by SARAH ROWLAND

After watching Sam Dunn’s documentary, don’t be surprised if you get the sudden urge to “Run to the Hills” in search of some “Sweet Leaf.” But keep in mind that sometimes “The Chase is Better Than the Catch”—not to mention the forecast is calling for a 70 per cent chance of “Raining Blood.”

If you have no idea what that means, don’t worry. Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey is a film that takes both power chord diehards and devil-saluting neophytes into consideration.

And it’s not your standard behind-the-music promotional viewing either. Instead, Dunn and co-director Scot McFadyen take an anthropological approach to metal culture, addressing issues of gender, religion, censorship, imagery of death and the sociological differences between punk and metal fans.

Together, they revisit such pivotal eras in metal as the Birmingham beginnings, where Sabbath and Judas Priest rose to fame; the heyday of the Sunset Blvd hair metal scene, where bands like Mötley Crüe ripped a hole in the ozone layer with their aerosol products; and the Norwegian church-burning phase, where bands like Mayhem bowed down to the Beast with onstage sacrificial rituals.

Island isolation

Throughout the film, Dunn talks to everyone from Ronnie Dio of late Sabbath to Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. And for a Victoria, B.C., native like Dunn, conducting one-on-one interviews with metal mavericks is a long way from having to ferry across the Georgia Straight to see his favourite arena acts in over-crowded Vancouver venues.

And, as he recalls, growing up a Morbid Angel fan in a skate-rock town known more for bands like Dayglo Abortions and No Means No had its share of other challenges as well. True, Metallica and Slayer provided some common ground in the mosh pit, but for the most part, Dunn remained part of a longhaired minority throughout his high school career—though that didn’t stop him from hosting his own campus radio show.

“There was literally more wattage in my parents’ toaster than there was in the entire UVic radio station at that time,” says Dunn—who is both excited to talk to someone from Montreal, aka the capital of Canadian metal, and saddened by the recent death of Voivod guitarist Denis “Piggy” D’Amour. “So if you lived on the other side of the hill, you couldn’t get the signal. And that was really the only source in that town where kids could access the more extreme stuff.”

Nickelback nightmare

One of the most outstanding aspects of this film (aside from discovering that Rob Zombie has the makings of a male model underneath his ragamuffin dreads) is the fact that this movie has never been made before. While there have been several piss-takes, there’s never been a film that takes the world of 11-minute guitar solos so seriously.

“Yeah, I know, we just kept looking for one, and we were like, ‘This is amazing, this will be a first,’” says McFadyen, who’s also originally from Victoria but, like Dunn, now lives in Toronto. “Then came the fear that during the five-and-a-half years it took us to do it, someone else would beat us to it. There were rumours that a similar documentary was being made in Britain and that Lemmy was going to be the narrator.”

They needn’t have worried. The initial cut of this infamous no-name rockumentary was apparently so misguided that everyone including Maiden and Motörhead pulled their support. No one can say for sure what made it so abominably bad, but Dunn has a theory or two: “We saw the synopsis and they had Nickelback listed on their bands of metal.”

The Ozz that never was

Rest assured you won’t see any lame radio rock acts in Dunn’s movie, and strangely enough you won’t see Ozzy Osbourne either.

“Sharon Osbourne has blocked us every step of the way on this project,” says McFadyen of the Sabbath manager. “We tried everything to get an interview with Tony Iommi. We even sent her flowers.”

“I just think it’s really sad,” adds Dunn, “because she’s kind of lost sight of what it’s all about in a way. Ozzfest does do a great thing: it brings all these bands to all these towns every summer. But at the same time, it’s also become very corporate and commercial.”

In the end, though, they went around Sharon and landed an interview with Iommi—the man who, according to Rob Zombie, is responsible for every great metal riff ever penned, riffs that are ripped off to this very day.

“I think that really pissed her off because she likes to think that she’s the gatekeeper of all things metal,” says McFadyen.

Still, it must have been disappointing not to have the Prince of Darkness in their movie, yes?

“I hate to say it, but no,” says Dunn. “We set out to get Tony because that was the kind of film we were making. We wanted to present a different perspective on Sabbath, because Ozzy’s become this household name, a buffoon almost. In a way, he reinforces all the stereotypes.”

The Legend of Lemmy

Although they had landed almost every interview they wanted, there was one card they hadn’t played: the ace of spades.

“We were almost finished and we were like, ‘Fuck, we need Lemmy,’” says McFadyen. “We couldn’t get him and we were like, ‘We cannot make this movie without him.’”

Dunn adds: “For the longest time, we had a sign in our office that said, “Where’s Lemmy?” We tried so many times to catch up with him. He was supposed to be at the German festival you see in the movie, but he hurt his foot and disappeared. He was in a hospital somewhere and no one knew where he was. Finally we pinned him down at The Rainbow on Sunset Blvd, which is right around the corner from his house.”

Where Iommi proved to be a very proper, very polite teetotaller, Lemmy lived up to his legend.

“He had like five JD and cokes and one pack of smokes during our one-and-a half hour interview,” says Dunn. “He’s like almost 60. No one beats Lemmy.

Bach to the beginning

Along with no Ozzy, you can also look forward to a Lars Ulrich-free doc.

“Metallica was ‘documentaried out’—I think that was the term they used at that time,” says Dunn. “They weren’t touring and they were in different parts of the world and so it just wasn’t good timing. I’m just really happy we got to use ‘Masters of Puppets’ at the end of the film and that they watched the film and liked it.”

Ulrich and co. weren’t the only rock stars who gave their seal of approval to the film, which theorizes that if 18th-century classical composers had had access to Marshall stacks and the Mississippi blues explosion, they would have been headbangers too.

“Eddie Van Halen wrote and said, ‘Hey, any time you want to compare me to Bach, go ahead,’” laughs McFadyen.

So far so good, but they still have yet to screen at the upcoming Oslo International Film Fest, where some of Norway’s most prominent Satanists may be in attendance—some of whom, according to legend, ate their bandmate’s blown-out brain matter or, according to fact, were arrested for drinking blood. Dunn says he’s not too worried.

“We were careful not to sensationalize the events that took place in Norway in the early ’90s, and I hope that the Norwegian people feel that we did something that was critical yet honest,” he says, referring to his interviews with members of Mayhem and Gaahl from Gorgoroth. “Then again, perhaps I should hire security...”

As for McFadyen, he’s just happy that they accomplished what they set out to do.

“It was really important to break down the stereotypes,” he says of all the metal misconceptions. “Whenever we would tell people that we were making a movie about heavy metal, they would get this little smirk on their face. So our goal with this movie was just to wipe that smirk off people’s face.”

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey screens as part of the 34th Annual Festival du Nouveau Cinéma at Cinéma du Parc Friday, Oct. 21 at 11 p.m. and at Cinéma Imperial Sunday, Oct. 23 at 3:30 p.m. For more info, visit www.nouveaucinema.ca

>> Movie Listings