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Occasional Movie Star

His real name is Vincent Damon Furnier. He is the son of a preacher-man. His daddy is his biggest fan. His first rock group was called The Earwigs, his second The Spiders. His third, so legend has it, was inspired by a spirit calling through a Ouija board. It was called, and he personally remains, Alice Cooper.

More than two decades of mock-constrictor, and lashings of gore, Alice — and in conversation one does call him Alice — is still going strong. Like Wayne and Garth in Wayne's World, all one can do is prostrate oneself before such an enduring showbiz wonder and declare, "We are not worthy."

Alice, an exceedingly genial and slick interviewee, recalls his priceless scene in the aforementioned comedy.

"When you go backstage at any rock concert, people expect to see people hanging from chandeliers with champagne bottles and naked girls running around," he chuckles. "So Wayne and Garth spend all this time getting backstage passes for the ultimate party in the world, and here are these guys with hair down their backs and covered in tattoos — and they're totally intellectual and very calm : 'Isn't Milwaukee the Iroquois worked for "this good land?" ' It was such a funny juxtaposition. Dana Carvey and Michael Myers were standing right across from me, and you just look at those guys and start laughing. So the hard part for me was looking between them."

And now, Alice is back. In a tiny but jewel-like cameo, he appears in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare ("Freddy Dies In 3D Freddy Vision," promises the video blurb of this sixth and "last" installment of the series spawned by A Nightmare On Elm Street). He plays the guy who made Freddy what he is today - Mr. Krueger Sr.

"We've got to find somebody to play his dad who's worse than Freddy. Let's call Alice. Ha, ha ha," breezes the wizened 44-year-old rocker. "I love these movies because they're comedies. They're really not scary at all. If you see a shock, it lasts one second visually and then you laugh. When I was a kid I used to love all the old RKO movies — Dracula, Frankenstein. It used to be clear-cut that the monster was the bad guy. But in these new movies they've totally turned it around. You'll notice that the kids who get killed are always kids that you hated in high school — the snobby cheerleader who wouldn't give you the time of day, the jock who was better than you at ever sport, walking around like he owned the place. You can't wait till Freddy gets his hands on these guys. Being killed by Freddy is like being hit in the face by a pie from The Three Stooges — it would be a privilege."

Alice Cooper made his movie debut playing himself in 1970's Diary Of A Mad Housewife, and has gone on to cameo in the disastrous celluloid attempt at Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Meatloaf/Debbie Harry picture Roadie, and John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness.

"It's fun to do bit parts," declares this occasional thesp and - yes indeed - keen golfer. "In '76 I did a movie, Sextette (Variety: "A cruel, unnecessary and mostly unfunny musical comedy"), and it was totally opposite to what I like to play. They said, 'Why don't you play this singing waiter - with Mae West? Whaaaat? That was a stretch of the imagination. Mae was great, about 86 years old and she couldn't hear a thing. They had a little transistor in her ear telling her the lines. She was pretty senile at the time. But it was fun 'cause Keith Moon and Ringo was in it."

There is no stopping Alice Cooper as he recalled the "high"lights of his movie career.

"Then I did a film called Monster Dog," he enthuses. "I was the romantic lead, the horror lead, everything. It was right after my bout with alcoholism and I'd just come out of hospital and wanted to know if I'd be able to work again without alcohol. They called me up and said they wanted me to go to Spain, and promised me that this movie would never be released except maybe in the Philippines. But it's in every video store and it's the worst. There was so much blood in that movie that the camera crew and to wear raincoats."

Perhaps Alice's lasting contribution to the movies is the fact that he literally owns a little bit of the Hollywood - the second "O" of the famous sign the beams down from the hills (Empire, September 1992). It was in the 1977, and Hollywood was celebrating its 75th anniversary, yet the sign was visibly collapsing. Alice was so outraged he rang the Chamber of Commerce who told him that each letter would cost $30,000 to restore while they had a total fund of only $3,000.

"So I said, 'Tell you what — I'm gonna buy one letter, the second 'O', I'm going to dedicate it to Groucho, who'd just died, and, if nothing else, that 'O' is going to be fixed. I said 'I'm dropping an 'O' out of my name till the sign gets done.' That embarrassed a lot of people. Gene Autry brought a letter and Hugh Hefner and Warner Brothers, until all the letters were bought."

Alice is anticipating with bemusement the November Presidential Election, because, running for Vice President on the Democratic ticket, is Senator Al Gore, husband of the notorious Tipper Gore who, in the mid-80's, campaigned for censorship of pop music — especially pop music by the likes of Mr. Cooper - on the grounds that it promoted everything from staying out late to devil-worship.

"Now you're talking horror," he chuckles. "She was on a with-hunt : everybody was a devil-worshipper — and it turns out nobody was. The absolute worst insult it to call me a Satan-worshipper ; I'm just the opposite. I still think The Exorcist is one of the scariest horror films, because it deals with something that is real. If you believe in God you have to believe in Satan, and that it is possible to be possessed. That's the most frightening thing in the world — I'm a Christian. And that movie really didn't have a sense of humour. But I think the Freddy movies are not harmful. Most of the kids watching those movies are laughing their heads off..."