FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Sergio Leone |||
Sergio Leone

Leone’s career is remarkable in its unrelenting attention to both American culture and the American genre film, exploring the mythic America he created with each successive film examining the established characters in greater depth.

Only his second feature (a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Leone's landmark "spaghetti western" caused a revolution and features Clint Eastwood in his breakthrough role as "The Man With No Name". This classic brutal drama of feuding families wasn’t the first spaghetti Western, but it was far and away the most successful up to that time.

Plot is of minimal interest, but character is everything to Leone, who places immense meaning in the slightest flick of an eyelid, extensively using the extreme close-up on the eyes to reveal any feeling, as demonstrated by Clint, who squints his way through this slam-bang sequel to A Fistful of Dollars as a wandering gunslinger that must combine forces with his nemesis to track down a wanted killer.

The final chapter in the groundbreaking trilogy follows Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as they form an uneasy alliance to find a stash of hidden gold. Leone focuses on his central theme as they find themselves facing greed, treachery, and murder, showing that the desire for wealth and power turns men into ruthless creatures who violate land and family and believe that a man’s death is less important than how he faces it.

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Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey

By EdwardHavens

April 14th, 2006

“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” is just the most recent example of what can happen when a documentary filmmaker is far too emotionally attached to his subject. And while the film does remain consistently engaging and entertaining throughout, it acts not as the window for the outsider into the spectacle of heavy metal music, as the filmmakers proclaim it to be, but an unprovoked fan’s defense for liking what he likes.


Sam Dunn, a Canadian anthropologist and self-professed metalhead, clearly loves his loud music, and that’s great. As someone who was himself inspired to learn to play bass guitar thanks to people like Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris, Van Halen’s Michael Anthony and Metallica’s Cliff Burton, I know firsthand metal can be truly inspiring. But unlike Sam Dunn and many other metalheads, I never felt the need to grow my hair out or walk around wearing worn-out Dio or Dokken t-shirts. This is probably where my apprehensions with “A Headbanger’s Journey” come from. Dunn says he wants to explore why heavy metal has been continually stereotyped, dismissed and degraded by mass society, but then only shows us the stereotypical side of the metal fan: drunk frat-boy reject types in black t-shirts and ripped jeans, with long straight thin hair and patchy “beards,” who can’t help but walk around flashing the devil sign in the hand that’s not already carrying a beer at any given moment or use the F word at least twice every sentence.

But then, Dunn and his co-directors, Scot McFayden (who worked as the music supervisor on Canadian horror film “Ginger Snaps”) and Jessica Joy White, are probably painfully aware the only audience who might be remotely interested in an anthropological study of heavy metal and its fans are metalheads, so why not gear the film to that audience from the outset? Well, for one, it dilutes and lessens the impact of the intended message. At one point... in fact, the very last thing Sam says (in voiceover) before the end credits, as he stands on the grounds of where a massive metal show will soon commence, shows us what we just watched, in case you weren’t paying attention, was not a balanced documentary or anthropological study but simple dogmatic fanboy gesticulating:

“Even since I was twelve years old, I’ve had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it’s a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don’t. If metal doesn’t give you that overwhelming surge of power, and make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, you might never get it. And you know what? That’s okay. Because, judging from the forty thousand metalheads around me, we’re doing just fine without you.”

A statement that is indeed true on many points. I like Duran Duran as much as I like Iron Maiden, and I’ve had friends who’ve stated if I like one, there’s no way I can like the other. If these people want to be that closed-minded, that’s not my fault or responsibility. But that is how many metalheads in this film, including Dunn, come off, as outsiders who found something that pissed off their parents and other people in authority, and have clinged to that music like a life preserver throughout their lives. Which is not to say metalheads are any better or worse than the Kevin Smith fans who live for his web site’s chat boards and must own everything related to the View Askewniverse, or the anime fans who feel the need to dress up in public as their favorite characters and roam the boots at conventions looking for that imported third volume of music from “Cowboy Bebop” that leaves their collection incomplete. These obsessions fill a hole left by some deep psychological scars growing up, and if it takes one fan’s documentary to tell other fans it’s cool to like what you like, so be it.

It’s not as if this film is a complete waste of time. Quite the opposite. Dunn and his crew were able to get great access to some of the giants of metal (including Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio, Tommy Iommi, Alice Cooper, Dee Snider and Rob Zombie), and have compiled an impressive and thorough breakdown of heavy metal and all its various sub-genres, but again, some of the information as it is presented borders on the obsessive. (Do we really need a five minute interlude on whether it was Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin who were the first heavy metal band?) Some of the interviews might shock and disturb metalheads, and it is quite refreshing to see some honesty amongst the artists talking about how much they really believe in some of the things they’ve been accused of, but for the most part the film spends its 96 minutes preaching to the converted, telling us things we already know and reminding us of battles against Congress and the PMRC long ago fought and won, as if any of it matters in today’s society.

The film is also memorable for its conspicuous absences. How can a documentary about heavy metal and its fans have but only a handful of mentions, and no interviews or anything but incidental background performances, of KISS (and its once-massive fan Army), Metallica, Megadeth or the other headbanging artists who were able to transcend the fringes of metaldom and make it to superstar status? Are these bands being punished for breaking into the cultural zeitgeist? It’s like talking about the history of the New York Yankees and never once mentioning Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Derek Jeter.

“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” should find a willing audience amongst metalheads, who will rightfully lap up the inside access they’d never otherwise get, but will unearth little interest with the masses. Not that Sam Dunn cares what the masses thing, as he keeps telling us over and over again. He's doing just fine without you.

My rating: B-