Alice Cooper: The Nightmare was a conceptual television special

Television special

A television special is a television program which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Sometimes, however, the term is given to a telecast of a theatrical film, such as The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, which is not part of a regular...

 showcasing the music of the Welcome To My Nightmare

Welcome to My Nightmare

Welcome to My Nightmare is the eighth album by Alice Cooper, released in 1975. This was Alice Cooper's first solo album . The cover artwork was created by Drew Struzan for Pacific Eye & Ear. Rolling Stone would later rank it as one of the "Top 100 Album Covers Of All Time".Welcome to My Nightmare...

album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 by Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...

. It originally broadcast in America on April 25, 1975 on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

.

In the TV special, Alice Cooper stars as "Steven" who is trapped in a nightmare

Nightmare

A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...

 he can't wake up from and tries to escape. Vincent Price

Vincent Price

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...

 also appears throughout the special, starring as the "Spirit of the Nightmare". The special features the Welcome To My Nightmare album in its entirety, with the addition of the song "Ballad of Dwight Frye" from the Alice Cooper album Love It to Death

Love It to Death

Rolling Stones John Mendelsohn found it favorable. He explained that it "represents at least a modest oasis in the desert of dreary blue-jeaned aloofness served up in concert by most American rock-and-rollers." However, referring to "Black Juju" he also stated that "the one bummer on this album is...

.

The video of this special has been discontinued since its original release, and has not yet been issued on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

.

Trivia

• This film won an Emmy in 1976 for Outstanding Achievement in Video Tape Editing for a Special.

• In 1983, this special was released on VHS
  VHS
  The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
  
   and Betamax
  Betamax
  Betamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
  
   Home Video in the US.

• Its Home Video release gained a Grammy Awards nomination for Best Video Album
  Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video
  The Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video is an accolade presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally named the Gramophone Awards, to performers, directors, and producers of quality videos or musical programs...
  
   in 1984 (it lost to Duran Duran
  Duran Duran (1983 video)
  Officially titled simply Duran Duran , this video compilation is sometimes unofficially referred to in print as the Duran Duran video album or Duran Duran: The First 11 Videos...
  
  ).

• When it was originally broadcast on television in 1975, the lyrics to "Only Women Bleed
  Only Women Bleed
  "Only Women Bleed" is a song written by the musicians Alice Cooper and Dick Wagner. It is a ballad about a woman in an abusive marriage.It is one of Cooper's biggest hits, reaching #1 on the Canadian RPM national singles chart and #12 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1975. It is from...
  
  " were slightly changed. A portion of this version is featured on the Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts video, initially released in 1991.

Track listing

1. "Welcome to My Nightmare"
2. "Devil's Food"
3. "Some Folks"
4. "Only Women Bleed"
5. "Cold Ethyl"
6. "The Black Widow"
7. "Years Ago"
8. "Department of Youth"
9. "Years Ago (reprise)"
10. "Steven"
11. "The Awakening"
12. "Ballad of Dwight Frye"
13. "Escape"
14. "The Awakening (reprise)"