TOTAL ANARCHY: Heavy Metal (1981) on 35MM + Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
Sponsored by The Record ShopAbout
“Some of the animation is first-rate, particularly in the more modest comedy segments, and even the heavy set pieces have greater flash and dazzle than anything Ralph Bakshi mustered around the same period.” — Dave Kehr on Heavy Metal
“Perhaps the highest praise anyone can give Arkush’s exuberant musical is to say that it captures the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll and the essence of the Ramones, which luckily happen to be one and the same.” — Nathan Rabin (A.V. Club) on Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
Heavy Metal (1981)
A lurid, headbanging fever dream forged in the crucible of late-Cold War anxiety and adolescent fantasy, Heavy Metal translates the anarchic spirit of its source magazine into an episodic animated odyssey of sex, violence, and cosmic dread. Across a series of loosely connected tales, each orbiting a sentient, malevolent green orb that corrupts all it touches, Heavy Metal ricochets between dystopian sci-fi, sword-and-sorcery, and dark comedy, unified less by narrative than by a sensory onslaught of rotoscoped bodies, airbrushed excess, and a thunderous rock soundtrack.
Equal parts midnight movie provocation and cult artifact, Heavy Metal revels in its own bad taste while crystallizing a particular strain of Reagan-era nihilism, where liberation and annihilation collapse into the same ecstatic gesture. Beneath its surface of pulpy titillation lies a fractured anthology about power, desire, and corruption, filtered through the iconography of underground comics and arena rock; a time capsule of countercultural energy at the very moment it curdles into spectacle.
Format: 35mm
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
A gloriously anarchic collision of teen rebellion, B-movie slapstick, and punk rock insurgency, Rock ’n’ Roll High School channels the scrappy ethos of its New World Pictures origins into a full-throttle assault on institutional authority. Set in a repressive high school ruled by a tyrannical principal, Rock ’n’ Roll High School follows a fanatical student whose devotion to the Ramones ignites a riotous uprising that blurs the line between fandom and revolution. Narrative coherence is gleefully secondary to propulsion: sight gags pile up, performances bleed into fantasy, and the Ramones themselves emerge less as characters than as avatars of pure sonic disruption.
Part teen comedy, part punk fantasia, director Allan Arkush refracts late-’70s youth culture through a cartoonish lens, where the rigid structures of education and authority are literally blown apart in a climactic act of demolition. Yet beneath its gleeful idiocy lies a sincere expression of subcultural identity, capturing the moment when punk’s DIY spirit briefly infiltrated the mainstream without entirely losing its oppositional charge. A cult classic that wears its irreverence as both weapon and shield, Rock ’n’ Roll High School remains a delirious testament to the transformative (and destructive) power of music.
Format: DCP
PROGRAM NOTE
Coming soon.
SCHEDULE
Introduction / Trailers: 7:00 PM
Heavy Metal (1981): 7:15 PM
Intermission (15 minutes): 8:45 PM
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979): 9:00 PM
End of Show: 10:35 PM
TICKETS
Adults: $25
Senior/Student/Military/Veteran: $22
Members: $19
Designer/Director/Visionary Members: Free
Sponsors
Information
- Genre Sci-Fi Animation / Musical Comedy
- Director Gerald Potterton / Allan Arkush
- Released 1981 / 1979
- Runtime 3h 30m
- Rated R
- Studio Sony / AGFA
- CountryCanada / USA
Trailers
Stills
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