Sunday, February 10, 2008
Animation with BALLS
I watched HEAVY METAL again recently...and yeah I still dig it. For all it's flaws and immaturity. It's what made me really want at one point in my career to be an animator in the vein of Ralph Bakshi, and any other animation that was willing to go against the grain and give Disney's singing animal schlock the finger.
Blame my mom for this one as she took me to see the Bakshi version of "Lord of the Rings" back in 1978(?) and after watching an animated bloodbath like that, The Rescuers weren't going to cut the mustard.
Furthermore I had started collecting comics at the time and Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL struck a nerve with me. It's violent, frenetic pulpy atmosphere took place in my hometown of NYC, and it's underworld overtones of good, and evil seemed to be torn straight from the headlines of the New York Post. Daredevil didn't fight Super villains, he fought Serial Killers, Organized Crime, The Yakuza, and assorted wackos, and street undesireables, So it felt real since it wasn't so far from the truth (NYC was pretty scary and dangerous in the late 70's and early 80's).
So when HEAVY METAL opened in 1982 I tried like hell to either one of my parents to take me to see this. But it was no go. Ironic since they took me to every other type of wacky flick since I was a kid. So I had to wait for a bootleg VHS tape to fall into my lap in 1987, and I watched that movie all the time.
Yeah sure, it's dated, the animation's not up to snuff by today's standards, but it still makes me feel like a 15 year old dork, which kicks ass.
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2 comments:
I saw this in a theater in Lawrence, MA when it came out and the thing I remember best about the experience was the fact that someone had thrown a brick through the screen in the previous showing.
It attracted that kind of crowd.
Don't underestimate the impact that had on a sixteen (or so)year old kid who still LIKED Disney's singing animals (despite having also seen LOTR on the big screen and loved it... it got me to read the books)!
But who the hell dropped the ball on the music? I mean, it's called HEAVY METAL and it's got songs by Devo (no offense), Don Felder, Journey, and Stevie Friggin' Nicks???! WTF?
Later on I wound up working on Spider-Man with a bunch of guys who animated on it and their stories of the work experience were pretty abysmal.
All the same I liked it and still get a kick out of how raw and absolutely un-mainstream it is.
It's certainly better than the Land Before Time XXXIV or whatever other schlock the industry's putting out now (apologies to Pixar... the only real standout of the bunch!).
Are you sure you didn't see this on Chestnut with the "Brothers" in attendance?
I don't have any "Bricks thrown through the movie screen" anecdotes."
Dammit, Guy you've stumped me again.
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