Cheap Video Reviews: The Doors: The Soft Parade, A Retrospective

Doors: The Soft Parade.

Boz sent me this VHS tape. It consists of live performance footage shot for PBS, interspersed with archival footage of the band hanging around backstage and some other miscellaneous live performance footage. It is perhaps better appreciated by die-hard Doors fans. It contained nothing substantial or very interesting. The film makers were likely just making a buck off of some footage they had.

Door with groupie.

The film kicks off with footage of the band sitting around backstage with groupies, then quickly goes downhill from there.

There's some performance footage from a PBS special, which is ok, but nothing special. Jim Morrison is wearing a thick beard and the spaced out organ player is smoking his cigarette down well past the filter.

After the concert, we're treated to an interview with the band in which they ramble all over the place, speaking just above a whisper to the Village Voice interviewer, who is apparently some kind of greasy hippie himself.

The Doors being interviewed by a greasy hippy.

In the interview, the band is taking themselves way too seriously which I expected; but what surprises me is how seriously the interviewer and everybody else seem to be taking them as well.

The interview discusses the Doors' live concerts as a "religious experience". They're seriously talking about a "communion" that occurs and how great it would be if that communion occurred in the larger outside society as well. WTF.

Jim Morrison talks about himself as a "rock shaman" and you can almost see that he even annoys his band mates when he starts in with that nonsense. The interviewer is eating it up though.

Then there is more footage of girls flirting with Jim Morrison followed by a backstage improvised composition, Ode to Friedrich Nietzsche, which Morrison composes spontaneously on a piano and he's almost manic. It's funny to see Jim Morrison bobbing around all giddy for a change.

Next, there's a long performance of The Unknown Soldier which is interspersed with real war photos as well as footage of the doors walking around on a beach. Just to be as pretentious as possible, Jim Morrison is hanging on a cross in this footage. This footage goes on for what seems like an hour or two.

Some of the best footage was shot in the recording studio. The organ player's head hovers just an inch or two above the organ keys.

Closing credits.

Then there is an older intellectual gentleman who is talking about religion with Jim Morrison. The gentleman is almost giddy when the singer tells him he will give him his address for future correspondence.

The video ends with the Doors performing "Hello, I Love You" while a lady dances and the credits roll.

I greatly prefer Doors songs to NKOTB songs, but I greatly prefer the NKOTB video to the Doors video. For that matter, I prefer almost all the videos I've reviewed to the Doors video (except for Samurai: Reincarnation. I prefer the Doors to that because, at least the Doors video takes up less than an hour of time to view).

[ Reviewed late 2006. ]