Metal Hurlant Chronicles: The Complete Series

This French-produced, English-language sci-fi anthology series draws its stories from a long running French magazine of the 1970s and ‘80s: Metal Hurlant, an adult comic that gave birth to the American Heavy Metal. The magazine offered a mixed bag of inventive graphic storytelling and pulp tales with R-rated levels of nudity and violence. The live-action series leans toward the pulp side, favoring cliché-ridden sword-swinging fantasy and futuristic space adventures with Twilight Zone-style twists (minus the social commentary or allegorical dimension). The 12 episodes compiled here from 2012-14 play like digest versions of bad direct-to-cable films, directed without any visual flair or dramatic creativity, and produced with a mix of slapdash sets and cheap CGI effects. The shows feature a mix of B-list genre actors (Rutger Hauer, Michael Biehn, James Marsters, Michael Jai White) and foreign actors (with badly-dubbed voices) in performances ranging from hammy to horrible. Metal Hurlant Chronicles, which is very tame compared to the magazine, played in the U.S. on Syfy in 2014, without much notice. Extras include alternate French-language versions of four episodes (with English subtitles), behind-the-scenes featurettes, and interviews. Not recommended. (S. Axmaker)