Heavy Metal Parking Lot. - movie review

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002

1986, 15 min Directed by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn $15 VHS

On the evening of May 31, 1986 a pair of aspiring documentary filmmakers took their video equipment to the Capital Center arena outside Washington, DC, and filmed teenagers arriving for a concert by the British heavy metal thudmasters Judas Priest. Jeff Krulik and John Heyn scooped up a pure slab of teenage wasteland by simply asking dumb questions ("Does anybody here do air guitar") and recording as increasingly sauced teens wheeled around in their orange cars and got "ready to rawk!" Like Jane Goodall peeking through the leaves at the chimps, the filmmakers captured an amazing anthropological slice of life, complete with bad hair, bad teeth, bare chests, and semi-articulate babbling. Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a short work, only fifteen minutes long, but it's an ingenious masterpiece.--JD