Title: Last Days Here

Opens: March 2, 2011

It’s such a cliche that I hesitate to use it but with some documentaries, truth is stranger than fiction. Who would believe that the guy shown in the opening scene of Don Argott and Demian Fenton’s “Last Days Here”–in his fifties with gray hair, a pock-marked face, scabs all over his body from picking at “parasites,” the look of someone wasted on cocaine, crack and heroin (which he was), living at his age in his parents’ basement in Germantown, Pennsylvania–would marry one of the hottest blondes you’ll see on the screen, a straight woman a quarter century his junior? Can you imagine what her parents might think if and when he went to their home for The Big Meeting? Hallie is not a groupie who prowls around with a typical audience for rock concerts, and the fellow, however groovy he was in the 1970s, looks nowhere near about to redeem himself and bring the fans at New York’s Webster Hall to their feet.

Bobby Liebling (the last name is ironically German for “darling”), appears in virtually every scene, easily recognizable by his huge eyes, which appear to be his calling card since before one concert he is seen getting shadow painted onto his lower lids. As seen in the opener which was photographed about the year 2007, he looks near death, his mother having just about given up on him as she puffs on a cigarette while playing with some strange concoction on the stove, his father agreeing with everything that mom says despite his record as a U.S. defense department adviser to Nixon, Johnson and Ford. In other words, the family is as straight-laced as their son is zonked out.

Thanks to the support of Sean “Pellet Pelletier,” the manager of the heavy metal group called Pentagram, Bobby appears ready to get his life together. Never mind that years back he would show up late to the band’s concerts, in one case leading a member to tell the audience that the group is without a singer and inviting everyone to sing along karaoke style.

Not quite as unbelievable as the marriage he gets into with Hallie, a woman who at one point had him sent to jail for violating a restraining order, is the fact that a youthful audience would crowd Webster Hall for a concert featuring a singer whose fame originated before anyone on the floor was born. It’s not as though Bobbie is simply recapping the renaissance of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, since despite a fairly long article in Wikipedia on the band the name Pentagram would conceivably be unknown except to die-hard fans of heavy metal.

The filmmakers put in years to accumulate the narrative but what’s missing is a heavy dose of archival films depicting the origins of Pentagram and actual concerts by the group, including stories of the many band members who dropped out during the group’s heyday. Otherwise, you don’t have to be a fan of the music to appreciate the doc since the filmmakers are concerned principally with the idea of redemption beyond all odds. We wish Bobbie the best with Hallie and their new baby.

Unrated. 90 minutes (c) 2012 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Overall – B