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DVD review: 'Doors/Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman'

“Doors/Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman” could justifiably be subtitled “The Decline and Fall of the Lizard King.” Promoted as a film documenting the recording of the last album by The Doors to feature Jim Morrison on vocals, it also traces the last self-destructive months in the life of the enigmatic and deeply troubled lead singer.

“We were a four-man band. I always thought of us as something like the Modern Jazz Quartet of rock 'n' roll,” keyboardist Ray Manzarek says in one of the many new interviews in this fascinating film from producer-director Martin R. Smith. Of course, Manzarek is smiling as he purposely understates the importance of a group of musical innovators that had established itself as one of the most prominent “house” bands of the '60s anti-establishment, anti-war movement in just four short years. Their lean, haunting sound, dominated by Manzarek's seductive spook-house organ riffs and Morrison's sonorous voice, singing and speaking his ominous, sexually charged poetry, made the establishment edgy, and those in authority were always on the lookout for excuses to shut The Doors down. The singer's increasingly erratic onstage behavior made it easy for them during a Miami, Fla., concert, when he was arrested for indecent exposure and inciting to riot.

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