Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts

Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts (1991)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Very good, if too short, look at Alice Cooper's rise to fame and his eventually downfall before getting a comeback in the mid-80s with his heavy metal albums. For its time this was the most complete look at Cooper and also featured some great interviews and concert footage. Viewing this seventeen years later there's no doubt that there's more footage out there but for what it is this is a very good documentary especially if you don't know the history behind the group or the solo stuff. As with most documentaries, the weakest part of this one is that we don't get to hear too much about the down period, which included albums like 'Zipper Catches Skin'. The highlights of Cooper's career, including 'School's Out' and 'Welcome to My Nightmare' have a lot of discussion about them. Alice talks about everything that was going on from the writings of the songs to various ways to kill himself on stage. One of the best stories has Alice talking about auditioning for Frank Zappa when the legend told them to show up at his house at seven. Alice and the buys showed up in the morning, which woke Frank up as he meant seven at night. Ozzy, Slash and a few others are also on hand to show respect. The concert footage is certainly one of the highlights here and contains some great stuff, although these full concerts have since been released. One would hope that someday the producer's will go back and extend this stuff with the post-Hey Stoopid period.