TV REVIEW : Many Ideas, Too Few Facts in ‘Deceivers’

David Van Taylor wants to make so many points in his documentary for PBS’ “P.O.V.” series, “Dream Deceivers” (tonight at 10, KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15), that he ends up making none of them well enough. He looks at the notorious 1990 Reno, Nev., trial involving the heavy-metal band Judas Priest and families who claimed that the band’s music incited a double suicide attempt, and in a coolly detached style, he looks beyond the trial itself for deeper meanings. Van Taylor has the right instincts for an ambitious sociological report but neglects some reportorial niceties in his quest.

In the introductory segment, Van Taylor openly derides the trial’s assumption--that rock lyrics could drive young minds to suicide. He views this as yet another example of people not taking responsibility for their actions. He also wants to go inside the world of frustrated, alienated teens, beyond the Christian cant of parents in denial.

Perhaps it was a dangerous move to put all his cards on the table; having done it, Van Taylor never fully follows through on these themes.

The December, 1985, police report filed on the death of Ray Belknap and the attempted suicide of James Vance indicated depression as the key cause. Four months later, however, Vance changed his story, claiming that the culprit was Judas Priest’s song “Beyond the Realms of Death.” Before the trial, the Vance family’s attorneys shifted the story again, pegging a different tune--”Better by You, Better Than Me”--as the cause.

Why is none of this information in “Dream Deceivers”? To explore Vance’s turnabout would likely have taken Van Taylor to the heart of points on personal responsibility and parental denial, even to the heart of teen-age darkness. His camera is mesmerized by the tragically disfigured face of Vance recalling the bloody night, but misses some of the most revealing facts of the case. Footage of aimless Reno youth partying at midnight and of heavy-metal dudes uttering lots of unexplored statements hardly take us inside the heads of kids with “suicidal tendencies.”