Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare

I saw this in either the late 70s or early 80s on television in Pennsylvania on a horror movie program. At that time, I was getting over the fear of him, or actually the snakes. I have hated snakes since I stood on one when I was six. But, he is a great showman and his stage antics made an excellent show/concert.

Any fan of the Masters or classics have to see this. I cannot figure out what my favorite part of it was, but Vincent Price was a great touch. It is strange that "Welcome to my Nightmare" was considered "acid rock" and now is seems so much more mellow compared to today's music.

I lived in Phoenix and just about everyone there knows him or has met him a few times and he is very approachable and a great guy. He gives back a lot to the community and does a lot of good with some of his fund raisers. Not to mention, he owns half the town. He should run for governor again, "a messed up governor for a messed up state" is an understatement for those who live or have lived in Arizona.

But, any one interested in the History of Rock needs to see this. It is a great story and he is a great showman and puts on a good show.

I seen this one a couple of years ago, and it is always fun to watch. Alice Cooper made this as a last ditch attempt to rise his career from the ashes after the classic Alice Cooper Band dissolved. Producer Bob Ezrin was a major ingredient in this production as well, showing how he uses some elements that were not common in the rock and roll vein. He uses these elements later on for future high profile projects such as Pink Floyd's The Wall and Kiss Destroyer. Cooper and Ezrin came up with Welcome To My Nightmare, the album and broadway play. The main theme is Alice portraying a demented individual named Steven, who displays an array of emotions such as amusement, confusion, anger, and mostly fear. Steven encounters trolls, giant spiders, a giant cyclops, and dances like Fred Astaire. This play incorporates the "Nightmare" music as well as some Alice Cooper Classics. I don't know if calling it a "play" is too accurate (I used it for lack of a better term), it is more like several music videos back to back, as there is hardly any dialogue between numbers. "concert" may not be an accurate word either, due to the concept involved. This production was unique for it's day. It has a demented aura from start to almost finish (the last 2 songs were too upbeat to follow through the theme).

Alice does a great job portraying Steven. Alice Cooper was an "alter ego" of sorts to Vincent Furnier (Alice's real name), and Steven appears to be an additional alter ego of his as well in a professional sense. I know this all sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but to an Alice Cooper fan it all makes sense.

Interesting to note:

Alice Cooper met his future wife during the making of "Nightmare."

A lot about "Nightmare" as well as Alice's full career was outlined in a VH1 Behind the Music episode. Definitely worth watching if you liked "Nightmare."

This film is an Alice Cooper concert at the Wembley Arena in London from 1975. It probably does help to be a fan of Alice Cooper to watch this film (in the same way as people who dislike ballet will probably not care that they have just seen a really good ballet because it will still do nothing for them). However I watched it partly out of curiosity but also because I am always curious to see how films play when they are not being watched by their target audience. In other words I always assume that a genre film will do the basics to please genre fans but what marks it out is how it plays to audience who have a more general requirement. The parallel is perhaps not great but essentially I was interested to see if the concert was "just for fans" or if it worked for the casual viewer as well.

Well, for me it sort of did but probably not in the way that it will work for fans. In my experience of the man (much later in his career) Cooper was always a rocker with a sense of flamboyance, being OTT and not taking it too seriously. I know a few of his songs but his best are behind him by decades and it is only really the couple of biggest hits that get regular airings that the casual viewer will take from this film. What made it worth seeing for my money was the sense of period.

The show itself is a wonderfully camp rock concert that made me understand just what it was that Spinal Tap was spoofing. The show is set in Cooper's bedroom where we have creatures dancing around only to disappear into a massive toy box, skeletons coming out during Steven, him beating a woman unconscious during "Only Women Bleed", a giant spider's web, a big furry Cyclops and other weird moments that make up his stage show. It is a million miles away from the modern rock concerts where songs are performed, pyrotechnics explode and those who are about to rock are saluted etc. Within these weird happenings on stage, Cooper is a good fit. Dressed in a sort of adult romper suit and in his famous black eye makeup Cooper staggers round totally bought into the action he is part of. OK at times I was laughing and unable to take it seriously but to a point I guess that was the aim.

The production of the film as well as the action dates it as it is obviously not up to modern standards. The sound is not as crisp as you would like, which didn't bother me too much but what did bug me was the fact that it had comparatively little crowd noise on the soundtrack. Similarly the crowd are mostly missing visually and I would have liked to see more crowd shots just to get a feel for how all this stuff was going down with them – it was only in School's Out where we got to see and hear them, which suggests their reactions up till that point had perhaps not been good enough to make it onto the film. Otherwise the action is filmed from several well placed but mostly static cameras – quality is a bit fuzzy but it comes with the territory.

Overall then a strangely enjoyable concert film. It goes without saying that Cooper fans will enjoy it but for the casual viewer it is a wonderfully weird concert that delights as a camp throwback to rock of the day. Sure, at times you're laughing at it but mostly it is entertaining.