Alice Cooper can probably talk your ear off about monster movie minutiae, and if he can't, he'll cut if off with a hatchet. The man did more for theatricality in rock than anyone since Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The Alice Cooper brand name quickly became synonymous with "shock rock," a mostly-pejorative term that led to a metal subgenre all its own. In the beginning, though, there was "The Ballad of Dwight Fry." Dwight Frye (his last name misspelled by Alice, who was apparently eating a lot of Bic Macs at the time) was a supporting actor during the thirties, Hollywood's go-to fall guy in movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the original Maltese Falcon. His insane eyes and inclination for dying onscreen earned him the nicknames, "The Man With the Thousand-Watt Stare" and "The Man of a Thousand Deaths." He would never be as famous as Karloff or Lugosi, but his performances made him nonetheless iconic. At the very least, his Renfield chuckle inspired a slew of haunted house records. It was only fitting that Alice Cooper tell a story from a Frye character's perspective. The band's first couple of albums hadn't done as well as they'd hoped, and they went into Love It to Death with the intention of solidifying themselves as a different kind of rock band. Producer Bob Ezrin had Alice wear a straitjacket while recording the song, resulting in a genuinely-manic performance.
Check out "The Champ" by my alter ego, Greg Forrest, in Heater #12, at http://fictionmagazines.com.
I used to do a mean Glenn Danzig impression. Now I just hang around and co-host The Workprint podcast at http://southboundcinema.com/.
