Welcome to My Nightmare (film)
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| Welcome to My Nightmare | |
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| Directed by | David Winters |
| Produced by | Robert Ezrin David Winters |
| Written by | Alan Rudolph |
| Release date(s) | 1976 |
| Running time | 84 min. |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Welcome To My Nightmare is a 1976 music concert film of Alice Cooper's show of the same name, directed by David Winters.
In 1975, Alice Cooper released his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, and a huge theatrical stage show was put together to 'tour the album'. Whilst in the past the Alice Cooper stage show was semi-improvisatory, with confrontational elements of violence and satire (see Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper), the new production was purely horror-themed and professionally choreographed and performed to the split second. With the edginess removed (gone were the bloody guillotine, the spit and the skewered baby dolls, although 'Only Women Bleed' presented a drunken, physically abusive side to the character), the Welcome To My Nightmare show was part a carefully-planned move toward a more mainstream-friendly 'Alice'.
Welcome To My Nightmare was a phantasmagorical exposition of music and theatre themed around a nightmare experienced by a young boy named Steven. Costing US$600,000 to produce, the show was a grand visual spectacle with an elaborate stage set, pre-filmed projections, four dancers, and elaborate costumes. Set in a graveyard/bedroom, a well-drilled band ran through the new album and a selection of older hits, whilst Alice encountered giant spiders, dancing skeletons, faceless silver demons and a 9-foot 'cyclops'.
Concert footage was taken from a series of London shows during September, 1975, but the film was a box office failure in its original 1976 release. However, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Phantom of the Paradise and others, Welcome to My Nightmare found a low-volume but dependable audience on the midnight movie circuit. The film is out of sequence with the live show, and the final Department Of Youth segment has some post-production inserts.
The film was first issued as a videocassette in 1981 with numerous reissues since, and a DVD version was released in 2002.
Before "Some Folks", a short medley was performed as the dancers danced in their skeleton costumes. The medley consisted of "Halo of Flies" (from Cooper's Killer album), "The Black Widow", and "Didn't We Meet" (which would be released on Cooper's next album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell).
Track Listing:
- Opening credits - The Awakening
- Welcome To My Nightmare
- Years Ago
- No More Mr. Nice Guy
- Years Ago (reprise)
- Billion Dollar Babies
- Years Ago (reprise)
- I'm Eighteen
- Some Folks
- Cold Ethyl
- Only Women Bleed
- Devil's Food
- The Black Widow
- Steven
- Welcome To My Nightmare (reprise)
- Escape
- School's Out
- Department Of Youth
- End credits - Only Women Bleed (alternate version)
