Film

Heavy Metal

Name: Heavy Metal
Genre: Animation, Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy, Music
Released: 1981
Cast: Rodger Bumpass, John Candy, Jackie Burroughs, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks

Heavy Metal strings together six unconnected sci-fi and fantasy vignettes via a glowing green orb that's basically evil incarnate, wall-to-wall scored with actual heavy metal and prog rock. It's gloriously excessive: spaceships, barbarians, zombies, a lot of gratuitous nudity, animated in the loose, slightly rubbery style of early-80s adult cartoons. Watch it for the vibe, not the plot — it barely has one.

TMDb rating

6.5

If you liked this

Love, Death & Robots2019

Netflix's anthology series is the closest thing modern TV has to Heavy Metal's spirit — wildly different animation styles, adult content, and a love of pulpy, high-concept sci-fi in fifteen-minute bursts.

But Quality swings wildly between episodes, and some segments feel like tech demos with a plot bolted on.

Rock & Rule1983no page yet

A Canadian animated cult curio from the same era, with a post-apocalyptic rock musical plot, a genuinely great soundtrack, and the same anything-goes weirdness that made Heavy Metal a midnight-movie staple.

But It's obscure and hard to find in good quality, and the pacing sags badly in the middle.

Fire and Ice1983no page yet

Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta's sword-and-sorcery epic, rotoscoped into gorgeous, muscular motion — pure pulp fantasy with none of the irony, just glaciers, warlords and impossibly oiled bodies.

But The plot is thin as parchment and the dialogue is pure Conan pastiche — style over substance, unapologetically.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Fantasia1940

Heavy Metal is essentially an X-rated Fantasia: both are anthology films built entirely around letting music dictate the animation, segment by segment, with no connective plot required.

Disney's original music-driven anthology, from spinning classical ballet hippos to a Stravinsky-scored parade of dinosaurs — the format Heavy Metal borrowed wholesale and then filled with monsters and nudity instead of ballet.

But It's a Disney classic aimed at families, so the tone couldn't be further from Heavy Metal's excess — don't expect an ounce of the sleaze.

Akira1988

The anime that redefined what adult animation could look like: darker, more violent and far more ambitious than Heavy Metal, but sharing its DNA of biker gangs, apocalypse and psychic chaos.

But Its plot is famously dense and rushed in the back half, condensed from a much longer manga.

Sin City2005

Frank Miller's anthology of hardboiled noir stories, shot in stark black-and-white with splashes of colour — if you liked Heavy Metal's segmented structure, this scratches the same itch with guns instead of spaceships.

But The stylised dialogue is deliberately purple and the violence is cartoonishly graphic — not for everyone.

The Animatrix2003no page yet

Nine short animated films set in the Matrix universe, made by different anime studios — a genuine anthology of styles and tones, much like Heavy Metal's patchwork of segments.

But You'll get more from it if you already know the Matrix trilogy; some shorts assume that context.

American Pop1981no page yet

Another Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped odyssey from the same year, tracing four generations of a musical family through jazz, rock and punk — less sci-fi, same restless, music-driven visual energy.

But It's more melancholy family drama than adventure, and the tonal shift might catch you off guard.

Wizards1977no page yet

Bakshi again, earlier: a scrappy post-apocalyptic fantasy pitting magic against fascism, animated on a shoestring with the same collage-and-rotoscope techniques that make Heavy Metal look so distinctive.

But The animation budget shows — backgrounds repeat and some scenes are static photographs with figures pasted on.

Liquid Sky1982no page yet

A genuinely trashy, synth-drenched New York sci-fi cult film about tiny aliens feeding off human orgasms — if Heavy Metal's sleaze appealed more than its spaceships, this is the underground extreme version.

But It's cheap, slow and deliberately alienating; this is midnight-movie material, not a Friday night crowd-pleaser.

The Twilight Zone1959

Same episodic structure and pulpy sci-fi/horror instincts as Heavy Metal's segments, but Rod Serling plays it as moral parable rather than spectacle — restrained black-and-white where Heavy Metal is lurid colour.

Twist-ending anthology television at its sharpest: each episode a self-contained sci-fi or horror story with a moral sting, decades before anthology TV became fashionable again.

But The pacing and effects are of their era — slow by modern standards, and some episodes' twists are now cultural clichés.

Belladonna of Sadness1973

A genuine forerunner from the same underground-erotica-meets-dark-fantasy tradition, using watercolour stillness instead of Heavy Metal's kinetic rock energy to tell a story of possession and abuse.

A hallucinatory, sexually explicit Japanese animated film that predates Heavy Metal by eight years and treats trippy, erotic dark fantasy as serious tragedy rather than pulp fun.

But It's slow, painterly and genuinely disturbing rather than fun — this is arthouse trauma cinema, not a rock-and-roll romp.