Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – UFO
Written by Johnny H
Sunday, 24 August 2014 04:00
UFO – ‘The Story Of UFO: Too Hot To Handle’ (Wienerworld)
Through the years as an avid collector of all things UFO, I have managed to not only pick up a VHS original Castle Hendring copy of this 1993 released documentary about the greatest UK hard rock band never to make it big, but also a 2 VCD (remember that format?) on Castle/Panorama, before finally getting a DVD transfer from Cherry Red/MVD, making me feel rather smugly like my collection was suitably complete. However sometime after all of this multi format meltdown there was another reissue of ‘The Story Of UFO: Too Hot To Handle’ which boasted a different cut to the original documentary, released via Snapper/Razor Records, it is this version of the film that Wienerworld will be rereleasing on 29th of September 2014.
For those of you who have never seem the original 90 minute documentary from 1993, it was basically released as a follow up to the band’s then new(ish) album ‘High Stakes & Dangerous Men’, and as such featured a still trying to get sober (weren’t they always?) Phil Mogg and Pete Way along with a very clean and sober looking Michael Schenker and mega fans Joe Elliott, Rick Savage and Steve Harris as talking heads retelling the basic outline of the band’s turbulent story to the accompaniment of some pretty damn essential live footage culled from throughout the band’s career.
Shortcomings? Well apart from the fact that the Cherry Red/MVD DVD was seemingly just a direct lift from the original VHS, albeit now coming with a title screen and pick a song direct link set up, the rest of the 90 minutes of viewing was full of classics like ‘This Kids’, ‘Out In The Street’, ‘Shoot Shoot’ and ‘Come On Everybody’ recorded back in 1976, and ‘Lights Out’, ‘Too Hot To Handle’ (which you can see below) and ‘Let It Roll’ from 1977, which at the time of its original VHS release was probably the nearest I would have ever come to seeing the band with the Blonde Bomber (as Mogg affectionately refers to Schenker) on guitar.
Plus for those of us who were too young to see what many regarded as being the classic UFO line up first time around there was also the inclusion of some fine Tonka Chapman/Neil Carter era live footage, and to end the original film four tracks from the then current line up of the band that featured Laurence Archer on guitar and Clive Edwards on drums alongside the stalwarts of Mogg and Way.
So what about the version we have here, the Razor Records cut of the film?
Well the press release makes a specific point of mentioning the Archer/Edwards line up as some kind of magical catalyst for the reinvention of the band but here their 4 song contribution that ended the original film is cut without any explanation whatsoever, also cut is the Paul Chapman live era material making me thing that either, a) whoever recut this didn’t have permission to use that footage, or 6) they had a bit of a thing for Michael Schenker going on. That’s because in its place we now have 30 minutes of footage from 2001’s Legends Of Rock show at Castle Donington, which wasn’t even a proper UFO show but instead a Pete Way/Phil Mogg/Michael Schenker jam with Uli Jon Roth. This footage, it has to be said, whilst visually well captured is actually very painful to watch largely because at the time, following the release of the ‘Covenant’ record, Schenker was obviously suffering health wise. So instead of the fantastic Chapman/Raymond era Old Grey Whistle Test version of ‘Doctor Doctor’ that graced the original cut of ‘The Story of UFO: Too Hot To Handle’ what we get here is a version of the song that has me screaming at the TV “Doctor Doctor please go and help Michael Schenker”. Thankfully he is now in a much better place as a person/musician, as are his cohorts Mogg and Way, the latter having only recently been given the all clear after a prostate cancer scare.
The question I ultimately need to answer though is “would I go out and buy this to add a fourth version of ‘The Story Of UFO: Too Hot To Handle’ to my collection?” Well, the simple answer to that one is an emphatic “NO!”, instead I’d go get a copy of the original VHS/VCD/DVD out of the racks and watch that instead. That’s because this “razored” version of what was an otherwise very fine documentary about a band I love dearly, is what I would call a real video nasty.
To pick up your copy of ‘The Story of UFO – Too Hot to Handle’ on DVD – CLICK HERE
