The first impression I had after watching Super Duper Alice Cooper was that Vincent Furnier has had one helluva ride as Alice Cooper. Frank Zappa released his first album, Pretties For You. In one of the film’s more entertaining animated sequences, Cooper goes to meet his future manager Shep Gordon, and he encounters Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in a haze of smoke. Gordon would later get Alice Cooper (then known as a band) a gig opening for John Lennon and a chicken would go down in the carnage. Cooper inspired Elton John at the Hollywood Bowl as women’s panties fell from the sky. And in later years, as a “celebrity,” he would mingle with the likes of George Burns and Frank Sinatra. Super Duper Alice Cooper is packed with style and panache, delivering the story with one broad stroke after another, leaving minor (perhaps essential to some) details to the side, but never surrendering to innocuous filler. Without the bad acid trips, Budweiser beer and cocaine, you can’t help feel constantly bedazzled with the facts, figures and ferry dust in the singer’s illustrious career.
The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde analogy that drives Super Duper Alice Cooper, the creation of Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn and Reginald Harkema, is a clever reminder of how Furnier has struggled with being Alice Cooper and maintaining a normal lifestyle as a husband, father and all-around good guy. As we learn, during his rise to stardom as a member of a band, he was without fear, shunning life as a pastor’s son to chase a crazy dream that took to Hollywood. His bass player from the Alice Cooper band, Dennis Dunaway, is featured prominently as Cooper’s best friend, confident and partner in crime. But, as the film illustrates, there are plenty of disappointments shared among the members of the Alice Cooper band.
Drummer Neal Smith’s role in the film is minimal at best (even though he had a hand in the Alice Cooper name), while guitarists Glen Buxton, who passed away in 1997, is barely mentioned, and a very much alive Michael Bruce, who appeared on Cooper’s 2011 Welcome 2 My Nightmare album, is nowhere to be found. Considering he co-wrote a good chunk of Cooper’s biggest hits, including “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Muscle Of Love,” it seems like a rather obvious omission. Other prominent musicians who worked with Cooper, like Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, are never even brought up. Producer Bob Ezrin, however, figures well into the story as the man who brought the band to the charts. Equally significant is his clash with the other Alice Cooper band members, which lead to a temporary split with the singer. That event likely had an impact on the band’s eventual break up and Alice Cooper’s ascension as a solo artist.
In the film, we go to Detroit, where Alice Cooper played on stage with MC5 and Iggy and The Stooges; to New York where Andy Warhol looked on in astonishment; to rehab where Cooper gives up alcohol; and back home to Phoenix where he seeks redemption with his parents, followed by his wife and daughter, after beating down an addiction to cocaine. At the heart of Super Duper Alice Cooper, there’s a steady flow of stock film, animation, 3D cut-and-paste scenarios, never-seen-before Alice Cooper footage, and no on-camera interviews with anyone (you get those in the bonus section of the DVD and Blu-ray Disc). One viewing and you too will love and appreciate Alice Cooper even more as a musical entity, a public figure, the revered Godfather of glam metal, and one of the last remaining rock stars of the rock & roll era. By the way, there’s a Deluxe Edition with the full film on DVD and Blu-ray, a second DVD of previously unreleased concert footage from Montreal University in 1972, a CD of Cooper’s performance at the 2009 Montreux Jazz Festival, and a 60-page hardback photo book. That’s for the true Alice Cooper fan.
~ Shawn Perry
