How was the film originally promoted at the time it was released?

I was 11 when the film was released and my dad took me to the theater to see it. He was cool like that and we always went to the more cutting edge movies like Heavy Metal, American Pop, The Road Warrior, Stripes and other awesome flicks from around '81. We had seen Where The Buffalo Roam the year before, so we were always looking for the crazy stuff cuz it was usually better than the mainstream bullshxit. Heavy Metal definitely was in Starlog magazine, which I had a subscription to in the early 1980's. I had a few issues of Heavy Metal Magazine as well, so that also was a big push for the movie. I know the film was on my father's radar as well, at least from newspaper ads in the movie section of the L.A. Times during its release. I seem to remember a trailer for Heavy Metal when we saw Stripes (Stripes was released in June of that year and HM came to theaters that August 1981). The same guys were behind both Stripes and HM as far as Reitman, Ramis, John Candy and a bunch of others so that makes sense. It was by no means a big ad campaign, but it was enough advertising to pull in anyone who was into alternative, cutting edge type flicks at that time. The bands included on the film's soundtrack were listed right there in the newspaper ads so it was understood that some type of Rock or Metal would be driving at least part of the experience. I didn't even know who these bands were at the time, but I do now. You simply could not ignore the print ads listing "music by..." because the names were so funny. Felder, Fagen, Grand Funk, Blue Oyster and all that. To a little kid, it just seemed funny at the time. Music was changing quickly and the new wave was taking over a bit. Hard rock was not as much on the radar for an 11 year old at that time when Blondie, Benatar, Journey, 38 Special, Greg Kihn Band, Missing Persons, and The Go-Go's were scoring radio hits in '81. And yes, Journey is on the Heavy Metal soundtrack but still...

<<from what i recall, it was always touted as "adult animation" inspired by heavy metal magazine with a heavy metal soundtrack. alas, i foolishly trashed my collection of heavy metal mags but i believe at least one of the bits in the film had already seen print in the magazine (the "den" segment).

it's a bit humorous now remembering what "heavy metal" music meant back then - don felder (of the eagles)? blue oyster cult? journey? devo???? >>

From what I can gather from what I've read on the other forum, that's whole crux of the biscuit. Other than Blue Öyster Cult, none of the people you named were ever considered "heavy metal" or even "hard rock". Neither were Stevie Nicks, Donald Fagen, or Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick and Journey both occasionally had songs bordered on hard rock, but they were never associated with that genre.

Of course, you probably wouldn't know that Blue Öyster Cult are a hard rock band if Veteran Of The Psychic Wars was the only clue you had. But if you knew songs like The Red And The Black, Cities On Flame, ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence), or Golden Age Of Leather, you'd know that at least in theory, they had more of a place in a film called Heavy Metal than, say Stevie Nicks. Of course, BÖC were more diverse than a lot of hard rock bands, doing ballads and stuff that almost sound like folk rock music.

Apparently, s what upset Ronnie James Dio and at least some of the metalheads who saw the movie at he time, was they weren't expecting a movie with an orchestral score, nor were they expecting songs from the likes of Donald Fagen, Stevie Nicks or Devo. They were expecting full blown hard rock and metal through the entire movie.

Of course, as others have said, the movie poster listed the artists whose songs were in the film. I guess if you didn't know who Stevie Nicks or Donald Fagen was (and I can imagine a lot of metalheads not knowing the names of the people from Steely Dan or Fleetwood Mac), you might not know have enough a clue to know the film wasn't going to have more than just metal in it.

For what it's worth, I've never had a problem with this movie. It's always been one of my favorites, and I've always been happy with the choice of music. Well, I could live without the Stevie Nicks song (I can't stand her, especially after finding out how she got to be in Fleetwood Mac in the first place), but thankfully in the movie itself, you only hear about 15 seconds of the song.

<<Starlog had a feature article, >>

Yeah, I remember the Starlog article, actually I remember they had a couple different pieces on the movie over the course of the film's production. One, I think when the film was first announced, named the stories that were at that point going to be part of the film, and if I remember correctly, one or two were cited that didn't actually appear in the finished film.

The big feature piece I remember when the movie was released mentioned that there were a couple sequences that were done using rotoscoping. At the time, I didn't know what that meant, and it drove me crazy trying to find out (I was 8 years old at the time, with no internet, and no clues to WHO to ask what rotoscoping was). Years later, I saw a documentary about animation where they explained rotoscoping, but it was still wasn't until the advent of the DVD player that I found how it was used in Heavy Metal.

I also remember there being a sidebar piece on the music, which mentioned that the Don Felder song Heavy Metal (Takin' A Ride) was originally intended for a sequence that got cut from the film originally, and at press time, they were still looking for a place to use the song in the film (curiously they didn't mention Felder's other song in the film, All Of You). I also remember them hyping the fact that Grand Funk Railroad ("one of the originators of heavy metal music" or something like that) had reformed and would have a song in the film.

<<You couldn't have seen it promoted on MTV, because it didn't exist yet.>>

According to Wikipedia, the movie was released on August 7, 1981. MTV first went on the air on August 31, 1981. So unless the movie only played in theaters for a couple weeks, it's possible MTV could have run promos for it.

Although now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure we didn't get cable TV until summer of 82, so I couldn't have seen the TV spot on MTV or any other cable channel. I HAD to have seen it free TV! In 1981, Cleveland had a whopping seven broadcast channels, with the three network affiliates (plus the Akron ABC channel), PBS, and two local channels, 43 and 61. So it had to be one of those that I remember seeing it on.

And I'm sure I actually saw a TV spot, because up until then, I had no idea what the movie's rating was going to be (I was 8 years old, what did I know about Heavy Metal magazine?) so I was disappointed to find out it was rated R. I also distinctly remember they used at least a bit of Zeke and Edsel's "trip", because I remember seeing the bit where the Enterprise flies by.