Heavy Mental review (DVD) ★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Tiffany Apan, Brenna Lee Roth, Monique Dupree, Lloyd Kaufman,
Josh Hooper, Heather Martin, Bart Allen Burger, Glen McFarland, Johnny B | Written by Mike Hartman
Certification Unrated | US RRP $14.95 | DVD Region 0 | Runtime 100 minutes | Directed by Mike C. Hartman

Released by the legendary Troma Entertainment, though it's not one of their own productions (and thankfully so), Heavy Mental is an obviously Troma-inspired film that is essentially a horrible retelling of The Toxic Avenger, with a heavy metal horror twist.

Also known as the grammatically-incorrect Heavy Mental: A Rock-n-Roll Blood Bath, the film concerns young metalhead Ace who lives above the music store that's owned and operated by his parents. The only thing is, his ma and pa are pa and pa, although this bears no relevance to the story and doesn't progress the film further, existing simply for cheap laughs. But the problem is it's not funny at all. And when I say that it isn't funny, I mean it's an utter waste of time that fails to tick any of the obvious boxes for a comedy. Anyhow, it's Ace's birthday and the gift from his two dads is an electric guitar. But not just any old guitar – the glass-bodied axe of heavy metal legend Eddie Lee Stryker, one of the genre's biggest stars up until his death when he and his band were found dead under mysterious circumstances in their hotel room years prior. The guitar isn't even just a Stryker six-string, either, as within in is the spirit of the deceased headbanging god.

Communicating with Ace through the guitar, Stryker reveals that he was murdered by Mrs. Delicious, a crime boss with an angry mob of vile vixens who will kill and maim at her every command. Paving a path of destruction as they wage to take over Detroit, Stryker empowers Ace and, at will, morphs him into a superhuman wrecking machine with a skull for a face and barbed wire wrapped around his body. As a crime-stopping instrument of death, the transformed Ace acts as a one-man resistance against Mrs. Delicious and her warrior women, quite literally ripping through them.

I have no qualms with how cheap Heavy Mental looks and sounds as quite frankly it would be idiotic to take shots at those behind the movie for the small amount of money they had to make a feature film on, but it's the creativity that I do have problems with. Starting off with an homage to The Toxic Avenger's infamous head-crushing scene, this sets the tone for the rest of the movie as Ace basically becomes the ultra-bad-movie, non-toxic version of Toxie. The comedy is incredibly infantile, but not in the sense that its stupidity is self-referential and droll and therefore works – it is instead a humourless carcass – a feature-length film reduced to the mere bones of cinema: (bad) actors and a camera, thanks to a terrible script, zero finesse, poor gore effects, and quite simply a lack of energy and interest. Heavy Mental is light on the good and heavy on the bad.

EXTRAS ??? A near hour-long making-of that is for some reason called a “featurette” on the DVD; feature-length commentary by writer/director Mike C. Hartman; the trailer; Troma T&A: Tromette of the Week Hypodermia stumbling through a skit about Geoffrey Chaucer intercut with the flashing of her breasts every time she goofs up; Radiation March: Troma's anti-pollution message from God knows how long ago; PSA: Motorhead's Lemmy discusses hermaphrodites, featuring South Park's Matt Stone and Trey Parker; 15 trailers for other Troma releases new and old; and DVD credits.