The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 28, 2018

Part of what might be called “the Woodstock Generation”’s accomplishments weren’t just the predilection for huge outdoor music festivals, but how provocative those very festivals were to this generation’s perceived “nemesis”, The Man. Woodstock may very well be the best remembered stateside festival celebrating sex, drugs and good, old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but the United Kingdom had a celebration that lasted for three years running, though that third year was such a calamitous experience that “saner” heads prevailed and Parliament more or less outlawed such festivities (or at least made them significantly harder to stage, with a bunch of bureaucratic hoops that needed to be jumped through). That concert series was the Isle of Wight Festival, which began more or less inauspiciously in 1968, with a “mere” 10,000 attendees. The first event generated enough buzz that by 1969 attendance was numbered at north of 150,000, and even that amazing exponential growth was dwarfed by attendance at the 1970 concert, which some estimates have placed at as much as 700,000. One of the headline acts for the 1970 concert was The Doors, who participated on a Saturday which almost incredibly also saw performances by Joni Mitchell, Tiny Tim (I kid you not), Miles Davis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and The Who.

As is described in some subtitles in this film’s opening moments, there was a roiling atmosphere above and beyond the chaos resulting from hundreds of thousands of people descending upon an isolated farm to hear music, and that included the environment of The Doors themselves at this point. Jim Morrison was fighting his well publicized obscenity charges, and it was something of a surprise that he even came to this venue. Adding to the confusion was a mixup on who was supposed to provide a lighting package, and so the band’s middle of the night performance was lit substantially by a lone red spotlight, casting everything in a kind of hellish glow that made tunes like “The End” seem positively apocalyptic.

While playing a relatively short set (around an hour, give or take), and with Morrison in a restrained mood that Ray Manzarek reportedly called “Dionysus shackled”, not to mention the 2 a.m. performance time, one might assume a lackluster performance followed, perhaps one reason why this footage has remained largely unseen for decades. But that’s actually not the case. The band is intense if somewhat less florid than usual, and if Morrison occasionally lapses into something approach crooning, he’s also focused and effective.

The band’s set list for the concert includes:

Roadhouse Blues (audio only, playing under scenes establishing people getting to the concert)
Back Door Man
Break On Through (To the Other Side)
When the Music’s Over
Ship of Fools
Light My Fire
The End (Medley: Across the Sea / Away in India / Crossroads Blues / Wake Up)

The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Doors Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, Universal Music Group and The Doors with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Unfortunately the press materials accompanying this release don't really get into the source elements, and instead emphasize that this was "meticulously restored via the latest 21st century technology, color correcting and visually upgrading the original footage". I'm assuming this was shot on 16mm, perhaps Super 16 (which would have been a brand spanking new technology in 1970) given the aspect ratio, though (again without more information) I can't state whether the 1.78:1 aspect ratio is actually "original" or part of an "upgrade". While a number of the screenshots accompanying this review show some of the detail deficits regularly on display due to the poor lighting conditions and the rather heavy grain field, I have to say in motion things look considerably better than some of these screenshots may indicate. There's still a kind of almost (appropriate?) hallucinatory quality to any number of shots, especially those where the red kind of blooms and leaves a halo that obliterates much in its wash, but the close-ups of Morrison often are at least adequate and some of the midrange shots of the band are at least acceptably detailed. Some opening footage in broad daylight proves that the source has at least decent detail levels with a natural looking palette (see screenshots 4, 8 and 14).

The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Doors Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks (as is often the case with Eagle Rock releases, the disc is authored to default to the stereo track). There's a noticeable difference in amplitude between these two tracks, apart from the expected boost to the mid and lower ranges that the surround track offers. Fidelity is excellent throughout, with a good accounting of the band and (especially) Morrison's voice. Occasional crowd noise tends to spill through the surrounds a bit more noticeably than in the stereo version, where the band is prioritized more forward, though with less overall "oomph".

The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "This is the End" Featurette (1080i; 18:31) is an interesting piece which puts this era of The Doors in context, and which offers several interesting interviews with Bill Siddons.

Additionally, a Bonus CD of the performance is included.

The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In a very real way, this was in fact the beginning of "The End" for The Doors. As the subtitles state, there were only two more concerts given after this one, and to the best of everyone's knowledge, neither of those performances was filmed, making this the last known record of a live Doors performance. Within a short amount of time, of course, Morrison would be dead. This is a somewhat curiously tamped down performance by the band, as if Jim half expected Interpol to show up and arrest him there, but the music itself is surprisingly intense and powerful. Video has some inherent issues due to the fact the boys played at 2 a.m. with only a red spotlight illuminating them, but the audio sounds great. Recommended.