Welcome to My Nightmare (film)
| Welcome to My Nightmare | |
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| Directed by | David Winters |
| Produced by |
Bob Ezrin David Winters |
| Written by | Alan Rudolph |
| Starring | Alice Cooper |
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Release date
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Running time
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84 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $600,000 |
Welcome to My Nightmare is a 1976 music concert film of Alice Cooper's show of the same name. It was produced, directed and choreographed by David Winters. The film accompanied the album, the stage show (also produced, directed and choreographed by Winters) by the same name and the TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, the first ever rock music video album, starring Cooper and Vincent Price in person. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic.
In 1975, Alice Cooper released his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, and a huge theatrical stage show was created and put together by Winters 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 (Winters had a long history of choreographing and directing big celebrity films, stage and TV shows starring in the cast of West Side Story and choreographing 4 films with Elvis Presley and 5 films with Ann-Margret). 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'.
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