7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
From Banger Films, the creators of Iron Maiden: Flight 666 and Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, comes Super Duper Alice Cooper the story of Vincent Furnier, the preacher's son who struck fear into the hearts of parents everywhere as Alice Cooper, the most outrageous rock star of his generation. This unique doc opera, a dizzying blend of documentary archive footage, animation and rock opera goes from the early days of Alice as the front man for a cutting edge rock band in the sixties through the hazy decadence of global celebrity in the seventies and on to his winking comeback as the glam metal godfather in the eighties. This is the tale of Alice and Vincent battling for each others souls. Super Duper Alice Cooper combines audio interviews with a wealth of archive Alice Cooper footage covering concerts, TV appearances, movie cameos, dramatic headlines and magazine spreads. All the highlights of his career are covered aided by contributions from some of the biggest music icons of all time including Iggy Pop, Elton John, John Lydon, Bernie Taupin, Dee Snider and of course Alice Cooper himself. This is the definitive, extraordinary story of the man and the myth that is uniquely Alice Cooper.
Starring: Alice CooperMusic | 100% |
Documentary | 40% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: LPCM 2.0
English, French, Spanish, German
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
There was an article many years ago in Life Magazine or some such publication that profiled Alice Cooper in a rather unexpected way which I can still recall to this day. The photograph accompanying the article found Cooper out on the golf course in typical doubleknit attire, and furthermore the iconic rock musician detailed his love of Burt Bacharach albums in the interview, something which just completely caught me off guard. There’s a bit of that same ironic shock value running through Super Duper Alice Cooper, an enjoyable overview of the life and career of erstwhile Vincent Furnier. Told through a series of archival footage and stills, but graced with some latter day commentary by Alice himself (as well as others), the documentary fills in some surprising informational gaps in terms of Alice’s formative years and some of the trials and tribulations he withstood on his trek to the podium of the Rock Gods.
Super Duper Alice Cooper is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As mentioned above in the main body of the review, the documentary features archival footage and stills that are highly variable in quality, with many looking pretty fuzzy and ill defined, as well as rather badly faded a lot of the time. There's some visual ingenuity here, though, as well, courtesy of some more flashy animation and the like which considerably heightens the visual appeal. With an understanding that the source elements here are in fairly shoddy shape quite a bit of the time, there's nothing overly problematic and most fans will probably delight in seeing a lot of this old footage, much of which has a certain inherently nostalgic quality. The Blu-ray itself offers no issues like artifacts to warrant any concern.
Anyone expecting a knock your socks off soundtrack full of uncut Alice Cooper tunes is going to be at least partially let down by this documentary's approach, for this is by and large a voiceover affair, with a variety of interviews and confessionals sounding fine but certainly not incredible via either the included LPCM 2.0 or DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. The 5.1 track does open up the musical segments significantly and also provides an expected boost to the low end, but this is after all a documentary and not a music video, so audiophiles should set their expectations accordingly.
For such an intentionally provocative persona, Alice Cooper actually comes off as an almost mundane guy, albeit one with an obviously very colorful history. While rabid fans will probably find little here that they didn't already know, Cooper provides some piquant commentary on his own life and there's a generally enjoyable air to this piece that elevates it above typical rock hagiographies. Recommended.
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