Porn: naked scenes
Animated films don’t tend to feature a lot of nudity, considering how many are built for a very young audience in mind. So “Heavy Metal,” an animated anthology adaptation of the cult magazine of the same name, caused a stir when it arrived in 1981 theaters with a copious amount of cartoon topless scenes. A bit of a juvenile male fantasy, Gerald Potterton’s film really goes wild with the sexual content in the highlight segment “Den,” about a nerdy kid transformed into a musclebound hunk and sent to the world of Neverwhere, where all the women are buxum, naked, and eager to throw themselves at him. The audaciousness of the premises is near parodic, and “Den” is significantly stronger for leaning into it with tongue-in-cheek narration that makes the eroticism more amusing than anything else. Is the gratuitousness particularly artful? Not really. But that’s part of what makes “Heavy Metal” so fun. —WC




















