![]() Among the more pathetic scenes are the glimpses of young women competing for the attention of a club owner, Bill Gazzarri, a 60-year-old who claims he's like three 20-year-olds and works hard at using more obscenities than any of his young clientele. Miss Spheeris never makes direct moral judgments, but she suggests indirectly that many of those in the film share a craving for just the sort of help Mr. ''Only when he's awake,'' the mother says. At poolside sits his mother, silently taking all this in, until Miss Spheeris asks Mr. Holmes is on a severe and deliberate downward spiral. It hasn't happened yet, but from the way Chris Holmes of the group WASP drifts drunkenly on a swimming pool float, guzzling vodka out of the bottle, telling lurid groupie stories and marveling at how much older he looks than his 29 years, it's clear that Mr. The most startling sequence here is one in which a mother witnesses the death of her son. The women are happy to be exploited, the men avid for new forms of self-destruction, and no one can see an inch beyond tomorrow. For all the amusingly fatuous remarks heard here -and Miss Spheeris has a great ear for these - the overriding dimness of most of the fans and musicians is frightening. That's one reason that the new film is both so funny and so sad. In Miss Spheeris's earlier hell-in-a-handbasket documentary, the original ''Decline of Western Civilization'' about punk rockers, the brainpower quotient was somewhat higher than it is among heavy-metal fans. ![]() What if it doesn't happen? ''I don't believe that it won't because there's nothin' in this life you can't do'' is a typical answer. ![]() Just as everyone Miss Spheeris asks cites sex as his or her favorite pursuit, they all express the same certainty that great success is just around the corner. Uniformly, those interviewed display a contempt for holding ordinary jobs, an unwillingness to contemplate anything between glory and the gutter and a blind faith that talent will find a way. Osbourne indeed seems to be a simple soul. Compared with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, who boasts about his musical and sexual talents and also declares, ''I must've snorted up all of Peru,'' Mr. Osbourne is interviewed while puttering around a comfortable kitchen in his bathrobe, extolling his new abstemiousness yet still having trouble pouring orange juice into a glass. Osbourne conveys the impression that the measure of success in the heavy metal world is being able to budget a stay at the Betty Ford center. Along with several of the other big-name luminaries who appear here, Mr. To say that Ozzy Osbourne functions as one of the film's chief voices of sanity may give some notion of what the other interviewees are like. Stanley flinches slightly and the girls look up, suddenly interested. ''Where do you see yourself in 10 years?'' ''What if you don't make it as a rock-and-roll star?'' ''Would you go out with a girl if she pays for some food if you didn't like her? Isn't that prostitution?'' ''Are you in it for the money?'' Of Paul Stanley of Kiss, who has smugly arranged himself in a supine position for his interview with three lingerie-wearing groupies draped strategically around him, she inquires ''Have you ever said to yourself 'I could fall in love with this groupie?' '' Mr. ''So what do you have to say to people who think your music maybe isn't all that original?'' she asks. But when it's time to ask bluntly about sex, drugs, ethics or economics, Miss Spheeris is ready to speak up. Although the director does not appear on camera, she is very much a presence in the film, conveying a genuine interest that wins her subjects' trust, and perhaps tacitly goading them to new heights of outrageousness. For one thing, Miss Spheeris has a way of asking just the right questions. Even those who would never, without the urging of wild horses, dream of attending a film about the seamy world of heavy-metal music are sure to find Penelope Spheeris's ''The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years'' of unexpected interest.
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