Cover Art

Credits

Director: Joe Gannon Starring: Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith Screenplay: Joe Gannon, Shep Gordon, Fred Smoot Music: The Alice Cooper Band Tagline: "The film that out-grosses them all!" Country: USA

Seriously, the Alice Cooper band from 71 – 74 were the only real commercial alternative to the Rolling Stones. Yeah, I know that the Velvet Underground, Blue Cheer, the Stooges and MC5 were all in operation at that time, but the key word was "commercial", which the Cooper band unashamedly were. Actually, "sensationalistic" is a word that springs readily to mind. And for the likes of those who trawl these hallowed pages, the Alice Cooper band is where it's at. Over-the-top horror themed stage shows, ridiculously outrageous props (ever seen a grown man in a mini-skirt and snakeskin cowboy boots stalk a woman dressed as a giant molar, armed with an oversized toothbrush before?), guillotines and fake executions mixed with hi-octane rock'n'roll. This is all a few years before Alice fired his original band, succumbed to alcoholism, lost the plot musically (if you've heard the album Lace and Whiskey, you know what I'm talking about…), appeared on the Muppet Show (the evidence is on youtube, people) and Hollywood Squares and eventually became a metal-lite FM rock star, a DJ in his own right, and, if rumours are to be believed, a Christian. There is at least a sense of ironic self-detachment here missing from some of his later efforts.

Basically, this is a concert film with a framing narrative – and a very bad one at that – to do with a film director who hasn't been able to get the Alice Cooper band (or "gang", as he insists on calling them in an atrocious sub-Colonel Klink German accent) to do the film he wants them to do. They wreck his set, and leave, and he wants to get revenge. The direction is poor. Very poor, actually, and I seriously doubt – with no sense of exaggeration – that there was even a script involved; watch it and see for yourself. Thankfully, these intrusions into the concert footage are generally brief – but they are so ineptly acted as to be extremely painful - the cinematic equivalent of bamboo shoots under the fingernails. Seriously, these inserts make the acting in a Herschell Gordon Lewis or Ted V Mikels film look like top shelf material. That said, the opening sequence with Alice dressed as a lounge singer with an appalling blonde wig generally hamming it up while singing "The Lady Is A Tramp" is hilarious – albeit on a kind of sub-Monkees level. The feature length version with the inserts is the kind of thing you'll only watch once. Probably with a sense of disbelief and the kind of headache that could stop a charging rhino. Select the concert-only version.

The Coop's earliest incarnation was true exploitation – by their own admission all about sex, death and money (check out the liner notes in the gatefold of School Days – the reissue of the seriously weird Pretties For You and the moderately less bizarre Easy Action - if you don't believe me). And watching Alice (during the tasteful little ditty "Dead Babies") wave a cutlass with a baby doll impaled on the end of it certainly cements the exploitation angle, particularly when he tries to insert it between the legs of an inverted female mannequin, before a few songs later hurling real money into the crowd in order to incite a riot (as Alice states on the commentary track).