious, trippy artwork of Métal Hurlant and throw it straight onto the big screen. Depending on who you talked to, it was either a brilliant piece of counterculture animation or a gloriously over-the-top teenage fever dream.

And the timing couldn’t have been better for a kid who was into this stuff. Heavy Metal was released in theatres on August 7, 1981, right in the middle of the original Star Wars phenomenon. It arrived between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which meant that for a sci-fi-obsessed teenager, the summer of 1981 was basically an embarrassment of riches. You could have Star Wars on one side and Heavy Metal on the other, with Starlog sitting somewhere in the middle telling you about all of it. For a kid who loved science fiction, comics and loud guitars, this was pretty much the perfect time to be sitting in a dark movie theatre.

A blonde woman with wild hair, wearing a black bra and red arm armor, rides a large, winged, bird-like creature with big eyes and an open beak. She holds a sword triumphantly in her raised right hand. They fly over a sprawling, ancient-looking city under a sky split between bright light and dark, ominous clouds. The title "HEAVY METAL" is prominently displayed at the bottom.

And there is another reason Heavy Metal matters to me, especially as someone from Montreal. The movie wasn’t simply a Canadian production that happened to have some Montreal connections. Montreal was essentially the nerve center of the entire operation and the creative hub that helped bring this bizarre international experiment to life. The production brought together animators from more than a dozen countries, but the project was anchored right here in Montreal. That makes Heavy Metal an important part of the city’s animation history and one of those fascinating moments when Montreal was quietly helping establish itself as a serious powerhouse for animation and visual effects. For a movie that looked like it had been beamed in from some strange corner of the galaxy, its creative heartbeat was beating right here in Montreal.

Mainstream critics were not exactly lining up to give it a standing ovation. The story was all over the place, and aside from a few standout segments, like the creepy “B-17” dogfight and the almost completely silent power of “Taarna,” the movie felt like a collection of wildly different stories stitched together by a glowing green ball of generic evil called the Loc-Nar. Critics took plenty of shots at the movie’s juvenile and hyper-sexualized approach, basically treating it like the cinematic equivalent of a teenage boy’s locker-room imagination. But animation fans and sci-fi geeks saw something different. They loved the bold 2D artwork, the ambition of the whole thing, and the comedy voice cast, which included Second City legends John Candy, Harold Ramis and Eugene Levy.

But for me, the real glue holding this wonderfully crazy experiment together was the music. I still love the soundtrack to this day, and there are some seriously heavy tracks on that album. Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Cheap Trick and Sammy Hagar brought exactly the kind of loud, guitar-driven energy you wanted from a movie called Heavy Metal. Black Sabbath’s contribution, “The Mob Rules,” was sung by Ronnie James Dio, not Ozzy Osbourne, which is an important distinction for anyone who knows their Sabbath. The songs didn’t simply accompany the animation. They helped turn the whole movie into a time capsule of a very specific era.

Of course, not every song fits the movie quite as well. My least favorite tracks are usually the ones that feel like they wandered in from another album, including Journey’s ballad “Open Arms” and Donald Fagen’s jazzy “True Companion.” They are not bad songs, but when you’re watching animated warriors, spaceships, monsters and enough violence to make the Loc-Nar nervous, they feel a little out of place. Then there is Devo’s “Working in the Coal Mine.” Some people really don’t like it, arguing that the jerky, robotic cover is repetitive and doesn’t fit the gritty aesthetic of the movie. I actually like it. It has that strange, nervous Devo energy, and somehow that works for me in a movie that is already operating on its own set of rules.

Another song I could do without is “Blue Lamp” by Stevie Nicks. Stevie Nicks is rock royalty, but this particular track has never done much for me. It has always struck me as more of a mid-tempo leftover from the Bella Donna era than something that belongs on one of the most memorable rock soundtracks of the early ’80s. Still, those are minor complaints when you look at the album as a whole. I can put on the Heavy Metal soundtrack today and immediately get transported back to that particular moment when rock music, science fiction, comics and animation all seemed to be colliding at once. For me, it is one of those albums that still sounds like trouble is about to happen.

The movie’s legacy didn’t stop with the original film. One of the best examples came years later in South Park, which famously paid tribute to Heavy Metal in the episode “Major Boobage.” Kenny gets high from inhaling cat urine, or “cheesing,” and suddenly finds himself inside a psychedelic world that looks remarkably familiar. The episode recreates the distinctive rotoscoped animation, imagery and music of Heavy Metal, particularly the film’s iconic final segment featuring Taarna, the silent warrior riding a giant bird-like creature. It was a pretty good indication that what critics once dismissed as adolescent excess had become something much more important: a piece of animation history that an entirely new generation recognized instantly.

A cartoon image depicts a buxom cowgirl with long blonde hair and a brown hat, wearing a blue bikini top and bottom, riding a large, light blue winged creature with yellow accents. She is holding a small, orange Kenny from South Park plushie in front of her chest. The creature has a pink head with large black eyes and a small beak. They are flying over a desert landscape with rolling hills and faint outlines of skeletal figures on the ground, under a bright blue sky with scattered white clouds.

There is always a temptation with a cult movie to say, “Well, if people loved the original this much, how bad could a sequel be?” In the case of Heavy Metal, we eventually got an answer, and the answer was pretty bad. Heavy Metal 2000 arrived nearly two decades after the original and completely missed what made the first movie so much fun. Instead of the wonderfully chaotic anthology approach, the sequel tried to build a single extended story around Julie, a warrior seeking revenge against the villainous Tyler. Critics were not impressed, and the movie never came close to developing the cult reputation of its predecessor.

For me, that is the biggest problem with Heavy Metal 2000. The original felt like someone had opened a giant toy box and dumped everything onto the floor: European comics, science fiction, fantasy, sex, violence, rock music, bizarre animation and a healthy disregard for good taste. It wasn’t always a great movie, but it was an experience. The sequel felt like it was trying to recreate the formula without understanding why the formula worked in the first place.

And then there is the magazine itself, which has had almost as wild a ride as the movie. Heavy Metal has spent much of the past decade dealing with financial problems, management and ownership changes, distribution issues and the general difficulty of keeping a print magazine alive in an increasingly digital world. After years of instability, the magazine was relaunched through a major Kickstarter campaign with an entirely new editorial team. It was a chance to bring the old beast back to life, although the comeback has not exactly been smooth sailing.

A comic book cover for "Heavy Metal" #6 (Legacy #326, $14.99 US) depicts a light blue-haired woman in minimal black and red armor, holding a sword, walking up stone steps. She is set against a backdrop of glowing red and blue crystals and a dark, starry sky, with the title "HEAVY METAL" prominently displayed above and "THE WORLD'S GREATEST ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" at the bottom right.

By 2026, Heavy Metal was once again changing direction. According to reporting from The Comics Journal, the magazine was going through another significant transition, with rising printing and production costs putting additional pressure on the business. Subscription prices were increasing, with new premium hardcover options adding another tier for collectors. For a magazine that has spent decades walking the line between underground comics, collectible art book and heavy-metal time capsule, keeping the thing alive has become almost as complicated as producing the original movie.

The funny thing is that the incredible soundtrack lineup almost helped make the original movie disappear. The producers had secured the music rights for the theatrical release and soundtrack album in 1981, but they failed to clear those same rights for home video. With Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, DEVO and the rest of that soundtrack lineup involved, sorting out the licensing became a legal nightmare. Heavy Metal was essentially trapped in home-video purgatory for 15 years. It couldn’t simply be released on VHS, so for years fans who wanted to own the movie had to rely on bootlegs, while others stayed up late to catch it on cable or at midnight screenings. It finally received a legitimate home-video release in 1996, by which point its long disappearance had only made the legend bigger.

And maybe that is the strangest thing about Heavy Metal. A movie that critics once dismissed as juvenile excess became a cult classic, while a soundtrack that nearly prevented its release on home video became one of its most celebrated features. A movie made through an international animation effort was creatively anchored in Montreal, and a scene featuring a silent warrior on a giant bird was eventually recreated on South Park. A sequel came along and reminded everyone that some things really are better left alone, while the magazine that inspired it all continues to fight its way through another generation of financial and publishing challenges.

Maybe that is the most Heavy Metal thing of all. It refuses to die, even when it probably should have.