Alice Cooper: The Nightmare
In 1974, shock rocker Alice Cooper decided to part ways with his bandmates, taking his name with him. The band had grown tired of on-stage theatrics, but Alice wanted to push his act further. For his first solo effort, he had an idea for a film which centered on a potential killer whom was never certain if he was awake or dreaming. Alice kept a tape recorder by his bed and spent months documenting his dreams, which were used as inspiration for a screenplay, but the movie didn't come together as planned. However, portions of the story went on to be used on his first solo album and, when scouting for directors, a visit was paid to Daniel Mann on the set of "Journey Into Fear," where Cooper's producer, Bob Ezrin, was introduced to screen legend Vincent Price. Ezrin jokingly asked Price, "How would you like to make your rock 'n' roll debut?" Price responded, "Really, do you think I ought to?"
This encounter turned out to be fortuitous for both parties when Cooper and Ezrin decided to enlist Price to play the role of The Curator, introducing the song "The Black Widow" on Cooper's 1975 album "Welcome to My Nightmare." However, fans later discovered there was an entirely different name written down for the character that Price portrayed: Jolly MacAmbre, Tour Guide at the Pasadena Palace of Insects. This bizarre moniker was doubtlessly an in-studio joke which referred to Price's attire. "We were waiting for him to come into the studio and expecting him to be all dressed in black," Cooper later recalled. "He comes in and he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt and striped pants. Everybody's like, 'That's Vincent Price?' Then he goes in and does this really Edwardian dramatic reading and it scares the hell out of you. Then you look at him and you just have to start laughing, because he looks like Ronald McDonald."
To get out of a contractual loophole, Warner Bros. got creative in their marketing of Cooper's first solo album. They decided to do a 90 minute TV special and issue the album as a soundtrack on their Atlantic Records label to sidestep any legalities involving Cooper recording without his band. A story outline was penned by Alan Rudolph (who would later use Cooper's song "Road Rats" as the inspiration for his 1980 film "Roadie"). The story included such lavish things as an enormous staircase lined with statues of children whose eyes followed Alice as he descended. Unfortunately, they were constricted by time, money, and network censors and got stuck making a cheap shot-on-video '70s TV special which lacked the punch that Rudolph's story had on the page.
The plot was thin; the special is just a series of nightmares had by Steven, a (not so) little boy portrayed by Cooper. The dancers were utilized who would join Cooper on tour, and choreographer David Winters (who appeared in Cooper's oft-referenced favorite "West Side Story") jumped on board (and ultimately helmed the concert film which followed). The TV special was directed by Jørn Winther, whose biggest claim to fame was directing numerous episodes of the '60s music series "Shindig!"
The special was shot in Toronto in March 1975. Unfortunately, the area was bereft of Budweiser, the then-alcoholic singer's favorite brew. " I had to bring 40 cases along just to be sure I'd have enough to get me through," Cooper joked.
The Nightmare was groundbreaking, as it was the first time a music video was shot for every song on an album (though "Escape" is a bit of a cheat, as it's mainly a montage of recycled shots). A complete video album hadn't happened before (the closest was probably The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour," which only featured half of the songs from the LP) and it wouldn't happen again until Blondie's 1980 compilation "Eat to the Beat." However, in the TV version of The Nightmare, there would be some big deviations...
The song "Devil's Food" is much longer and is presented from an entirely different point of view, with Steven being bound and cooked in a boiling cauldron as lunch for two green witches. "Only Women Bleed," a song about spousal abuse, was slightly altered to satisfy network censors. "Man got his woman to take his seed" was changed to "need." You couldn't elude to semen on TV, even with Alice's wife dancing around like a mannequin come to life in the background -- after all, merely repeating "only women bleed" on TV in 1975 was kind of shocking. "Cold Ethyl," Cooper's earlier song "The Ballad of Dwight Fry" and two different versions of "The Awakening" were recorded live on set.
The videos themselves are practically akin to segments on "The Muppet Show," (which Cooper and Price would each subsequently guest-star on) with people dancing around in weird costumes on studio sets in front of blue screens. "It's the first time I've ever danced and I have to do three hours practice a day for it," Cooper commented at the time. "I've found muscles I never even knew I had!"
For wrap-around segments, Price was brought in to reprise his role of The Curator, who refers to himself in the special as "The Spirit of the Nightmare." Cooper later recalled that Price "was in his element because he had me on a leash, walking me around, and I was just like being jerked around on this leash. I said, 'Don't be afraid to yank the leash. Make this like one of your movies where I'm just like this little pet of yours that you're showing around.'"
"We were kind of worried, because you can't believe how tight they are on TV," Cooper lamented in a 1975 interview. "Like they wouldn't let us use even fake blood. I wanted to used just a little for effect, just one trickle of blood coming out of Cold Ethyl's mouth. Just one little *trickle* so it'd look really nice, but they said no. 'But aside from that, we had complete control of the show."
Now, it would appear from the montage music video for "Escape" that there might have been more footage shot for The Nightmare, but the scene that would probably interest fans the most is seeing Vincent Price clad in a bulky black widow spider costume. ("He sits upon his throne and picks at all the bones of his husbands and his wives he's devoured"). Apparently a few photos of Price in costume exist, but sadly the footage of this sequence has never seen the light of day. If this picture is any indication, it was probably deemed too corny to use.
"Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can..."
The Nightmare first aired on ABC's "In Concert" on April 25, 1975. Cooper caused an uproar when he appeared on the debut of "In Concert" in 1972, and The Nightmare wound up being the final episode broadcast until the show's 1991 revival. Unfortunately, the reviews of the TV special were lukewarm, at best. In 1976, The Nightmare won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Videotape Editing for a Special. Videotape editing was still very much in its infancy (for many years, the only way to shoot on video was to shoot "live"), and for the most part recipient Nick Giordano is worthy of the award -- though there's a particularly notable audio gaff during "Escape," which resulted from the extension of the song for the special.
The concert tour accompanying the release was virtually the same show as the TV special, but performed live without Price, whose recordings were utilized. In September 1975, the concert in London was filmed and released theatrically as "Welcome to My Nightmare." That film has gone on to garner numerous home video releases.
In 1983, Warner Home Video issued The Nightmare on VHS and Beta in their standard oversized clamshell cases. Weirdly, they didn't bother to advertise Vincent Price on the cover, the photo on the back is from a short film used in the live concert, and the only text on the box is a song credits. Pretty crummy packaging.
Once again The Nightmare would be nominated for an award, this time a 1984 Grammy for Best Video Album, but it lost to Duran Duran for their self-titled home video compilation. Tragically,The Nightmare has never been officially reissued since and has never had a released outside of the USA, though it was rerun a few times on the popular 80s music series "Night Flight" and segments have been extracted as music videos for everything from Cooper documentaries to MTV's Elvira and Freddy Krueger specials. In 2002, Rhino Records re-released Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare" album with three bonus tracks: alternate versions of "Devil's Food," "Cold Ethyl" and "The Awakening" taken from The Nightmare, but they didn't bother to reissue the special, even on the DVD-audio version.
Vincent Price was proud of his musical achievement and was presented with a gold record by Cooper on Dinah Shore's talk show in January 1976. Price reprised his role live on stage for Cooper's concert in Lake Tahoe in December 1975 and recorded new dialogue for the emceeing cyclops doctor in Cooper's 1979 Madhouse Rock Tour (filmed and released as "The Strange Case of Alice Cooper").
Having had such a positive experience with Cooper, Price quickly signed on when Michael Jackson asked him to record a rap for his 1982 hit "Thriller." Unfortunately Jackson's label paid Price a paltry fee and contractually blocked him from receiving residuals from the song and music video -- a move which left the actor thoroughly miffed by his second (and more widely known) pop music experience. Check out "Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography" by Victoria Price for more on that little-known story. Adding insult to injury, additional/alternate recordings of Price's "Thriller" rap have surfaced over the years, most notably in Jackson's final film, "This is It." Similarly, there are alternates of his "Black Widow" monologue residing in the vaults which haven't been issued, presumably because WB (unlike Jackson's Epic Records label) would have to fork over residuals to Price's estate.
As for The Nightmare, it is sort of a shame that they didn't get the budget to film a lavish TV special like the ones that Raquel Welch headlined around the same time. If they had, the special could have truly been.... well, special! As it is, The Nightmare is a '70s TV time capsule which is so cheap that the seams show, but everyone gives good performances, some of the stagings are imaginative, the music is great and it's got award-winning editing. And where else are you gonna see Vincent Price on a teeter-totter with Alice Cooper?
