“Unleashed Spirits: The Rise Of The Hollywood Vampires” opens the 42nd Boston Film Festival next month.
“Unleashed Spirits: The Rise Of The Hollywood Vampires” gets its world premiere as the opening-night film of the 42nd Boston Film Festival, screening at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. The festival runs from 17 to 21 September.
Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen are due to attend along with director Daniel E. Catullo III, with a red carpet before the screening, a question-and-answer session afterwards and a party to follow. Johnny Depp, the band’s fourth member, is not among the names announced for the panel.
Catullo, an Emmy winner, traces Hollywood Vampires from the 1970s drinking club that gave them their name, a circle around Cooper that took in John Lennon and Keith Moon, through to the group that formed four decades later.
The film’s stated subject is friendship between people who arrived from different corners of the industry. Onstage the four are not a shock rock pioneer, a film star, an Aerosmith guitarist and a producer, but simply a band.
Paul Geary, the Medford-born former Extreme drummer who now works as an artist manager, is an executive producer, as is Ernie Boch Jr., the Massachusetts car dealer, philanthropist and musician who knows the band.
“This film documents a group of artists who are deep rooted in film and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a peek behind a curtain that has never been opened,” Boch said. “The audience will feel like they’re sitting in their living room with Alice, Johnny, Joe, and Tommy.”
Robin Dawson, the festival’s executive director, said she knew after the first phone call with the team that it was the right film for the opening slot.
The festival also carries the world premieres of the features “Bolio” and “A Minor Time“, and the documentaries “Papertown“, “My Father, Dick Allen“, “4000 Days“, “Come What May” and “Tony Foster: Life On The Edge“. Michael Mailer‘s “Little Audrey” closes proceedings on 21 September.
The premiere lands during the band’s first tour in more than three years. Hollywood Vampires opened the run at London’s O2 Arena on 12 August, where Ronnie Wood joined them onstage. The set took in Cooper‘s “School’s Out” and Aerosmith‘s “Livin’ On The Edge” alongside songs by The Who, AC/DC and The Velvet Underground.
Cooper, Depp and Perry first recorded together in 2015, built around a shared interest in playing songs by musicians who died young, what they described as celebrating their dead, drunk friends. The self-titled debut followed that year.
Rise, produced by Henriksen with the band, arrived in 2019 and was mostly original material, with three covers included in keeping with the original idea. In 2019 the group completed a seven-city North American run including a sold-out night at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, having been voted best performance of 2018 at London’s Wembley Arena.
Onstage the four are joined by Cooper‘s drummer Glen Sobel, bassist Chris Wyse and keyboardist Buck Johnson.
