Super Duper Alice Cooper
April. 17,2014Emerging from the Detroit music scene of the 1970s in a flurry of long hair and sequins, Alice Cooper restored hard rock with a sense of showmanship, while simultaneously striking fear into the hearts of Middle America with the chicken-slaughtering, dead-baby-eating theatrics that would cement his identity as a glam metal icon. Meticulously crafted from rare archival footage, Super Duper Alice Cooper tells the story of the man behind the makeup, Vincent Furnier, the son of a preacher, who got caught in the grip of his own monster.
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Reviews
Redundant and unnecessary.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
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.
Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014): Dir: Sam Dunn, Reginald Harkema, Scot McFadyen / Featuring: Alice Cooper, Dennis Dunaway, Robert Ezrin, Sheryl Cooper: Documentary about one of the most enduring personalities to ever grace the concert stage. Born Vincent Furnier, the son of a pastor, the film narrates through archive footage how music has impacted his childhood with the Beatles bursting on the scene. He gets together with friends to form a band that is simply called Alice Cooper but it became apparent at the cost of his band that Vincent is Alice donned in lace, long shaggy black hair, and heavy black eye makeup. He became celebrated for his extreme stage antics that often included his own hanging or other theatrics such as taking a hatchet to a baby doll on stage. One of his most famous antics is a 1969 concert where he tossed a live chicken into the crowd and it was mangled by those in wheelchairs. Directors Sam Dunn, Reginald Harkema and Scot McFadyen capture the spirit of the performer with well edited sequences featuring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari but perhaps some face time interviews might have helped. Maybe some more details into albums, charts, and perhaps the origins of specific songs would have been great. It also avoids less talked about areas like adding a theme song to Friday the 13th, Part 6: Jason Lives, or accompanying Jake "the Snake" Roberts to the ring at Wrestlemania 3. Otherwise this is a super duper documentary of unusual form that takes viewers into the mind of one of the industry's most bizarre minds. Score: 9 / 10
Although it featured some great film footage of the early band, the story of Alice Cooper as told here is a miserable whitewash and a complete insult to fans of the band. Glen Buxton gets little mention and no credit; Michael Bruce doesn't even get mentioned. Not even once. How can you tell the story of this band and leave them out of it? Answer: you tell the story as if Alice Cooper (the individual) was the only person who really mattered and the rest of the band just happened to be there in the beginning. (I don't understand how Dennis Dunaway could have participated so much in this without feeling like a complete traitor to the rest of the band.) Basically this smells like somebody's manager trying to sweep history under a rug while polishing his client's reputation for all of the fans who arrived after "Welcome to My Nightmare." As the documentary rolled on and it became ever more clear what a nice, quiet hatchet-job this was, Alice's la-di-da narration really started to grate on me. (I know: that isn't exactly thoughtful or deeply analytical criticism, but I found myself increasingly outraged by this travesty.) A highly disingenuous presentation.
Over the last forty-plus years Alice Cooper has found himself answering the same questions in interviews and thus he often repeats the same anecdotes. Thankfully the makers of Super Duper Alice Cooper, two of which were responsible for the excellent documentaries Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and the underrated Global Metal, have decided to approach the subject from a different angle.Instead of following the traditional interview route by merely featuring Cooper on-screen talking about different parts of his career, Cooper himself narrates the story, starting with the formation of his Beatles spoof band the Earwigs in the mid-1960s and their through the brief time as the Spiders, before eventually settling on the name Alice Cooper.Everything is covered here; their arrival in Los Angeles to find a city of free love and LSD, something which they sought to challenge with their outrageous brand of rock 'n' roll; the band's rise to success and how Cooper found himself in the spotlight; the group's split and Cooper's descent into alcoholism as he struggled to keep the character of Alice at bay while launching a solo career.The documentary comes to an end following the Nightmare Returns tour of 1986. Fans may have wished for the filmmakers to continue through his success with Trash and Hey Stoopid, the rediscovery of his faith in the early 1990s and his evolution into heavier metal with Brutal Planet in 2000, but the movie ends on a perfect note so this is not a flaw.Instead of showing the interviewees on-screen, Super Duper Alice Cooper incorporates the technique of animating photographs in a similar way to Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas 2009 documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story, while also including stock footage from classic movies such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, old films of the band and footage taken from TV.This is a unique and entertaining approach to telling the story of an iconic artist that, in one form or another, has been told several times before. Super Duper Alice Cooper is a must for any fan.