90 minutes
This animated anthology consists of seven stories. They all have to do with the Loc-Nar, a sentient, glowing, green orb. In the first story a man brings it home with him from a trip in space. He wants to show it to his daughter but when he takes it out of the case it kills him. It then proceeds to tell her stories about itself.
Harry Canyon - A taxi driver (Harry Canyon) tries to help a woman who is being pursued by gangsters who want the Loc-Nar and know that she is the only one who knows where to find it.
Den - A human man (Den) is transported to another planet where he interferes in a fight between a high priestess and a monarch, and along the way rescues the woman they both want to sacrifice to appease the Loc-Nar.
Captain Sterrn - A man on trial (Sterrn) flees from his friend who has been mutated by the Loc-Nar into an angry giant.
B-17 - The crew of the Pacific Pearl is shot to pieces during a mission during the Second World War. The last remaining man, the pilot, parachutes out of the bomber, after the Loc-Nar animates the corpses of his comrades and sends them to kill him. He quickly discovers that he has leaped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
So Beautiful & So Dangerous - A spaceship, piloted by stoner aliens and a horny robot, kidnaps Gloria, a secretary from the Pentagon.
Taarna - The Loc-Nar's quest to conquer Earth is foiled by Taarna the last of the last of the Taarakians.
Thoughts
I really didn't remember much of anything about this movie from the last time I saw it, but I'm pretty sure that was sometime in the 1990s. According to Wikipedia the film wasn't released on VHS until 1996. I probably saw it on VHS. I don't think I owned it so it was probably a Blockbuster rental.
I don't have any nostalgia for this film, because I didn't see it when it came out. Maybe I would, if I had seen back then. I was 11 years old at the time and my parents were not about to take me to see Heavy Metal or let me go with someone else to see it.
The quality of the animation varies quite a bit. I wouldn't say it was great or even really good. Most of the stories were fairly short. The exception was Taarna which was about 30 minutes long.
There is a fair amount of gratuitous female nudity in this movie. Only two of the seven stories didn't have any nudity.
There are almost two dozen songs used in this film. I only recognized one of them. There are songs by several artists whom I know from their other work.
There are a number of actors that I know who voiced characters in this movie. I am referring to John Candy, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, and John Vernon. Most of the ones I recognized were connected with Second City Television.
There are ten credited directors for this movie. There is only one of them (Jimmy Murakami) who has directed anything else I have seen. I am referring to Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).
Taarna was by far the best of the stories but that's not saying much given the quality of the other stories. I think I would have preferred it if they had dropped Captain Sterrn and So Beautiful & So Dangerous from the movie and put more time and effort into one or more of the other stories.
I'm sure that there are lots of people who won't be impressed by this movie given the advances in the quality of animation over the past 45 years. Honestly, Disney and a few other studios were making much better looking animation than this. What those studios weren't doing was making animation that wasn't family friendly.
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