His face as horribly disfigured as if it were the result of the botched experiment of a mad scientist, James Vance sits in his back yard and, in a voice so mangled by his deformities that his words most be subtitled, tells of the night in 1985 when he and his best friend, Ray Belknap, took a rifle and tried to blow their heads to smithereens.
Belknap died of his wounds, but the rifle slipped in Vance`s hands and he wound up in the hospital.
It was there, in a letter written to Belknap`s mother, that Vance set in motion a chain of events that resulted in a notable recent trial and in a fine documentary called ”Dream Deceivers,” a ”P.O.V.” segment airing at 10:30 p.m. Monday on WTTW-Ch. 11.
”I believe that alcohol and heavy metal music such as Judas Priest led us to be mesmerized,” Vance wrote.
The parents of Vance and Belknap brought a civil suit against the heavy metal band and CBS Records, charging that subliminal messages in the band`s songs had incited the youngsters to suicide.
Filmmaker David Van Taylor, a 30-year-old Harvard graduate making his directorial debut, uses the trial as the centerpiece of his hourlong documentary.
But the program is textured beyond the sometimes high-tech testimony and legal maneuvers.
Van Taylor uses the trial as a launching pad for explorations into the family life of the two teens, probing most deeply into the Vances, unveiling a pattern of alcoholism and abuse; into the heavy metal subculture by visiting three fans who, while playing with guns, dismiss the notion that heavy metal music promotes suicide; and into the teenage world of Reno, Nev., where the trial took place.
We meet the band: sitting in suits in the courtroom; dressing up in the metal-studded black leather that is the performance garb; and in thoughtful conversation about their own teenage years and their music.
Lead singer Rob Holford is particularly insightful.
”Ninety-five percent of the Top 40 in America at any given moment is about love,” he says. ”We feel that we`re a bit more intellectual than that. ”Our music is an artistic expression of the feeling of isolation and frustration that living in the modern world can give you.”
Van Taylor is eager to make a movie that explains the lure of heavy metal for some teens. But he is too careful in his approach, too concerned with the many facets of his subject.
Still, his film touches on many provocative matters. Tragedy, of lives bruised and void of self-esteem, exists in Vance`s fearsome face, in his every choked word.
The judge in the trial found Judas Priest and CBS Records not guilty, but that`s the least of it.
This is a story that addresses more than a trial. In the end, it`s a sad tale of youth disenfranchised to the point of madness.
As a poignant punctuation to the story, Holford cannot even remember the lyrics of the song that supposedly spurred Vance and Belknap to their bloody, deadly act.
– ”Who`s so bad he gets to wear plaid?” asks a buxom announcer.
Why, it`s Mr. Pete, the star of ”The Late Mr. Pete Show,” a try-too-hard-too-be-zany talk show hosted by a fellow named Pete Chaconas.
Looking like a dime-store Ernie Kovacs and behaving like a randy teen, Chaconas conducts this new, limited-run USA cable series (11 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays) with manufactured outrageousness.
On the premiere, ”the world`s tallest teen” spends the whole show eating a pile of hamburgers while Chaconas chats with Jessica Hahn (straining for sexual innuendo) and suffers a couple of screaming young actors.
Chaconas is fairly smooth and quick-witted, but his silly shtick quickly becomes tiresome.
When this was a local show in L.A., ”The Late Mr. Pete Show” copped a couple of local Emmys. Go figure.
