Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I take a look at the classic 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Heavy metal in the 1980s was fairly ridiculous. Fun, but ridiculous. I say that with love, because I was a teenage metalhead. I was more of a fan of the heavier bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, but I liked some of the poodle-haired stuff as well like Ratt and Dokken for a while. It didn't take long for the genre to lose its luster, so by 1991 when bands like Nirvana effectively took them off the board, it wasn't a big loss.
But in 1986, that wasn't even a possibility. Metal was riding high and the ridiculousness was in full force. On May 31, Judas Priest was playing at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. Jeff Krulik and John Heyn borrowed some cameras from the local PBS station and went to interview fans in the parking lot. Thus was born Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 17-minute documentary that perfectly captured that moment in time, all the mullets, spandex and youthful exuberance.
The amateur filmmakers walked around the lot, telling fans they were from MTV and getting some incredible interviews with the fans, some of whom were feeling no pain. The most notable (and hilarious) was a guy in a zebra-print jumpsuit who went on a rant about Madonna and punk. The documentary managed to be both endearing and illuminating. It resisted the urge to poke fun at the fans while also showing how funny their fandom was. Deadspin did a great piece a while back catching up with a lot of the participants.
Krulik and Heyn showed the doc at some film festivals. They tried to show the doc to the members of Judas Priest, but couldn't get backstage the next time the band came through the DC area in 1988. After a few years, it was consigned as a VHS tape to the shelves of video stores. Obviously, these were the days before the World Wide Web, but the tape went viral in a different way, by word of mouth. Ironically enough, one copy reportedly ended up on Nirvana's tour bus in the early '90s.
I never saw Heavy Metal Parking Lot back when it came out; not many people did. Eventually, when the internet and YouTube became a thing, I and many others saw the documentary and it became a sensation.
Krulik and Heyn made other documentaries: Monster Truck Parking Lot in 1988, Neil Diamond Parking Lot in 1996 and Harry Potter Parking Lot (filmed outside a J.K. Rowling appearance) in 1999. They made a series called Parking Lot in 2004, which aired on Trio. And in 2006, a DVD of Heavy Metal Parking Lot was released.
I turned my back on metal for a while after the early '90s, but I've come to accept that there are no guilty pleasures. Every so often I'll crank up an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest album and feel no shame about it. Life's too short to not enjoy yourself. And if that means putting on a zebra-print jumpsuit and yelling out that Madonna's a dick, then hey, go nuts, man.
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