The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 13, 2014

Is this the end? Much as with the Jimi Hendrix estate, those in charge of The Doors’ legacy have been unearthing rare nuggets for years, releasing them piecemeal in an effort to satisfy fans’ seemingly unquenchable thirst for more material from a band that obviously had a finite amount of material to begin with. Over the past few years Doors aficionados have been able to experience elements of the band both in performance and supposed “private” life courtesy of such releases as The Doors: Live At The Bowl '68 and The Doors: R-Evolution. Feast of Friends seemed to be a lost cause, however, relegated to the back shelf of Doors outings, one that had been trotted out in various substandard bootleg forms through the years but seemingly unable to be reassembled from chaotically curated elements. Filmed in 1968 just as the band was experiencing the first rush of international superstardom, but perhaps before the inevitable hedonistic onslaught such fame typically brings with it, this kind of “anti-documentary” had been a Golden Fleece of sorts for diehard Doors lovers, and just as seemingly unobtainable as Jason (at least initially) found that desirable object. While Feast of Friends was never officially “completed” in a traditional sense, it’s not a traditional narrative documentary to begin with, and so its current state is perhaps less problematic than it might have otherwise been. Filled with up close and personal views of the band on the road during its 1968 tour, Feast of Friends is perhaps the last “big” release fans are likely to see from The Doors’ archives. Eagle Rock has wisely appended some fascinating supplementary material to augment Feast of Friends’ rather short running time, making this release an essential addition to any fan’s Doors collection.

In a perhaps curiously worded statement, Eagle Rock professes that this release has been “completely restored from the original negative, as supervised by Jim Morrison.” One assumes The Lizard King has not in fact returned from the dead, and that this is instead an allusion to the fact that it was long rumored that the negative for Feast of Friends had been under Morrison’s aegis when he died, and that his demise had thrown the status of the piece into question for some time.

What remains is a frankly chaotic assemblage of moments, both onstage and offstage, that give a kind of kaleidoscopic, some might even say (appropriately) hallucinatory, view of a band starting to deal with elements like the paparazzi and aggressive fans. There’s a brief black and white prelude that shows Morrison arriving for a gig and having a gaggle of girls just amble up to his car and stick their heads in. When one of them looks at the camera and says, “Oh, no, not again,” it perhaps gives the lie to the fact that this may have been a staged moment, especially after a line of girls marauds Morrison for a quick kiss.

That then segues into the bulk of the color footage, where a somewhat odd assortment of moment follows, some of which are apparently supposed to touch on the political unrest that was so much a part of the late sixties. To footage that looks like it might have been shot at Seattle Center’s monorail, a voiceover of an unseen and unidentified man seems to be relating an anecdote about some kind of war horror that took place during the Vietnam conflict. It’s an obvious disconnect between image and sound, and is further proof of how virtually synaesthetic The Doors could be a lot of the time.

Some of the concert footage has been seen in various other formats, including Morrison’s evidently drug induced desire to have the lights turned off before he launches into “The End”. But there are other curiosities here as well, including a brief snippet of Morrison comforting a rather bloody fan backstage after some lunatic bashed her in the head with a chair or some other object.

There’s not much of a through line to Feast of Friends here other than a kind of random assortment of images and sounds, but for those willing to sort through the quasi-psychedelic onslaught, there are copious clues as to just why Morrison and The Doors were such a phenomenon. One salient clue comes from a minister, who likens Morrison’s sway on his fans to Jesus gifting the Apostles with the “gift of gab” at Pentecost.

The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Feast of Friends is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. As mentioned above in the main body of the review, this was evidently sourced from the negative and then (to further quote Eagle Rock) was "color corrected and cleaned in high definition." That "cleaning" comment may disturb some, for this is apparent high frequency filtering here that has removed quite a bit of the grain. It's still evident when, for example, a camera pans past a bright blue spotlight and a visible grain field emerges, but for a film so swathed in blacks a lot of the time, there isn't as much grain as might be expected. Those blacks also present some problems with crush, with some onstage moments with Morrison in a jet black shirt against a shadowy background looking almost like a disembodied head and hands at times. The image is decently if not overwhelmingly detailed in brighter lit moments, but what was apparently the 16mm source never really provides much in the way of sharpness or clarity.

The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Longtime Doors collaborator and engineer Bruce Botnick remixed and remastered the soundtrack for Feast of Friends, which is presented here in both LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. Perhaps surprisingly, there's not a huge jump in low end support in the 5.1 mix, though it is a noticeable uptick. What is manifestly better in the 5.1 mix is a spaciousness in the midrange especially that helps to make some of the massed voicings of keyboards and guitars ring with better clarity and precision. Overall, there's still just a slightly boxy sound at times that is no doubt due to the original recording conditions, but fans will most likely be very pleased with the fidelity and lack of damage on display in both of these tracks.

The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feast of Friends: Encore (1080p; 34:44) presents even more footage in both black and white and color from The Doors' archive. There's some great stuff here, including lots of candid footage and tidbits like Morrison playing even more of his almost Hindemith-esque solo on the piano backstage, another section of which is shown in the main Feast of Friends feature. This features LPCM 2.0 audio, and like the main feature this is filled with great Doors music.


• The Doors Are Open (1080i; 53:49) bears a copyright date of 1977 courtesy of Granada Television, but this stems from the height of the band's popularity and provides a somewhat jaundiced view at times of the band due to a portentous narrator and the documentary's rather "establishment" point of view. With both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 audio.


• The End (1080i; 16:01) contains some fun reminiscences by the band members discussing their jaunt to Toronto in 1967 to do their first "big" television event. That appearance is also featured here, with host Noel Harrison, who helpfully alerts the viewer that this is the show's first foray into "psychedelia." In great looking color and with both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 audio.

The Doors: Feast of Friends Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Feast of Friends is ultimately an exercise in self-indulgence (on a group scale, no less), but it also provides some tantalizing glimpses of what life was like for the band just as their fame was beginning to really crest. What makes this release essential is not just the ability to see Feast of Friends in as complete a form as it's ever going to be, but the really excellent supplementary package Eagle Rock has assembled to augment the main feature. Video is about what should be expected from such an archival release, though the digital cleaning may be too aggressive for some aficionados. The audio is generally top notch, and Feast of Friends comes Recommended.