Super Duper Alice Cooper

Coming this spring...


The official trailer for "Super Duper Alice Cooper", the upcoming documentary about the shock rocker's evolution from preacher's son to superstardom, can be seen above. The 97-minute retrospective on Alice Cooper is the latest release from Canadian documentarians Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen of production company Banger Films ("Metal: A Headbangers Journey", "Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage") and writer/director Reginald Harkema.

"Super Duper Alice Cooper" is the twisted tale of a teenage Dr. Jekyll whose rock and roll Mr. Hyde almost kills him. It is the story of Vincent Furnier, preacher's son, who struck fear into the hearts of parents as Alice Cooper, the ultimate rock star of the bizarre. From the advent of Alice as frontman for a group of Phoenix freaks in the '60s to the hazy decadence of celebrity in the '70s to his triumphant comeback as '80s glam metal godfather, we will watch as Alice and Vincent battle for each other's souls. The film is the first-ever "doc opera" — a dizzying blend of documentary archive footage, animation and rock opera that will cement forever the legend of Alice Cooper.

In a 2012 interview with Spinner.com, Dunn stated about the Cooper documentary: 'We know Alice through various projects that we've done. We interviewed Alice for 'Headbanger's Journey'. He's also featured pretty prominently in two episodes of [the new groundbreaking documentary series] 'Metal Evolution', both in [the] Shock Rock and Early Metal U.S. [episodes]. He's a pretty fascinating character, who has been through a lot in his life. He's one of those musicians that maybe he hasn't had a hit in a long time, but everyone knows who Alice Cooper is because of his influence on pop culture and the big songs he had in the '70s.

"We're exploring a different stylist approach with this film. It won't be talking heads; it's going to be more of an archival and animated journey through his career.

"He's such a rich visual artist, it makes so much sense to try and do it in a different way.

"I think we're just a little bit sick of doing talking head interviews, to be honest [laughs], after doing 300 of them for 'Metal Evolution'. So it's really the story of Alice's career from the '60s right up to the '80s and everything he went through — the ups and the downs, battles with alcoholism, being raised in a Christian family, rebelling against that but then coming back to faith later in his career, and moving from town to town, and trying to find his place."

I'm all for the archival stuff telling the story not so big on the idea of the animated use. As long as the stories are good/fun/interesting I'll never get tired of the talking head approach. What's funny is on the audio commentary for Headbanger's Journey Sam kinda slags on Alice for being an egomaniac. Either way there's a helluva story to be told with Alice.

This is awesome!! Alice Cooper is one of my favorite artists I can't wait to see this.

Definitely sounds fun.

I am huge Alice fan and I did see that in the commentary where they slag the Coop in their commentary section. Funny they are the only people I have heard call Alice an egomaniac. Its can't be true, look at the songwriting credits on his albums, Alice is pretty generous when it comes to giving credit where credit is due.

I can't wait to see this!!

really looks good

Just saw the dvd at wal-mart. Anyone seen it? Is it worth picking up?

dvd out already?
It seemed like just last month it was advertised as screening exclusively at a movie theater in Toronto,Canada with a very few select USA cities.

I will have to message a friend I know who went. Never knew he liked Alice too much besides him being a massive fan of the "Raise Your Fist and Yell" LP (it was a good move he made in '87, for Alice to have some thrashy songs, and evil sounding guitar).

I picked up a copy because I was more or less honor-bound to do so...

It's a good movie and has some pretty shocking revelations about the 80s for him. That said, the narrative arc is kind of weird. There's a lot of time and detail put into his rise to about the Nightmare period, but then it kind of darts around and gets scattershot.

It's the same complaint I had with the Rush movie the same crew put together - there were albums in the catalog I would have liked to know more about from the later years that weren't even mentioned. Ditto for some of my favorite Cooper records. It's more about the man and his issues at that point and the music is so far towards the back, you're not really even aware of it anymore.

That said, it's totally worth seeing, but for casual fans, it may be better to wait for Netflix to pick it up than to own a copy.

Just my take. Anyone else checked it out?

is it out ? when ?
i miss it... damn.

I think it came out two weeks ago? Tops?

It's been out about 3 weeks.

I finally got to see this. It's not bad, but something was amiss. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Some of the archival footage was cool. And although his battle with beer/alcohol has been well-documented, I never knew Alice was a coke-head. It would explain his skeletal look of the early 80's.

I saw it and was unimpressed. I agree with MG71 that it felt like something was missing, because I was expecting something much more extensive.

Witchfinder wrote:

I saw it and was unimpressed.  I agree with MG71 that it felt like something was missing, because I was expecting something much more extensive.  

Part of it was the interviews. Just voices talking over images. Sometimes if felt like they were talking about something totally different that what was on the screen. It needed to show the people talking to break things up.

Aside from the drug-use segment, I felt I learned more from an old episode of VH-1's Behind the Music.

Zombie thread! Back from the dead!

I caught the last half hour or so of this flick on "MTV Live" a week or so ago (which I believe is the new name for the concert/music channel formerly known as "Palladia") - seemed pretty interesting to me. I'm keeping an eye on my local listings for a re-airing.

I dug this movie for what it was. As a fan though, I wish that it had either kept going past the "hair metal revival" era or gone into more detail towards the albums that were covered.

Granted, I wonder how much Alice himself remembers about the albums from Flush the Fashion to Dada. Great records, but it was pretty obvious that he was in rough shape making them.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I never knew Alice was a coke-head. It would explain his skeletal look of the early 80's.

It is painfully obvious that he was coked out of his mind during that time. Just watch that Paris TV Special from 1982. It's shocking how he looks, acts, "sings" there...


I saw it recently and thought it wasn't all that great.
What wanted the documentary to portray? They start out with talking about the band, them starting out, meeting Zappa, doing the album and then suddenly it's more about Vincent Furnier and his private life, they ignore most of the albums (would be interesting to hear how the band saw the reactions to their first two albums which weren't popular and how they thought about that and the future of the band at the time for example), they don't even mention Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton at all (what's up with that?!), they once again re-tell the Ouija Board story (which has been debunked long ago even by Alice himself) and stop at the Raise your Fist time.
I guess you can't do a lot in just 90 minutes but the pacing is really weird and leaving out so much stuff, including musicians of the band is just weird.

[quote="ShadowAngel"]

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I guess you can't do a lot in just 90 minutes but the pacing is really weird and leaving out so much stuff, including musicians of the band is just weird.

I think if there's a complaint I can raise about it, that about sums it up. Personally, I wish there had been more about the musical side - songwriting, recording, etc. but I know that's more my "Classic Albums" addiction showing than anything else.