Down On Us

''Down on Us'' is a low budget 1984 movie about a US government plot to assassinate 1960s rock stars Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, using an elite force of killers. It is sometimes known as ''Beyond the Doors''.

The movie does not use any of the original songs of the artists portrayed due to high royalty fees. Instead, they used songs written and performed to sound like the originals: Those artists were: Janet Stover as "Janis Joplin," David Shorey as "Jimi Hendrix," and Richard Bowen, he of the American International Pictures/Records recording artist, the Source (A Bullet for Pretty Boy), as "Jim Morrison" fronting the Doors. The film's ersatz, signature "Doors" tune, "Phantom in the Rain," was a 1984 solo remake of an old the Source single (1970) performed by Bowen. The starring actors lip-synced to the songs by Stover, Shorey, and Bowen.

Author F. Paul Wilson used a similar premise in his 1987 short story "The Years the Music Died."

Plot

The story of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, and how their message for their generation made them targets of a US government plot.

Reception

''Variety'''s review was largely critical of the "campy" reproductions of concerts and other events. The review read, in part, "Pic's only revelation is the claim that Morrison faked his own death in order to regain his privacy".

A review in ''Austin American-Statesman'' called it, "the ''Reefer Madness'' of conspiracy theory movies".

A review in '' The Daily News'' read, "...the whole project is so out of it, it seems like the work of a Martian whose understanding of the counterculture comes entirely from reading old issues of ''Life'' magazine".

References

External links

*

Review of ''Down On Us aka Beyond The Doors'' at Manor on Movies

1984 films
1984 drama films
Films directed by Larry Buchanan
1980s English-language films

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