I am a huge zeppelin fan and I really wanted to see this movie. So i rented it and watched it, and the fantasy sequences just kill it! I mean i wanna just watch them playing! Not john paul jones with a weird mask on riding around on a horse!
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I agree...the fantasy parts are what I skip over when I watch it. They are a bit silly. but yeah it probably did go over better in the 70's. at least there weren't any hobbits
shareHere I go dating myself...but I saw the film when it was first released..'75-76, I believe. The film was a huge event for Zeppelin fans, almost as good as a new album or concert! The fantasy sequences were wildly popular on the big screen...probably because we were all stoned. It quickly became a midnight movie cult classic, for that reason.
shareThat's right. I was a teenager in the late 70's and I recall the local movie theaters showing this film at midnight on Friday nights. Drink a quart of beer on the way to the show, sneak another one in, smoke a dube, admission price for the movies was like two bucks or so.
Beer - $1.00 per quart
Weed - $30.00 per oz.
Movie ticket - $2.00
Being a teenager in the 70's - PRICELESS
i was not already born in the 70's..well born late 70's to be true, but i tink its ok with sequence...it just add a little more to the show a little like the rolling stone with sympaty for the devil..sure not a concert but it have weird sequence there too...and man 30.00 per oz for weed...i would be ritch hahaha..but well music dont have age..for me!
share"That's right. I was a teenager in the late 70's and I recall the local movie theaters showing this film at midnight on Friday nights. Drink a quart of beer on the way to the show, sneak another one in, smoke a dube, admission price for the movies was like two bucks or so."
LOL... that exactly how it was,
The theatre i went to just looked the other way when you brought in backpacks of beer, booze, bongs...
Watching TSRTS on your teevee at home, even some mondo big screen with surround sound will never be the same, and the fantasy sequences do look a little silly, but in a big movie hall packed with wasted Zeppelin fans, it was bigger than life.
After watching the new "Collector's Edition" DVD, I have to agree with most of the postings that seeing this film on a big screen with some herbs in you makes this a better experience(though the DVD sound is very good). The fact is time has not been kind to this film. The fantasy sequences are hopelessly outdated BUT as someone once said when comparing Zeppelin to The Who, Zeppelin sang about fantasy and sex, the Who sang about reality and love. So the Zeppelin film was perfect for the "fantasy days" of sex without blood test results and Loch Ness monster sightings. But those days are at least "Ten Years Gone." The Who's chaos and destruction in "Kids Are Alright" is till timely in a lot of ways, Page's sunglasses and Plant's cape went out the minute Kurt Cobain showed up in torn jeans.
God, I envy you.
shareI saw it in the '70s when I was 15 or 16.
I wanted more concert and was bored with the fantasy.
We saw it again about a week later and we were, well, just a bit stoned and the fantasy scenes took a different aura.
Ah youth.
I saw it in early 1981 at a midnight showing, and it was great. The theatre was packed with rowdy Zep fans who were drinking and smoking pot ... Man I miss those days. Midnight movies were such a blast.
shareThe Rain Song and Ten Years Gone are beautiful tracks but those medieval scenes of Robert Plant walking in a tower stairway with a big torch or the knight on horseback being pushed into the moat are just far too obvious. Today this kind of movie would have included interviews, and I would have wished to see some here instead of those fantasy bits. With the gargantuan concert scenes invcluded it really blends into an image of rock excess and that's part of what Zep was about of course. If you compare with Metallica - Some Kind of Monster - a very different kind of rock film, but still - that's a much tighter and better paced movie.
It's endearing I think that the film doesn't try to hide or excuse this excess, swollen element. It's a loosely built flick; Peter Grant was somehow right in dubbing it "the most expensive home movie ever made". But the footage of Jason Bonham, age around 6, playing his dad's drums and Plant's wife and kids is also fun and touching. The concert scenes - great of course, but some of them not very tight.
But that was part of the band's whole thing. It's like the video equivalent of the album art. They were very much a concept band. I liked those segments.
shareI like those scenes as well but then again I grew up watching the film and even though they are cheesy they do possess a certain esoteric vaguely occultic quality/mystique that I always had a soft spot for. The whole film is somewhat vulgar and these sequences are in keeping with that drugged out seventies vibe, plus it was a precursor to the music video revolution of the 80's.
shareWell you should get the led zepplin dvd released 2003. its got nothing nothing but concert footage, from this movie and other concerts they did.
shareI gather that a great deal of the footage when this was filmed was mysteriously missing when they came to put the film together... that's why the freaky hippy sh't was added. I queued up to see this film when it came out ... absolutely loved it but even with hair down to my arse, the obligatory trench coat and Dr Who scarf, joint sticking out of the mouth and an allergy to razors... I hated the scenes.
'kin hippies
I was just a child then, now I'm only a man
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I don't know...as cheesy as they are they have their place in the film. Nobody worried that Zeppelin's lyrics made their sound seem silly.
To me the gravity, mystery and humor of the band are what makes them great. I don't always want to see a docu-film that shows a band getting trashed and doing lines. I enjoy some mystique and imagination.
"But Captain, wouldn't it be more humane-like to slit his throat?"
I don't know if "ruin" is the right word. That was the 70's after all, wasn't it? Big, bombastic, epic-like, 20-plus minute songs, gigantic guitar solos, drum solos that could go on for hours. So, why not the fantasies of the band members, too? I just thought it was interesting that the only guy in Zep that seemed to be comfortable in his own skin was John Bonham.
Jimmy Page was this dark wizard, Robert Plant was this viking warrior on a quest to save the damsel in distress, and JPJ was this shadowy "phantom of the opera" type. John Bonham, on the other hand, shot pool in his favorite pub, drove a tractor on his farm, showed of his motorcycle and race cars, hung out with his family, etc.
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hey, the fantasy sequences just completed the movie!
and you still get to see their awesome-ass 1973 Madison Square Garden tour and hear a 23-minute Dazed and Confused, so quit your whining!!
I've never seen the flick on account of not wanting to see the mighty Led Zeppelin on the small screen.
Still, what bits of the 'fantasy' sequences I've seen immediately conjure up laughable images of the 'stonehenge' sequence from This is Spinal Tap (or the bit from Family Guy where Peter & Lois are performing an acoustic duet for a local talent show & they're both wearing RenFaire clothes while a wooden, winged unicorn gallops over their heads, lol!!)
Stonehenge!!! LOL!
I kept thinking of Jack Black/Tenacious D crazy spoofs and the Conchords Hobbit song.
Great music, though.
Spinal Tap killed the mighty Zepp long before Cobain killed arena rock and 80s hair metal. And of course video killed the radio star in 1981.
"Stonehenge where a man is a man/and the children dance to the pipes of pan"
I was a teenager in 1976, but I'm watching it now for the first time. All I can see is Spinal Tap!
As for the musical performances...Bonham and Page were great, but it sure seemed like Plant was mailing it in on "Rock and Roll."
Bonham and Page were great, but it sure seemed like Plant was mailing it in on "Rock and Roll."
"Not the best version of "R&R" around, I agree. But Jimmy Page's astonishing bow solo on Dazed and Confused... wow! "
To me Jimmy Page carried that whole concert. It was like a 2 hour guitar solo.
"Apes don't read philosophy." "Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it."