In 1974, French artists Moebius and Philippe Druillet joined forces with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas to form Les Humanoïdes Associés to publish the comic anthology Métal hurlant which featured surreal imagery, adult themes and complex narratives. An American version was published under the title Heavy Metal from 1977 which initially consisted of reprints, but which later started to develop its own stories. In 1981, some of those stories formed the basis of a film, also titled Heavy Metal, made in Canada and overseen by British animator and director Gerald Potterton.

The wraparound story concerns itself with the arrival on Earth of the Loc-Nar (voiced by an uncredited Percy Rodriguez), a glowing green orb said to contain “the sum of all evils.” It arrives in the opening vignette (it’s really to brief to be called a story) Soft Landing in which an astronaut exits an orbiting space shuttle in his Corvette and descends to a desert canyon. The story, based on a strip by Dan O’Bannon, possibly influenced Elon Musk when he sent a dummy into space sitting at the wheel of one of his Tesla Roadster cars. In Grimaldi, the Loc-Nar follows the astronaut to his home where it murders him and confront his terrified young daughter, telling her of its influence throughout the universe. Soft Landing is a spectacular set-piece, though Grimaldi is too brief to really make any impact – it’s just a scene setter, a way to ease us into the story proper.

Which begins with Harry Canyon, a hard-boiled futuristic detective story based on the Moebius comic strip The Long Tomorrow which, in some respects, anticipates Blade Runner (1982), the cyberpunk movement and even Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997) – there’s also a pre-Back to the Future Part II (1989) gag about future sequels to Jaws (1975) with Jaws 7 showing at a local cinema. In a nightmarish New York of 2031, taxi driver Harry Canyon (Richard Romanus) struggles to get through a day beset by attempted robberies and a young woman (Susan Roman) who turns out to be a gangster who has murdered her father who had, in turn, discovered the Loc-Nar. Pleasingly, sequence director Pino van Lamsweerde retains the unique look of Moebius’ original artwork, but Harry Canyon sets the wearying tone of adolescent, testosterone fuelled wish fulfilment that runs throughout the film. With its hard-bitten noir heroes, big guns, bigger heroines, sex and violence, it only gives ammunition to those who would seek to paint all comics as mindless pandering to teenage boys.

Even worse in this respect is Den, based on a hugely character created by Richard Corben who had already self-financed a short, animated version of the story in Neverwhere (1968). A nerdy teenager (John Candy) finds the Loc-Nar which he mistakes for a harmless green meteorite and while experimenting on it is transported to the world of Neverwhere, where he becomes into a muscular man called Den, an acronym for his real name, David Ellis Norman. Den rescues Katherine Wells (Jackie Burroughs), a former resident of Gibraltar also transported to Neverwhere, from being sacrificed to the god Uhluhtc. The immortal Ard (Martin Lavut) is after the Loc-Nar for his own ends and much sex and violence ensues. This is as about as pure a distillation of the arch teen fantasies that inform most of Heavy Metal as it gets – nerdy teen becomes muscular sex machine and saves the world. It’s hard to tell if this was supposed to be tongue in cheek or if we’re being invited to take it all at face value.

There’s less uncertainty about Captain Sternn which takes a very conscious comedic turn. Based on the character created by Bernie Wrightson, it’s pretty much a one gag story about the conceited, corrupt and improbably chinned space captain Lincoln F. Sternn (Eugene Levy) who we first meet on trial for many serious charges including 12 counts of murder. Against the advice of his lawyer Charlie (Joe Flaherty), Sternn pleads not guilty having bribed witness Hanover Fiste (Rodger Bumpass). But Fiste, under the influence of the Loc-Nar, reveals the truth about Sternn before transforming into a monster and pursuing the captain around a space station. The problem here is that it’s very clearly just the one idea stretched almost to breaking point and certainly past the point where it stops being funny – if it ever was and that itself is debatable.

B-17 is possibly the most fondly remembered story, an EC-comics styled horror tale set aboard the eponymous World War Two bomber. Again written by O’Bannon, it sees the majority of the aircraft’s crew killed in a disastrous bombing raid, leaving just the pilot (George Touliatos) and co-pilot (Don Francks) alive. But the Loc-Nar attacks the ailing aircraft, and revives the dead crewmembers as zombies, leading to the death of the co-pilot and forcing the pilot to escape by parachute. To his horror, he lands on a remote island full of downed aircraft, alone with an army of zombified airmen. There’s lashings of animated gore, it’s brief enough not to outstay its welcome and in a sense it acts as a curtain raiser for O’Bannon’s subsequent dalliance with zombies in Return of the Living Dead (1985).

While B-17 seems to have etched itself into the memory, perhaps by virtue of its sheer simplicity, So Beautiful & So Dangerous, from the strip by Angus McKie, is easy to forget entirely. Dr Anrak (Rodger Bumpass) arrives at The Pentagon to discuss strange mutations that are being reported across the United States. The Loc-Nar turns up in the locket of stenographer Gloria (Alice Playten) who, along with Anrak, is abducted by a pair of Cheech and Chong-inspired stoner aliens, Edsel (Eugene Levy) and Zeke (Harold Ramis), and their horny robot (John Candy) who falls madly in lust with Gloria. The stoner aliens quickly become annoying and the segment just stops, running out of steam before it can find its own punchline.

The last full-length story, and the longest of the set, is Taarna, based on the strip Arzach by Moebius. It tells of how the Loc-Nar, grown to the size of a giant meteor, crashes into a volcano and erupts green slime over the crowd that gathers to investigate, mutating them into a monstrous army who march of a city of peaceful scholars. The city leaders summon the mute warrior woman Taarna, the last of the Taarakians who vowed to protect the city. Taarna flies to the city only to find that the people have all been murdered and sets out to avenge them. Cue some spectacularly epic battle that finally give the film the sort of epic feel it had struggled to find until now. Finally, back on Earth, the Loc-Nar begins breaking up, the young girl flees, and the alien evil explodes, destroying her home. Taarna’s reborn bird-like steed appears flies the girl away, Taarna’s soul having reincarnated in the body of the girl.

Inspired by the title, a decision was taken to cram the soundtrack full of rock music, though little of it might actually be referred to as heavy metal, at least not the way that heavy metal was understood in 1981. Black Sabbath would fit the bill, and perhaps even Trust maybe, but Stevie Nicks? Journey? Devo? Certainly not. It’s a mixed bag that was never going to be cohesive enough a selection to please anyone and the many publishers and rights holders involved ensured that Heavy Metal‘s home video releases were spotty for many years – it wasn’t until 1992 until agreements could be ironed out with all involved.

Like its soundtrack, Heavy Metal itself is a mixed bag. Some of the animation is stunning, the recreations of the styles of the original artists first rate and there’s a huge array of talent involved both in the voice cast and the many sequence directors and their teams. It remains unique – an animated anthology based on one of the key titles of adult-oriented comics, but it falls very short of greatness. Taken ion the level of a fantasy for teenage boys, it has its wayward charms, but one can’t help but think that there was something more better waiting to burst free from all this talent, something that was sadly pummelled to death by sex, violence and mismatched musical cues. See it for the gory pleasures of B-17 and the stunning visuals elsewhere, but try not to dwell for too long on the stories themselves…