Music Video of the Day: Feed My Frankenstein by Alice Cooper (1992, dir. Penelope Spheeris)


I thought this would be simple. It’s October, so of course Feed My Frankenstein by Alice Cooper would fit. Also, I find that I get more hits on artists and songs that people know. It was in Wayne’s World (1992). A perfect storm to feature as a music video of the day. I had no idea it would be so difficult to find out who directed it when it should have been obvious.

You would immediately think that Penelope Spheeris directed the music video. I went to the two major databases on music videos–IMVDb and mvdbase–but neither of them had a director listed.

At first glance, it looked like what I remembered from the movie. I pulled out my copy of Wayne’s World and played that sequence side-by-side with the music video. It certainly is the same set, but they actually look quite different.

The next thing that came to mind was that it made sense that she would shoot a little extra material for Alice Cooper so he would have a music video for his song. After all, she directed The Decline of Western Civilization movies and has a personal quote on IMDb that says:

[on why she does documentaries about metal and punk music] “I mean, look, you don’t see me making documentaries on Britney Spears, you know what I mean? Sweetheart of a little girl, you know. Or Madonna. That’s not my thing. I just like this harder edge stuff. That’s just me.”

My next step was to look up whether she did have any credits for directing music videos, and up came some results. She shot at least three music videos for Megadeth. However, that was only a tease because she actually directed the music video for Megadeth’s cover of Alice Cooper’s No More Mr. Nice Guy.

Luckily, the website Songfacts came to my rescue, and said exactly what I thought to begin with when I went in to writing this post. She shot some more footage to create an extended version of that scene from the movie.

I don’t know how that wasn’t in the two biggest music video databases, but there’s the series of steps I went through to find out that piece of information.

Sadly, that’s pretty much all I have on this music video. The difference between the music video and the film, is that you get the full song with all its’ sexual metaphors. The only other thing to mention is that Alice Cooper was originally going to perform School’s Out, but two weeks before filming, Mike Myers was told by the band’s manager Shep Gordon that he would be performing their new song, Feed My Frankenstein. Again, thank you Songfacts for that information too.

Enjoy!