Super Duper Alice Cooper

Well - Well - Well!.... Surprise! Surprise!

Not being at all a fan of Alice Cooper (the band) or Alice Cooper (the manufactured stage persona) - I certainly was all set to dislike this "Jekyll & Hyde" rockumentary, big-time. I really was. And, with that, most likely give this show a measly 2-star rating, at best.

But - Hey! - As it turned out - Due to this production having a really talented writing/directing team behind it (who were a trio of Canadian dudes) - I found "Super Duper Alice Cooper" to be genuinely entertaining, for the most part.

Yep. This rockumentary was a very slick and polished presentation that moved along smoothly as an impressive and colourful collage of retro film clips.

Born Vincent Furnier (1948) - This fast-paced, 85-minute rockumentary told the tale of young Vincent's ambitious rise to rock'n'roll fame as he struggled to be different from all the rest - Eventually morphing into a trashy, theatrical stage personality who promoted sex, death & violence.

Ah-yes! But there certainly was a price to be paid for Vincent/Alice's meteoric rise to super-stardom..... Be sure to watch this DVD to find out what price Alice paid for fame & fortune.

A nice cliff notes to his career, but it stops at 1986 choosing the redemption arc over a thorough examination. Some nice footage and uses the soundtrack as another way to tell the story. Worth a watch but not enough to be definitive.

Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This here is a highly entertaining documentary taking a look at the Alice Cooper character. Of course, he started out as Vincent Damon Furnier but soon he found himself in a rock and roll band and before long his alter ego became Alice Cooper. Through interviews with him, his wife, his mom, his band, co-writers and his manager we see the rise of the character and the eventual fall.

SUPER DUPER ALICE COOPER is something that fans of the singer are going to love for a number of reasons. The biggest is the fact that there's all sorts of great concert material and a lot of it that I hadn't seen before and this is coming from someone who collected bootlegs at one time. The early concert footage of the Alice Cooper Band was fabulous and really made this something special.

Another great thing is the fact that so many important people are interviewed (including Elton John talking about a concert he saw of Cooper at the Hollywood Bowl) and they help narrate this story. We get a great overview of the early Alice Cooper stuff including the pre- fame days as well as his time with Frank Zappa.

The film's one weakness is the fact that it clocks in at just under 90-minutes and the "Welcome to My Nightmare" era doesn't get talked about until the 57th minute. That tells you that the later portion of the Alice Cooper story is pretty much gone through very quickly and it ends with his comeback special during 1986. Obviously there's a lot of material left out and there's no great discussion of his various albums.

With that said, this documentary really does work as a "document" of the Alice Cooper character. Not really the man but the character and it's interesting to see clips from the 1920 version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE shown as a way to show us how Vincent was overtaken by the Alice Cooper character.

Probably because Bruce wrote a devastating book about his experiences in the band, and that he had written a lot of the material for the songs and that Alice 'abandoned them' after "Muscle Of Love" sessions were recorded. I think he's had an ax to grind with them ever since. Can't say I totally blame him either. He isn't even mentioned at the end of the film as if he didn't even exist.

Buxton was barely mentioned at all and not having an RIP at the end had to have been deliberate slap in the face on the filmmaker's part. Maybe Buxton was as bitter over the whole thing as Bruce was and the producers of this film followed the input from the management. Some kind of fallout occurred for this to happen

Not to mention, everything is done in voice-over and we don't get to see the participants as they are today. The scenes are done in that CGI diorama overlay style which is fine in some cases but I think overused here.

Overall, a not very satisfying documentary. 3 out of 10 for these glaring omissions.

So much more to see than just the printed "lives with shell and the kids " etc.

Really interesting to watch, just feel it shouldn't have stopped there, even if it were a five minute nod to all the good stuff he has done since.

I'm sober now, oh look, cocaine 😅