Customer Reviews

Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The VHS of Prime Cuts was frustrating to watch.

I realized that the VHS edition had limitations as far as length of clips, but it was still hard to see just a minute of "Black Ju Ju" and "Dwight Fry" live with the original band.

Longtime fans like myself want as much of the original band as possible in these compilations.

Problem solved with the re-done DVD version, right?

NO! These are still just clips, NOT THE FULL-LENGTH versions! Geez....who put this thing together anyway?

The "Alice Cooper Virtual Jukebox" feature will have the full-length versions, right?

No, this is just an direct access to the clips in Prime Cuts via a page designed like an old jukebox.Whoopee...

Wait! Disc 2 has "Over 80 minutes of comprehensive supplemental material assembled specially for this DVD", that will have the full-length clips of the original band, right?

No, it is an annoying, little game you play where you roll the dice on the screen to access different clips.

If you land on square 100, you can watch the entire feature all at once.

There has to be an easter egg for this but I haven't found it yet.It would be just like this stupid DVD not to have one.

The feature is different interview clips of Alice, Mike Bruce, Neil Smith, Dennis Dunaway and Dick Wagner from the Behind the Music show on VH-1, I think. It's pretty good because it's ALWAYS good to see the original lineup, ya see.

The incredibly stupid thing about it is that each clip leads into a FULL-LENGTH live song clip from the Brutal Live concert vid or The Nightmare Returns vid.

They interview the original band ONLY (plus Wagner) and then feature the 1986 and 2000 lineups ONLY via the clips! Huh?

These were fine shows (especially the Brutal vid), but why do they keep the material most wanted by the fans in the vault?

Anyone that would buy this DVD already has Brutally Live and The Nightmare Returns anyway.

Alice Cooper finally let some live material with the original band go on the Billion Dollar Babies 2CD reissue early in 2001.

I sure hope he has plans to make more of the original band's live material available via CD or DVD.

The Prime Cuts (Limited Edition 2-Disc Set) DVD release here is a big disappointment.

Prime Cuts is a pretty good DVD if you want to find out about Alice Cooper as in interviews.....but apart from that it is very disappointing as you get hardly any song footage, as for the Jukebox its a waste of time as you start getting into the song and then it cuts off as you only get a taste of the song, which is very frustrating! I was pissed off.
The Coopergame is annoying and the songs you actually get to see in whole form are still made around interviews and the song footage is poor quality.
If you want to see Alice cooper in action do not buy this DVD buy Brutally Live.
I paid $60 Australian Dollars for this DVD as i expected to see all the songs featured as whole songs not clips! I feel ripped off!

If you need proof to give your friends that Alice Cooper was among the best bands in the world, this is it. The majority of this VH-1 style documentary is pre-1975 footage of the original band hammering out the classics live in a way that Alice has never really duplicated since. Todays Alice and the Alice Cooper band are different animals, and if you weren't there the first time around, you'll wish you were after watching this. Alice's interview segments are very funny and insightful, but my only problem was there was no interviews with the original band members. They are spoken of as if they're all dead! A small complaint, when pretty much all the classic tunes are represented in their original live forms. After watching this you'll never look at Marilyn Manson the same way again.

There's a reason it's called "Prime Cuts". The DVD focuses on Alice's best work - his early years. It gives an overview of Alice's career up "Trash." "The Last Temptation" is briefly discussed on the second DVD.

While the song footage may be brief, this 2 DVD set is worth purchasing just for the complete videos of "Elected", "Department of Youth", "Poison", and "Lost In America".

The last Alice Cooper album I purchased was "From the Inside". However, the video of "Lost in America" (found on the Cooper game) convinced me to give "The Last Temptation" a try.

There's some good interviews and concert footage on the second DVD which is the Cooper game. However, the design of the Cooper game makes it difficult to watch because you have to play the game - you can't just choose "Play All."

If you're looking for a concert video, don't buy this DVD. If you're looking for a documentary focusing on Alice's early years, this DVD is worth the purchase price.

When I first found out about this release,I thought it was to good to be true.A total of 23 snippets and complete songs from Alice Cooper's pre-platinum days to the early '90's.Starts out with a couple of snippets that should've been a tad longer,like some extremely rarely(if ever)seen before scenes from "I'm Eighteen","Black Juju" and "Levity Ball".Would sure like to have a copy of these tunes in their entirety.Remember the 1974 cult movie 'Good To See You Again,Alice Cooper' they used to show in drive-ins?There are four(4)songs from that unreleased film here,"Hello Hooray","Billion Dollar Babies","Sick Things"(with snake) and "Dead Babies".I also recall the "Elected" promo clip here on various late night television shows.A couple of his mellow ballads are included as well,"Only Women Bleed" and "How You Gonna See Me Now?"(from the 'From The Inside' comeback lp).Some clips I haven't seen in YEARS are "Cold Ethyl","Under My Wheels","Department Of Youth" and "School's Out".You get the idea.I would assume that some of these clips might have come from Alice's own private stash of maybe 8mm or 35mm film.The quality is good.Recommended for any and all Cooper fans.

I finally recieved my copy of this today. First, the price from Amazon was right. I got my copy for $18(no pun intended) and yes, it is worth it. Most record stores will charge upward of $25.00 for this. The first disc is pretty much the same as the VHS version except with better picture quality and camera angles. There is a cool story about Bruce Springsteen and Alice drinking together, not on the VHS version.
The second disc is lot more in depth than the VHS, featuring interviews with Dennis Dunaway, Mike Bruce, Neal Smith and Dick Wagner.
The comments made by other reviewers about the game are true but if you just keep rolling those dice you eventually get to see the whole thing. The second disc also does feature full-length performances of many Alice Classics most performed with Kane Roberts on guitar. Kane plays the Alice tunes with lots of Steve Vai/Joe Satriani style embellishments. Lots of tapping and dive bombs and even ocasional nods to Yngwie. It took a second to get used to but actually is pretty cool.
The best parts have to be Dennis, Mike and Neal talking about the early days. This is truly a must-have for anyone who has been along time devoted fan. The casual fan may be bored with it as most of the interviews are assuming you already know certain things about the band which the casual fan probably doesn't.
I was definitely pleased with this and pleasantly surprised at how good it is.

"Alice Cooper - Prime Cuts" is a terrific documentary tracing the Coop's career from his earliest days to the early 90s. It has been available on DVD for some time. It is very good with some rare and wild footage and is nicely reviewed in a number of places. This DVD presents the documentary in anamorphic wide screen with 5.1 sound. It looks and sounds great.

The question here is the 80+ minutes of new material available on a second disc in this limited edition release. And the answer is that despite a noble effort, in the end, this new material fails to deliver.

Starting with the noble effort, the additional material consists of interviews and performances - natch. But they actually went to the trouble of interviewing the guys from the original Alice Cooper Group. Their comments are intercut with comments from Alice leading up to a performance of a song. Here's where the disappointment begins.

These musical performances are fairly recent. They are shot in such a way as to only reveal Alice - you can't see which band is doing the playing. And it appears they were shot without an audience creating a deadness, a flatness, no reaction or energy for Cooper to bounce off of. Indeed, stack these performances against the same songs captured on the "Brutally Live" DVD and they pale considerably.

It was great that they filmed the original guys for the interviews. But what this release called for was the unearthing of more rare videos, film, and concert performances from the old days.

The final disappointment comes with the second disc itself. The material on the second disc is accessible through this rather frustrating "board game" interface. Every time you choose "Play" on the menu, it just replays the menu. You must choose "Coopergame." This brings up a playing board reminiscent of the old "Chutes and Ladders" game but showing chains and snakes. By pressing the "Enter" key on your remote, a purple dice rolls across the screen - its final number causing an indictor to move along the board. Everytime you hit the top of a chain, you get to see a videoclip from the disc.

Now this would have been okay - fun even - if it gave you access to some hidden material. But as the only way into the main items, it's just a nuisance.

While I have no regret that I bought this new 2-disc DVD version and rather happy with new 5.1 audio and extras in disc 2, I have several complaints.

First, why this is widescreen? Most materials come from '70s-80s TV, so it's safe to assume 4:3 is their original AR. I compared several scenes with the old LD and found top and bottom are cut in this widescreen version.
More importantly, a few minutes between "Department of Youth" and "Trash" are cut, where Alice talks about Kane Roberts and Kip Winger, along with the brief footage of "Freedom".
(One more minor difference I noticed is the images used as the back of the opening title. But I believe no one cares.)

Although the luck of simple chapter selection is already noted by other reviewers, I want to add a few words about it. "Jukebox" doesn't allow to go back and forth outside the chosen track, so it doesn't work as the chapter selection. In "Coopergame" you can't even see which column leads to where. It's forgivable only because "Play all" is provided at least. But it should be the first selection, not the last one you have to "throw dice" so many times to reach.

Lastly, one reviewer below criticizes the performance in disc 2 as "it appears they were shot without an audience creating a deadness, a flatness, no reaction or energy for Cooper to bounce off of." It may be true, but on the package it is noted these are "dress-rehearsals footage from the 1987 Raise Your Fist and Yell tour" so it's expected in the first place.

PROS:

- Early and Rare Footage of the Alice Cooper band.

- Clips from mostly all of Alice's shows.

- Interveiws with the old members of the original band.

- Finaly one that tells the truth about why the band split up

- 5.1 sound (sometimes)

- plenty of interviews and storys to listen to

CONS:

- Disc 1 shows the option to choose the AC Game and Photos, but it restarts the menu, and the same thing happens on disc two for all but the game and the photos.

- The game is annoying (I used my chapter selecter and went to each chapter istead of wasting time with the game)

- Pretty much all of the clips are not in there entirity. Some cut out too soon, some start in the middle, some are just snippets, some have talking over them.

- dont be fooled by the name JUKEBOX, it's only the CHAPTER SELECTION.

- Most of the full songs on the bonus disc are very stale and bad versions of the old classics performed supposedly live, but without an audience it has a very un natural sound about it and tho they did a great job with there own albums "Constrictor" and "Raise Your Fist" the msucley lead guitarist f****d up most of the songs.

- All albums between Flush The Fashion and Trash have no mention. (tho the clips of the old songs are from the constrictor band)

- No mention of Feed My Frankinstien or any of the guest artists on the Trash and HS albums.

This may not be the best dvd package put together about Alice Cooper, but it is worth your time if you're a hardcore fan. The whole documentary is from the Hey Stoopid era(91) so you won't see any commentary on Last Temptation or Brutal Planet. It is pretty informative about Alice's early years, but it suffers from what so many of these documentaries suffer from-you don't see the videos in their entirety. A few of them, yes, like Elected, I'm 18 and Poison, but I would have liked to see all of Black Juju, Clones, Hey Stoopid and Levity Ball. Plus, Alice just totally skips over his Special Forces/Zipper Catches Skin/Dada/Constrictor/Raise Your Fist and Yell days. These albums may not be favorites amongst fans, but I would have really liked to hear what Alice had to say about them(I've always wondered what he thought of those albums, don't you?). Yes, the second dvd's game is quite annoying-I'm not sure why it's even on the disc. You can access the entire documentary without having to play Chutes and Ladders. Just go to Alice's website to find out, I can't remember offhand. The documentary on the second disc is quite interesting, it's more recent. Despite it's shortcomings, I do enjoy watching this from time to time, and it is an essential piece to the hardcore fans' collection