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Alice Cooper's Nightmare Revisited

So sang the ghoulish, ever so outrageous Alice Cooper Thursday night before about 5,000 fans at the Salt Palace. The 39-year-old singer/entertainer, backed by a powerhouse band and surrounded by a melange of ghastly props, thrilled, chilled, and at times spilled blood on an audience rapt with attention.

It was at once astounding and highly entertaining.

Talk about creepy. This Cooper character, dressed in black leather pants, vest and athletic supporter complete with a red cup, mesmerized the crowd with a bag full of bizarre theatrics shocking enough to offend Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman.

Cooper's 90-minute show contained magic, theater, music and gore galore. At times his stunts were downright tasteless. But they were so well conceived that you couldn't help but applaud his ingenuity while at the same time shaking your head in disbelief.

Alice's stage show, aptly titled "The Nightmare Returns," was Grand Guignol for the 1980s. The dramatic production did indeed horrify with its macabre content.

Amidst a stage full of skulls, limbs, smoke and creepy, crawly monsters, Cooper [a.k.a. Vincent Damon Furnier] went about acting out some of the strangest fantasies this side of Nightmare Theater.

If he wasn't brandishing a sword and cutting off a doll's head, Alice was whipping up on a leather-clad dominatrix or taking out his frustrations on a female dummy that managed to come alive.

In one odd scene, Alice, harnessed in a straight jacket, is given a shot from a rather large hypodermic syringe by an Amazon-like nurse. Just when he is about to die, he escapes the jacket, turns the tables and strangles the startled nurse. The crowd cheered loudly.

In another scene Alice is taken to the guillotine for a dreaded beheading. When the sharp blade drops, Alice's head is lopped off and then paraded around the stage by the ecstatic executioner.

Oh yes, Alice brought his pet boa to town and proceeded to dance about with the slimy creature, letting it slither and coil itself to and fro. At one point he put the snake in his mouth and later even touched tongues with the scaly reptile.

Alice's most shocking act however, occurred early in the performance. Masquerading as a blood-thirsty pirate, Alice was singing away when a female photographer approached him from the side of the stage. She kept getting closer and closer to Cooper, snapping shot after shot of the apparently oblivious entertainer.

Then surprise! Alice turned on the photographer and impaled her with his microphone stand. A pair of hideous creatures dragged the victim away as a triumphant Alice waved his bloody weapon.

The best illusion of the night, without a doubt, was "Teenage Frankenstein." He began building a huge monster to the words, "I'm a Teenage Frankenstein, The local freak with the twisted mind, I'm a Teenage Frankenstein, These ain't my hands, And these ain't my legs." After shaping the behemoth, it rose to life, chasing Alice and thrashing him to the ground.

Suddenly Cooper leapt to his feet and chopped off the monster's head, body and legs. Presto! there was a soul inside.

The music, though an integral part of the concert, played second banana to the theatrics. The sound was muddled at times, but it was not overly loud. Cooper's voice was in find fiddle as he worked his way through such favorites as "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "Only Women Bleed" and "Elected."

It was tough to tell how good Kane Roberts, the muscled, rather imposing lead guitarist, really was. His biceps were so massive that you found yourself watching rather than listening to his work. The Rambo-like musician brought the house down when he turned his instrument into a fire-spitting machine gun.

The Alice Cooper show was theater of the absurd at its most entertaining. The nightmare has returned.