HEAVY METAL (1981) Coming To Blu-Ray (1 Viewer)

I like this movie a lot, and figured some of you might be thrilled it's coming to Blu-Ray, but as a Best Buy Exclusive only.


TOONZONE: Sony Pictures' cult animated film Heavy Metal will soon be coming to Blu-ray. Although the film was initially announced to be released on Blu-ray on January 25, it was later canceled. Now it seems it will be released as a Best Buy exclusive and is now available for pre-order. Heavy Metal will be released on February 1, 2011.

I have been waiting for this release on Blu for a while. I love the Elmer Bernstein score for the film. The film should sound good I would imagine it will be a DTS HD 5.1 Mix for those who love the score I highly recommen the FSM release You can listen to sound samples also http://filmscoremonthly.com/cds/detail.cfm/CDID/396/Heavy-Metal--The-Score/

Love it.

Can't wait to see it in Blu.


$16.99 preorder, wonder what the features are if any.

I have the dvd and the superbit dvd.


Heavy Metal

The Elmer Bernstein score is a must have. There was a bootleg CD I found at a comic con in the 90's that got a lot of play before the official one finally came out. I listen to the score more often than the songs album.


I hope all the DVD extras are ported over. Pity they aren't calling the Blu-Ray the "Plutonium Nyborg" edition, or better yet, "Rocking T*ts" Edition.

I picked it up today, along with Almost Famous:



Here's the Heavy Metal specs:




I browsed thru it and the Heavy Metal Blu-ray is everything I hoped for: vibrant colors and expected gritty quality. Has NOT been DNR'd; grain is very intact. No signs of EE either. I'm over the moon!

Even the rough cut benefits from better compression (standard def).


This should retire the Superbit, but I'm holding on to my Collector's Series DVD from 1999.


The following features from that disc are missing on the Blu-ray: Production Photo Gallery, Heavy Metal Magazine Cover Gallery, Pencil Portfolio With Animations, Single & Layered Cel Portfolios, Conceptual Art Gallery, Prod. Notes, Carl Macek Reading His Book Heavy Metal: The Movie (an alt audio track that played under the feature film).

Found a list of BB exclusives on the AV Maniacs site; presumably they'll be available in a few months from other vendors:


Hannibal

Long Kiss Goodnight
Almost Famous (bootleg cut)

on Feb. 1
Heavy Metal
Last House on the Left (original)
Poltergeist 2
Still Waiting
Rules of Attraction
Leaving Las Vegas
Dead Man Walking
Thomas Crown Affair (McQueen?)
Manchurian Candidate (presumably 1962?)
The Cove
Robocop 2 & 3
Killing Machine (Lundgren?)
Out of Sight

BestBuy.com/MovieExclusives

Most (if not all) of these were also covered by Mike Frezon in this weeks weekly roundup: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/308406/weekly-roundup-2-1-2011

&_D%3Ap=%20&pu=defaultusr&_D%3Apu=%20&pt=1296367201&iht=n&_DARGS=%2Fsite%2Fen_US%2Fsearch%2Ffragments%2Fincludes%2Folssearchparameters.jsp.frmSearchResults&AID=10474050&PID=3792338&SID=&URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Folstemplatemapper.jsp%3F_dyncharset%3DISO-8859-1%26id%3Dpcat17071%26type%3Dpage%26ks%3D960%26st%3DBest_Buy_Exclusive_Blu-rays_20110130%26sc%3DGlobal%26cp%3D1%26sp%3D-bestsellingsort+skuid%26qp%3Dcrootcategoryid%2523%2523-1%2523%2523-1%7E%7Eq426573745f4275795f4578636c75736976655f426c752d726179735f3230313130313330%26list%3Dy%26usc%3DAll+Categories%26nrp%3D17%26p%3D%5Bpromotion%252C+synonymns%5D%26_D%253Ap%3D+%26pu%3Ddefaultusr%26_D%253Apu%3D+%26pt%3D1296367201%26iht%3Dn%26_DARGS%3D%252Fsite%252Fen_US%252Fsearch%252Ffragments%252Fincludes%252Folssearchparameters.jsp.frmSearchResults&ref=39&CJPID=3792338&loc=01]Here's the link to the BB exclusives.

A bit of redundancy the last few posts.

"Sex and crime and rock n' roll"? Like this needs a subtitle? At least they didn't screw with the poster art. Sucks that they left off some of the old extras, the Carl Macek book track especially.

Has "Heavy Metal" on Blu-ray gone through any kind of clean up? The previous DVDs, including the Superbit, have always used a very dirty print. I was going to pick it up on release date regardless, but my city (Tulsa, Oklahoma) received record snowfall on Monday night and the snow is piled up 13 inches in front of my door and I can't even get out of the house, much less drive to Best Buy.

There are specs here and there. I do not know how it compares to the previously releases on this level, though. The important thing is we have what appears to be a good representation of film without any digital tampering that I can detect. The boost in audio is also welcome.

Originally Posted by Mike Williams

Has "Heavy Metal" on Blu-ray gone through any kind of clean up? The previous DVDs, including the Superbit, have always used a very dirty print. I was going to pick it up on release date regardless, but my city (Tulsa, Oklahoma) received record snowfall on Monday night and the snow is piled up 13 inches in front of my door and I can't even get out of the house, much less drive to Best Buy.

Click to expand...

I was able to do a quick comparison with the new BD and my old Superbit DVD. The new BD does appear to have less instances of dirt scattered around. The BD appears to have been created using the same transfer done for the last HD broadcast I saw.

I just found out about this.. going to best buy today

Recently, picked this up. Not bad image wise. The corvette sequence that opens the film seems grainier than I remember and there seems to be some sort of yellow speckling that occurs in Grimaldi's suit as he climbs the staircase toward the front door. I don't remember ever seeing that before. The sound was good but I'm pretty sure that there is a sound effect missing in the bomber sequence. IIRC, the reason the co-pilot opens the bottom ball turret door is due to him hearing a scratching or knocking sound coming from the turret. In fact, you see him leaning forward to listen but the sound effect is missing at that point. Does anybody else remember that sound effect occurring or was I just imagining it?

Not sure about that scene, but I've noticed slight audio differences in the Harry Canyon sequence over the various video releases. The robot hot dog vendor says "Thank you" in some mixes, and the flying messenger robot has a louder more dramatic sound effect when it swooshed down to Canyon's taxi in previous versions.

Having watched this repeatedly (and also looked into older copies), it is a pretty good Blu-Ray, but I'm kind of hoping for a 4K release in 2021 for the 40th anniversary. Maybe taken from the negative due to both the original negative ratio (the Blu-Ray has a terrible matte job on it) and due to the better quality (since all home video copies appear to be based off of a theatrical print). Also, all of the special features from the past and all of the possible soundtracks should be included as well. Maybe even upgrade Heavy Metal 2000 to at least Blu-Ray or maybe even 4K Blu-Ray for the first time ever as a special feature. I'd definitely buy it.