Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest

I first saw a write up about this documentary where the reviewer warned potential film-goers that one of the gunshot victims had survived, but with a horribly disfigured face. That it resulted from an attempted double suicide, where the other boy had succeeded, only piqued my morbid curiosity ever more. But what really sold me was that it occurred in Reno where the parents of the two boys had filed a lawsuit against the heavy metal band, Judas Priest, claiming subliminal satanic messages in their lyrics drove the boys over the edge. But the documentary only played a week at a local repertory movie theater and then quietly vanished. Well, until it reappeared on public televsion as one of the entries in the independent filmmaker series, POV.

I videotaped it at the time (since that was the only way to preserve such things in the olden days) but never digitized it, thinking it would someday find a DVD distributor who would re-release it. That never happened. But not long ago, I began wondering if someone might have uploaded it somewhere on the Internet and lo and behold, here it is! Unfortunately, it has never been released on DVD, so here you have an analog-to-digital transfer. For what it is, the picture quality is decent and is as good as you would've seen on public television back in the 90s.

What unfolds during the hour long documentary is a mesmerizing, yet grim and depressing portrait of life in middle America, where the inhabitants believe good and evil drive the Chevy 2-ton of life, but where the facts of their empty
and depressing lives often veer them into the abyss of absurdity. I exaggerate, perhaps, but this film was made during the early 90s, at the height of the religious right's power, and it came as a breath of foul air, knocking all religious notions of morality right on its fat lazy American ass.

The hairdos and fashions might make you snicker, but the central themes and questions the film raises are as relevant today as they were then. Contrary to critics of the documentary, the filmmaker David Van Taylor, avoids taking sides. In fact, nobody comes off looking good, which leads me to believe that when each of the subjects signed their waivers, they thoroughly believed they were in the right. And that's what makes this story doubly tragic.