Video: Heavy Metal | Aeon Flux

15 years after its theatrical release, Heavy Metal comes to video

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• Heavy Metal
• Rated R
• 93 Minutes
• MSRP $19.99

he Loch-nar, to whom "armies are playthings," is a purveyor of evil throughout the galaxy. It is also a small, glowing globe that serves as the thread that holds together the diverse stories told in Heavy Metal.

Appearing in each of the eight short animations that make up the movie, the Loch-nar, whether its role is small or large, has adverse effects upon the people around it. From the humorous to the serious, the stone manipulates people like an evil puppeteer bent on causing pain and suffering.

Using this common thread, the individual stories stake out their own territory in terms of scenery, subplots and animation style. While B-17 tells the story of a bomber pilot into whose plane the Loch-nar falls, Captain Sternn relates the tale of a meek space lackey, Hanover Fist, who is to testify at Captain Sternn's trial. Unfortunately, he picks up the stone on the way to the trial...

Despite all the mayhem, in the end there is a lone hero to defend the galaxy from the evils of the Loch-nar, and her story takes place in the final 27-minute episode. (There is also a three-minute, surreal segment called Neverwhere Land that appears after the credits have rolled. It did not appear in the original theatrical release).

Although Heavy Metal first appeared in theaters in 1981, rights to the musical score kept it playing in midnight theaters until now. Originally the showpiece for the fantasy illustrated magazine of the same name, Heavy Metal might have been better off consigned to late-night shows.

If viewers want to take a stroll down memory lane, this is perhaps not the movie to do it with. While many people have fond memories of Heavy Metal, it seems to have lost something with time. Perhaps it is the juvenile focus on gratuitous nudity (all the women look the same, as if drawn by the same animator, only hair style and color change -- certainly not breast size!), or the overall story, which seems to hamper the artists more than draw them out. The musical score -- an innovative, powerhouse lineup back in 1981 -- has also become seriously outdated.

Despite its age, individual pieces of Heavy Metal still stand out. Captain Sternn takes a rollicking, humorous (if macabre) look at the Loch-nar, and B-17 has some haunting animation that is technically excellent and fits perfectly into the Heavy Metal style. (B-17 is also good because there is no gratuitous nudity.)

However, these can't overcome the rest of the animations, which barely stand the test of time. Rather than ruining what to many is an old favorite, most fans would be better off renting contemporary anime.

Eh. You might be better off watching Akira again. -- Alex

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Techno, sex and espionage...

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• Aeon Flux
• Created by Peter Chung
• MTV Home Video
• $9.99 - $12.99
• 120 minutes

eon Flux began as short clips on MTV's Liquid Television show, the action fast and the plot as thin as the air at the top of K2. Later developed into a full-fleged series, Peter Chung's creation is now housed in a two-hour video offering selections of both the original shorts and the series episodes.

The title chacter, Aeon Flux, is an emaciated Amazon, a spy and saboteur whose special skills include assassination, domination and modeling. In a futuristic dystopia, Flux is a free-agent anarchist who may or may not be a double agent for Bregna or Monica -- two slices of a divided city roughly akin to Berlin, if Berlin were designed by a sado-techno-masochistic fetishist.

Trevor Goodchild is the near-albino autocrat of Bregna, where high IQs have been declared illegal. He is either Flux's pawn or puppeteer, as well as her some-time lover. He has plotted both her destruction and seduction, and also green-lighted some of Flux's industrial espionage against his own forces.

Both Bregna and Monica are twisted Cybertowns where weird, technological prosthetics are de rigeur and even the menus have hidden agendas. They are divided by a corridor of no-man's land, ceaselessly patrolled by flesh-popping lasers and mobile amputation units.

The videotape itself is isolated glimpses of intrigue. In one segment Flux attempts to help a naive, crippled insurgent named Sybil whose disability becomes Goodchild's fetish. In another, Flux permits herself to be cloned by Goodchild. Assassination appears to be the goal, but perhaps the plan is to fulfill supressed desires. The rest of the stories are as vague and varied.

With her scorpion-tailed hair, nano-second reflexes and outlandishly illegal IQ, Aeon Flux serves as a kind of dystopian role model. Her psyche is as twisted as a bag full of rattlers, but she manages to come off something like a straight shooter against the parade of demi-perversions that is the Bregna/Monica citizenry. She's terribly interesting, and in this competitive world of carnival freaks, that's like being a millionaire.

Chung's world surveys technology and psychology in ways both innovative and alienating. Relations among individuals, genders and governments are often actively -- and always ultimately -- destructive. Betrayal and manipulation are matters of skill and pride, and all aspects of the disturbing are covered -- the sexual, the surgical, the violent and the scatological.

To see both the short clips and the long episodes of Aeon Flux in one long draught doesn't make the workings of this world any clearer, but it seems to, and that is somewhat satisfying. The short clips are pretty anomolous, but the episode-length segments are reasonably easy to follow -- if heavy on voyeurism and psychological vivisection.

Wherever the bleeding edge is, Aeon Flux is on it. This makes for animation that's too disturbing to be called good, but resonates in the brain after the blue glow of the television fades.

One of the hardest things to get used to is the way Peter Chung renders body forms. Characters look like they've just arrived from Auschwitz and perfom cricket-like springs and speed by like locusts. Yet it's believable. -- Tamara I.

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