In keeping with my heavy metal theme from my last post, I decided to share with you the greatest 17 minutes of film (actually a really old video recording....remember video?) dedicated to the rabid, drunk, stoned, usually shirtless and toothless metal fans of the eighties, and it goes by the name of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. This elusive documentary was the stuff of legend for quite some time. It was shot in 1986, and instantly became this bootleg that people just passed from one set of dirty grubby hands to another, dubbing it first, then passing it on. And on. And on. I learned from imdb.com that it didn't see a proper theatrical release until 1997. That's 11 years after the fact!! How awesome is that!? Not convinced? Well let me feed you some info on this documentary by describing what it is NOT. It is not complex, intellectual, introspective or engaging. What it IS is a document from the dirty bowels of the eighties; it's a twenty minute short doc about the fine ladies and gentlemen that inhabit the parking lot prior to a Judas Priest show in 1986. Period. This genius idea came to two guys (John Heyn & Jeff Krulik) out of nowhere. Heavy Metal was all the rage and Judas Priest was coming to their town...so why the fuck not? How the hell would they know that what they would capture would be pure, golden, molten lava-like scenes of magic? They didn't.
After hearing of this movie for at least 10 years, I finally was able to watch it (it got a pretty fine dvd release in 2006) and man, when I have to resort to a cliche to describe something to you, you know it's fucking good, but I seriously felt like I was in a time machine when I watched this! I was only 10 years old in 1986, but shit do I remember the fabulous fashions and of course, the music. The utterly hilarious and jaw dropping characters paraded before you in Heavy Metal Parking Lot are like the representatives of every slice of metalhead that existed in those days. There's really no way other than to present you with a snippet from one of the most memorable people in the movie, dubbed "Zebraman" by fans of HMPL.
Behold!
Yeah, it's like that. There's a river of greatness in these 17 little minutes, trust me. Mari and I could not stop laughing the whole way through. It's like a whip-it with no end...well actually it does end, so it's like a 17 minute whip-it, you almost devolve while watching it that's how powerful it is. But trust me, you want a full length feature, well, at least I did. It almost makes you want to go back and live it, but with teeth and shampoo. Please please please watch this and let me know what you think. Seriously, it probably took you longer to get through this post than it would've taken to watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
1 comment:
Great post, you should follow this up with the Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 The Metal Years.
Post a Comment