Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story

I've been a fan of Def Leppard since 1983, and truly, this movie did a great job! It wasn't perfect, some artistic license had to be taken, but it was a fine job by the actors, writers and producers! I agree with the previous poster that I wish it had extended further into the Leps' history to include the loss of Steve Clark, the addition of Vivian Campbell and the current status of the band, but as these wonderful band of die-hards have been around since 1977, I suppose that would have been a bit of a tall order! (Unless of course, they wanted to make the fans TRULY happy and do a two-parter! I'd be all for that!)

I truly enjoyed Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story. It showed how the young lads from the depressing industrial city of Shefield England rose to the top of the heavy metal world. Alot of the movie deals with Rick Allen, the groups drummer, overcoming his infamous car crash where he loses his left arm and has to learn a new style of playing drums. Steve Clark was shown as a charismatic, yet insecure lead guitar player, who faces the demons of alcoholism, stage fright, and an overly-critcal father. Joe Elliott was portrayed as the driving force behind the group, a powerful lead singer who would be willing to "cut his gonads off to get out of Shefield." I wish the story would have concentrated a little more about Rick Savage, the groups bass player. After watching the movie, I still knew very little about him. Phil Collen,as a replacement guitarist for the ousted original founder of the band, Pete Willis, was a superb guitar player and had a great sense of humor. Phil and Steve were good together as the "Terror Twins" who partied hardy every night, until Phil decided to quit drinking. "What if I black-out and end up like Rick?

I enjoyed the songs and soundtrack of the movie. I thought the story was well done, considering that it was only a 90 minute TV movie. I know the movie wasn't perfect, yet I thought it was interesting and very powerful!

Being a Def Leppard fan since 1992, I found this movie to be quite entertaining. The actors who play Def Leppard do pretty well, and their accents are decent. The only beef I have is with the Sheffield scenes being shot in Montreal. Montreal makes a rather poor substitute for an English city. The cars and buses don't look English either, especially since the drivers' wheel is on the left side of the car! Having the film shot in Sheffield would have been much more convenient. That aside, Def Leppard fans should enjoy this movie. The actor who plays Joe Elliott has a good singing voice, especially when he sings "Ride Into The Sun" and "Bringing On The Heartbreak".

If you live in Toronto, be sure to see them play live at the Molson Amphitheatre on August 15!

Silly, but entertaining (kinda like the band) biopic of Def Leppard. They've been called the real life Spinal Tap and with good reason (tragedies, etc.). The filmmaking is pretty standard, but the music is great and the acting is top notch (rare for a tv film). Orlando Seale is great as Joe Elliot and the actors portraying the rest of the band are excellent as well. Anthony Michael Hall has a small role as Mutt Lange (producer and husband of Shania Twain). The movie skims over a lot of years in the life of the band, but it's still damn fun to watch. Rock of ages!

You really can't have too high expectations for a made-for-cable TV movie. And made-for-VH1 at that. With that in mind, Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story was a decent little bio-film. Yes, its too short and sometimes plays fast & loose with the facts, but it gets its main point across pretty decently. Namely, that Def Leppard were always best friends first and a great rock band second.

Although the film opens with Rick Allen's accident and then flashes back from there, it doesn't overly dwell on just the negative. It makes it clear that these were stand-up guys devoted equally to their friendship as to their music.

And even though the actors were obviously chosen based on their strong physical resemblance to each band member, all of them give really strong performances. They all come across as real people, and not at all as mere hired lookalikes. And even though the role is severely limited, Anthony Michael Hall gets the gist of producer Mutt Lange's role (although they made him American when he's actually British).

A few time-line errors: They show the band working on Pour Some Sugar on Me while Rick is in the hospital and before Mutt Lange rejoins them in the studio. In fact, Sugar was the last song on the Hysteria album to be written and it was in fact Lange who recognized it as a potential smash hit and insisted on its development & inclusion (even though they were already way behind schedule).

Also the final concert scene where Rick plays live again for the first time, this was actually at an outdoor concert in Germany. But there actually were people grumbling about a "freak show" in reference to a one-armed drummer (not fans, but members of another band that was also playing that gig). It does also accurately portray that Allen performed without a hitch that day and was warmly welcomed back by the audience.

The real members of Def Leppard themselves have gone on record saying that even though they had no input to it, overall, they were reasonably satisfied with this docudrama.