UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: HEAVY METAL MYSTERY BABE.

This poster. This babe. This mystery. This uncanny quest.

Do you (yes, you) recognize this poster? The unknown whereabouts and unrevealed identification of this leather lady of the night has haunted me forever.

It all started back in high school shop class when I was just a small delinquent. Every afternoon when our shop teacher would leave at the end of the period, the nasty hijinks would begin. Setting off cherry bombs, throwing stuff out the window, pentagrams on the chalkboard, pouring liquid heat over the football player’s jockstraps, taping Larry Lester’s buns together and last but certainly not least, arm wrestling tournaments.

This was 1987 and Stallone’s arm wrestling movie blockbuster Over the Top was white hot. As impressionable kids we ate up every second of it, blasting the soundtrack on the way to school and turning our hats backwards just like the hero in our eyes: truck driver/arm wrestling GOD, Lincoln Hawk. “Meet Me Halfway…”

Once these shop class arm wrestling tournaments took off, they gained momentum and pretty soon it was the talk outside every locker and drinking fountain at school. Tournament winners started receiving awards. Grand prizes ranged from a pack of Marlboros and coupons to Wienerschnitzel — to a pair of prom queen panties.

Everything went up a notch the day a mysterious prize was dropped off which took our breath away — a large poster with a buxom babe donned in leather ‘n chains with only the words HEAVY METAL on the bottom right corner. Naturally, Uncle T had his heart set on this prized possession and would do anything to have it. ANYTHING.

At about the halfway point of the high stakes tournament, spectators began smelling a burning odor. At first they assumed it was a couple of our low-IQ, high-RPM classmates named Skank and Gutterboy probably huffing hydraulic fluid and God-only-knows what else in the back room. Suddenly one kid pointed over to the welding table. The coveted, cherished, beloved Heavy Metal Babe poster had smoldered in a small fire, cooking to a crisp right in front of the class.

Uncle T was beyond devastated. For years following that fateful day I wondered who this mysterious hellcat on the poster was and if I’d ever see it again.

Fast forward a few years. One morning while I was “being forced to watch” (wink) Beverly Hills, 90210, I saw something during Season 4 that made me literally roll out of my bean bag chair and choke on my Bagel Bites. THERE IT WAS. The infamous poster I hadn’t laid my eyes on in over a decade! There she was in all her glory on the walls of Steve Sander’s fraternity house. Sandwiched next to sports posters, pennants and a painting of dogs playing poker.

As evidenced in these screen shots, the bros of “Keg house” even made a special cut-out on the poster to make room for the light switch on the wall. There also seems to be signatures or messages written on it.

As cool as this was to notice, it ultimately didn’t bring me any information about the poster or the girl. People kept insisting to me that the woman was Samantha Fox or Bobbie Brown but something told me this couldn’t be true. Call it intuition. Call it destiny. So I kept hunting, with the words of Dokken echoing in my consciousness “searching for love on these lonely streets again….a Hunter searching for the things that I may never find again.”

Then a second revelation came — this time from the deep archives of 1980s rock historia with a little help from TNUC’s faithful disciples!

The model on the poster is Pamela Manning, who sometimes would go by the name Pamela Jackson. She made her first mark dancing on stage at early Guns ‘N Roses gigs and ended up being managed by Wendy Dio (Ronnie’s wife). She continued to dance for different bands at shows and then appeared in a number of music videos after being introduced to director Mark Isham. Her dating life included the likes of Izzy Stradlin and Tommy Lee! The poster in question was shot my photographer Sam Maxwell.

The mystery of the heavy metal poster babe is considered partially solved. I still need to have one of these adorned on my wall! If anyone reading this comes across a copy of this poster and you have any place in your heart for Uncle T, please contact my associates immediately. She needs to reside in the Land of TNUC.