A weirdly gripping documentary about the Doors, composed entirely of archival footage of the band in the studio, on stage, and most rivetingly of all backstage, overlaid with a narrative voiceover by Johnny Depp.
Director Tom DiCillo is relatively incurious about the bands' mundane professional and romantic lives, perhaps for fear of importing an injurious Spinal Tap irony. But his film material of Jim Morrison is sensational – particularly a quite extraordinary sequence in which Morrison is mingling with fans out front, at an open-air concert in which the Doors are opening for the Who.
Deadpan, Morrison coolly flicks through a souvenir programme packed with photos of those less pulchritudinous rock gods Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, repeatedly asking its awestruck salesperson how much the programme costs – all the while an infatuated admirer paws at his hair.
It is gobsmacking to watch Morrison on stage, surrounded by redneck cops, there theoretically to keep order, but openly hostile to this beautiful freak.
