April 11:Heavy Metal Movies — Pick a movie from Mike McPadden’s great book. RIP. List here.

The year was 1992. Kevin Eastman, who, along with Peter Laird, helped turn four turtles and some ooze into a global empire, decided he needed a new sandbox. And not just any sandbox, but the glossy, psychedelic and often scantily-clad pages of Heavy Metal. He may have grown up on a steady diet of Jack Kirby, but it was the French import Métal Hurlant that really blew his mind. The Richard Corben art looked like it was airbrushed in another dimension, plus it was European, it was cool, and it was for grown-ups.

When the magazine went up for sale, Eastman saw it as the final piece of the puzzle. He’d started Tundra Publishing to make comics for adults, and Heavy Metal was already sitting on newsstands across the country, waiting for those same readers. It was a match made in a weird, sci-fi heaven. His plan? Use the mag to bridge the gap between comic shops and the mainstream newsstands. He wanted to serialize high-end European hardcovers and bring them to the masses. 

While he eventually sold the brand, he did a lot with it, including this film, which was based on his comic The Melting Pot, which he created with Simon Bisley and Eric Talbot. In November of 2007, a new 170-page version of the story was published as a special edition of Heavy Metal, which was the springboard for this series.

Even better, not only was Eastman living a comic book lover’s dream life, but he was also married to Julie Strain, the B-movie queen and Penthouse Pet of the Year, who ended up being the animated star (and literal body model) of this movie.

The Arakacians once ruled the galaxy thanks to a rift where space and time itself leaked. They used this fluid to become immortal rulers of everything, until they were defeated. The key to this well of sorts is a green crystal (Is it the Loc-Nar? Maybe…), but anyone who finds the fountain goes absolutely out of their head.

Tyler (Michael Ironside) is a miner who touches the key and unlocks knowledge of how to get to the elixir by killing the Edenites of F.A.K.K.² (Federation-Assigned Ketogenic Killzone), a world where those touched by the fluids live. He destroys most of the world and takes a teacher, Kerrie, to be his slave, which sends her sister Julie (Julie Strain) on a blood-soaked quest for revenge.

This isn’t the original 1981 Heavy Metal, which is a movie I can watch at any and every time, but it tries its damnedest. It even has a ritual in which Julie bathes, just like Taarna, serving as a direct visual bridge to the segment we all remember from the first film.

And hey, if the plot doesn’t grab you, the audio will. Billy Idol shows up as a mysterious character named Odin, and the soundtrack is a time capsule of turn-of-the-millennium industrial and hard rock, featuring voices and tracks from Sascha Konietzko and Tim Skold of KMFDM, as well as Monster Magnet, Pantera and System of a Down.

You can watch this on Tubi.