Hacker Cinema
Heavy Metal
1981 · Film · 90 min
Part of Heavy Metal Collection
Directed by Gerald Potterton, John Bruno, John Halas, Julian Harris, Jimmy T. Murakami, Barrie Nelson, Paul Sabella, Jack Stokes, Pino Van Lamsweerde, Harold Whitaker
AnimationScience FictionAdventureFantasyMusic
The embodiment of ultimate evil, a glowing orb terrorizes a young girl with bizarre stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.
3 positive9 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
Yeah thats also how I do it.
I have a cool 16 DVD/Bluray ripping rig. Even have scripts that convert ripped images into MKV's with all audio and subtitles, art, etc. Uploads into my Jellyfin.
And yes, I do buy VHS, DVDs, and Blurays. I have probably 3000 movies in physical format, and 10000 audio CDs. I also rip old VHS, which you usually cant find any torrents of. Again, I specialize in rare stuff you cant buy retail or find.
There's also illegal shows, like the old WKRP in Cincinnati. They licensed for TV only multiple songs. Pink Floyd and other artists refuse to license now. Nobody can legally sell them, even if you have the money. Piracy is the only way for the complete show.
There's also a lot more shows that languished in licening hell for decades, or theyre still unobtainable at any price. Some you can get redacted versions, but the originals are illegal no matter what. And as an (well, illegal, but I DGAF) archivist, having shows intentionally lost due to pervasive greed is just... more wrong.
The Wonder Years - finally published in 2021, LOTS of cuts made
China Beach - published in 2013 after clearing hundreds of songs. 17 segments were cut due to licensing fuckery
Northern Exposure - multiple songs redacted on republishing
Pee-wee's Playhouse - multiple songs redacted on republishing
Beavis and Butt-Head - DVD was a hackjob with dozens of songs changed/parodied.
Cold Case - too much licensed content, cant republish
Third Watch - too much licensed content, cant republish
The Drew Carey Show - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Malcolm in the Middle - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Little Monsters (1989) - massive music rights issues, cant republish
Heavy Metal (1981) - tons of rights issues, cant republish
Kids Incorporated / Class of 1999 2 - tons of rights issues, cant republish
> what happens if you have a work where e.g. the music and the script were written by different people?
This happens ALL THE TIME. 2001 A Space Odyssey, Heavy Metal (1981-Blue Oyster Cult), Rocky (1976) airing on TV without Eye of the Tiger, It's a Wonderful Life was public domain but distributors needed to pay for the soundtrack. TV shows like Married with Children and Dave airing in syndication with different opening theme songs. etc.
All over archive.org you'll find tons of classic films but with the soundtracks stripped out.
Are you talking about made for TV animation or others? I would suggest animated feature films such as The Secret of Kells, A Scanner Darkly, or even Waking Life and Heavy Metal to see that this is not entirely the case.
The interesting thing about Blade Runner and almost all modern sci-fi and cyberpunk is that they all took their influence from one single comic, The Long Tomorrow, by Dan O'Bannon and Jean Giraud (aka Moebius).
Dan and Moebius were working on Jodorowsky's Dune. During a slow period, Dan was bored and started drawing a comic. Moebius saw this and offered to rework it a bit. Their collab appeared in Heavy Metal (Metal hurlant) magazine. Ridley Scott used this comic as visual inspiration for Blade Runner. William Gibson even credits this comic for Neuromancer. Other movies influenced by this comic, or the art of Moebius include Tron, Heavy Metal (based on the magazine comics), The Fifth Element, and The Abyss. And, of course, pretty much everything else that came later such as The Matrix or video games like Deus Ex.
It's crazy to think about all the what-ifs with Jodorowsky's Dune. If he did not bring Dan and Moebius together, we wouldn't have Blade Runner (or a vastly different one). If Dune didn't fall apart, Dan wouldn't have gone and written Alien. If Alien didn't happen, Ridley Scott may not have known about Dan O'Bannon or Moebius, and never have done Blade Runner.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was also influenced by Moebius, according to Miyazaki. Look at Azrach (again, Metal hurlant magazine) and the similarities are obvious. The French were really ahead in illustration and animation at one point, and don't often get the credit they deserve. Go and look at what René Laloux was doing with Fantastic Planet, Time Masters, or his short films. Some of this stuff still blows my mind.
The Josan Gonzalez “Deathburger” images on the article could be lifted directly the Heavy Metal movie. And Gonzalez did artwork for the Heavy Metal magazine.
When Musk launched a Tesla into space, there was a lot of speculation that he was inspired by the opening scene in the Heavy Metal film [0] [1].
This film was Ivan Reitman before he did Ghostbusters and same year he did Stripes, and became really famous. A film like this could never be made today; there are way too many unpolitically correct scenes. Just don't bother with "Heavy Metal 2000", the 2nd film that came out 20 years later -- it was not good at all and had no involvement from the original creators as I understand.
[0] https://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/02/did-heavy-metal-inspire-elon-musks.html
[1] https://bleedingcool.com/movies/spacex-elon-musk-use-falcon-heavy-greatest-heavy-metal-reenactment-space-ever/
More great art from Josan Gonzalez: https://www.heavymetal.com/tag/josan-gonzalez/
The film "Heavy Metal" from 1981 also had some of this aesthetic. So did the magazine counterpart (still in print!)
Despite the fact I share your tastes I think things have simply changed. In the 80s I had a choice of theatres to go see funky underground and classic movies. I remember one place played Rocky Horror, Liquid Sky and Heavy Metal every weekend for years. I saw Rocky Horror in three different Houston theatres and sincerely regret not seeing it in at least one or two more, which tells you how many places we had playing non-mainstream movies.
The River Oaks Theatre played so many different movies they had to publish a monthly calendar because it was often a new movie every night. In fact they had a bar in the same parking lot (Marfreless) that was movie nerd hangout downstairs and make out spot upstairs.
Fast forward to today and most of those theatres are gone. The nameless theatre in a strip mall on Gessner is gone as is the Landmark Greenway, The Alabama Theatre was turned into a Bookstop and is now a Trader Joe's. The Bellaire Theatre was squeezed to death by Whole Foods dominating their parking lot. Even a recent entrant with Angelika downtown which became the Sundance theatre ended up flipping to an AMC. The one to last the longest, River Oaks Theatre was shuttered after Covid 19 put them a year behind on rent and their landlord refused to renew the lease without an agreement to pay the back rent.
River Oaks had already sold to Landmark just to survive and Landmark let the lease lapse which tells you all you need to know about the margins they were operating under. It just isn't profitable enough to sustain a theatre any more. Marfreless is still alive and well.
People have a surplus of choices and immediate, online gratification available 24/7. No need to plan with friends, arrange a baby sitter or slog through traffic to sit in a theatre. Although I agree that many movies are undoubtedly best viewed on a big screen with a good soundsystem, it appears we're in the minority and there just aren't enough of us to keep places profitable.
Yeah, I'm not that far from 40 myself and having grown up in a charismatic church in the 90ies, I sure remember the scare around heavy metal (or any rock for that matter) and that most things in fact was satanic. Fun times.
This docudrama explains hard-to-understand concepts by telling emotional stories that most people can relate to, which frankly should be done more often for technical stuff affecting society in not so obvious ways. Again, this film is not for developers and engineers who mostly prefer dry facts. It's for everyone else.
Sometimes I like listening to music I’ve loved since I was in high school, so the album from the movie “Heavy Metal”, or other heavy metal bands from that time, sometimes music from bands like Yaz (Yazoo in the UK) or Depeche Mode, or other work by Vince Clark. Sometimes I’m in a Rush or Styx mood.
I have also discovered that there is a category of music called “instrumental heavy metal”, but I have not yet done much exploring there. I found out about it through the web comic author Jeph Jacques (https://questionablecontent.net/), who also has a one-man-band called “Deathmøle”.
In college, I found I could study best by listening to Johan Sebastian Bach pipe organ concertos. But for being productive in a work-type setting, I find that it works better to have more up tempo music whose words I know like the back of my hand.
For focused help, definitely see a therapist. I wish I could recommend a way to find one focused on this service. I wish recommend-me-a-therapist was a service that existed.
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Whenever I find myself on a rough flight, I generally find it helpful to put on either heavy metal or an action movie or to imagine myself as an aerial photographer returning from a dicy mission over the Baku oil fields.
Is the Tesla car and it's space suit-wearing driver a reference to the intro from the 1981 film Heavy Metal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWMPe3wF9jQ
My guess is Musk is launching a Roadster because he's a fan of the movie Heavy Metal
https://youtu.be/rYy_XJpI6uk?t=1m45s
The look seems to come from Heavy Metal, the 1981 movie.