Not the Greatest Program But I've Seen Worse

The 1975 television special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare stars Alice Cooper as Steven, a young boy trapped in a nightmare. Vincent Price also stars as the “Spirit of the Nightmare.” Early on he threatens all sorts of scares for Steven, assuring him he is at the nightmare’s mercy and there is no escape.

So, I sat through the whole thing. Every song is sung by Alice Cooper, sometimes with some backup vocals. His voice is not brilliant, but not really bad, I would say adequate. I found the music uninspiring, but having survived the ‘70s can attest to having heard much, much worse. My main objections to bad ‘70s songs was they seemed to consist of loud instrumentals and screeching vocals promoting loose morals with repetitive choruses. That is not the case here. The music wasn’t particularly obnoxious and the lyrics were not especially offensive. The words were mostly intelligible and consisted of responses to various fears.

Vincent Price here is in his best host persona, with his jovial menacing manner and convivial sinister laugh which he uses often. He seems to really be enjoying himself here and is by far the best part of the special. The program included a lot of dancing which was pretty good and I especially liked the dancing skeletons. A creepy carnival segment was also appealing.

As for objectionable content, some scenes may upset younger viewers, such as young Steven being boiled in a cauldron by witches and threatened by giant poisonous spiders. The Spirit of the Nightmare also talks about the black widow devouring her mate. The whole program is nightmarish and may induce bad dreams in certain people. Otherwise there is nothing particularly objectionable about it.

It seemed a longish ordeal to me. Once Steven woke up, and I got all hopeful that it was over, but he lapsed back into sleep. When it passed an hour I underwent a slight panic, fearing it would be two hours long, but it seems the length is 66 minutes, an odd length for a TV special. Perhaps a lot of ads padded it out to an hour and a half when it ran on ABC in 1975. Overall I wouldn’t rate it highly or watch it again, but Vincent Price was good and I’ve seen much worse things. The plot made more sense even than a couple of Vincent Price films I’ve seen.