Alice Cooper’s Trojan Jack Ass

GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, ALICE Directed by Joe Gannon (Penthouse)

Alice Cooper, the wet nurse of glitter rock, has made a movie. The extraordinary Mr. Cooper has hinted that he’ll make one more run around the rock circuit, then it’s exit stage left for the silver screen forever. His first endeavor is Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper, but would be more aptly titled: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Alice Cooper But Were In Tier A And Couldn't See. The magic of movieland takes you front stage at an Alice Cooper concert, and you too, witness all the particulars of the playful and the comically obscene skits that are such an important companion to the song.

Alice knows how to work an audigence, and what he does is present a repertoire of the Many Faces of Alice: one moment he’s coyly teasing and baiting his audience as he coquettishly confesses “I don’t like boys, faggots are all the same,” the next, the kitten has a whip, and Alice fondles the thigh of a mannequin, only to shove it aside, and strut off stage. In his act, Alice actively carries out fantasy. In his movie, he creates the fantasy: a little song, a little dance, Alice dons a greyhaired wig, ala Ceasar Romero, as do the others in the band, only to rip off their hairpieces at the end of the number and begin demolishing a Busby Berkeleyesque set, with Amazing Randy helming a bulldozer. Another sequence reveals Alice standing horrified in front of a gravestone bearing ALICE COOPER RIP 1948in neon letters.

“An idiot could see what a good actor Alice is,” states director, Joe Gannon, and you’re inclined to believe that if Alice isn’t already Mr. Showbiz, he’s in the right training camp — gab sessions at Groucho’s, luscious lunches with Liza, hobnobbing with Helen Hayes (“Hey, me and Helen.. .we’re like that.”), and weathering a snub from Peter Falk when they co-guest-starred on Hollywood Squares. It’s the next best thing to being there.

Alice told CREEM the he believes rock and roll is basically entertainment and should contain a little bit of Holly-, wood. Hence all the old film footage. These are the visual confessions of a true TV addict. Alice has transcended his second hand rendezvous with Hollywood via the B movies on late night TV, for the real thing, He’d rather do it himself. For years, the only thing for a band to do after their concert was to glue themselves to the tube. The fine wine, women and songs were exhausted hours before in the backstage dressing rooms. At 3:00 AM; there’s not much left but the TV-Eye, so you can see what an integral part Channel 5 has played in Alice’s life. You might even go so far as to say that It’s Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper is the byproduct of a six year immersion in television viewing. And now, you too, fair fan, can view life through the same TV tube as Alice did. Share in the antics of Shirley Temple, Betty Boop, Bob Hope, Bing, and all the Cooper favorites.

Someone in Cooper’s entourage informed us that Good To See You. .. supposedly revolves around a mock trial where Alice is accused of being a rock and roller of the highest order. As for the verdict, I’m sure Alice’s plea would be “not guilty, anymore.” Unfortunately the rest of. the band hasn’t enough talent to enter the same plea. Our guy has been bitten by the lights, camera, and action of the center stage, and if he intends to play out his celluloid fantasy (He’s to star in a Denny Mann production this month about a paranoid schizophrenic who kills at night and feasts on his victims during the day), he’ll have to relinquish all rights as a rock and roller, since he cah’t replay A Hard Day’s Night with the rest of the band indefinitely. The remains of the Cooper band will have to fend for themselves because this act is a solo.

JUGGERNAUT Directed By Richard Lester (United Artists)

Another world where men make all the decisions and are asked to deal with all the hysterical questions, and where the one woman (Shirley Knight) is a bitchy, resigned, pretty lady whose sole admirer is a fat man who didn’t ask to be recognized.

But a very enjoyable suspense-action thriller, a saleable vehicle for Richard Lester’s short scene economy, and definitely not A Hard Day’s Night which Juggernaut’s audience ignored because it was too noisy.

Juggernaut is an electronics wizard who’s built seven bombs into the ship Britannic, and Richard Harris is the hero elected to disarm them. If we reject the casting at first (I wanted David Hemmings to be the hero, but he was only the sacrifice), the powers that be convince us before time’s up. First of all, repetition. Because there are seven bombs, Harris toys with the first and each step he takes is copied by his assistants. Then there’s amplification. Back at the office, over loudspeakers, his crumb by crumb description of the bomb is reproduced with a blackboard diagram for a crowd of Scotland Yarders and us, who don’t even know what a detonator is. Manipulations of the filmmaket.

Disassembling a bomb is painstakingly fragile and time-consuming work. It’ll make you squirm. But if you lean too far over the edge of your seat, watch it — cause you’ll fall into the North Atlantic ocean and upon one of the trickiest scares in the movie. And if you fell in, would you be able to climb up a rope ladder at least 75 feet long in freezing gale force winds?

Such impossibilities do good suspense movies make. More powers that be: two minutes with the camera at sea level and you’re ready to quit swimming too; a ship rocking from winds the entire two hours rivals the dizziness accomplished by walking through Davey Jones’ Locker at Coney Island at age L3; and a close-up, endlessly, of The Bomb, whose contact points and light-sensitive meters eventually become as mysterious as a traffic jam.

When the bitchy lady relaxes a little, she says something nice to the fat man without acting like she is doing him a favor. She wanted the captain’s attention, this guy’s only the social chairman, and the movie’s at an end. It’s hard to decide if she was more unlikeable than she was expendable. Oh well, maybe it was just her nerves. Or mine.

Georgia Christgau