The Doors (1991): Welcome to the Soft Parade of Madness
If you’ve ever thought, “Gee, I wish someone made a film about Jim Morrison but with the subtlety of a brick through a lava lamp,” then congratulations, The Doors (1991) is your fever dream made flesh. Directed by Oliver Stone Hollywood’s patron saint of cinematic overindulgence – the film is less a traditional biopic and more a two-hour peyote trip that accidentally stumbled into a movie theatre.
Starring Val Kilmer as Morrison, the Lizard King of leather pants and lyrical despair, The Doors is what happens when a director hands a talented actor a bottle of absinthe, cranks up the soundtrack and screams, “Be iconic!” Kilmer responds in kind, turning in a performance that is so eerily accurate it probably had Morrison’s ghost filing a cease-and-desist from the great beyond
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Val Kilmer, or Jim Morrison With a SAG Card
Let’s get this out of the way: Val Kilmer doesn’t play Jim Morrison – he becomes Jim Morrison. He oozes charisma, danger and the general vibe of a man who hasn’t eaten solid food since 1966. Kilmer reportedly did all his own singing in the film and the result is unsettlingly convincing. At times you forget it’s a performance. At other times you wish you could forget, just to give your nervous system a breather.
The voice. The stare. The disassociation with reality. It’s all here. Kilmer is like a rock n’ roll vampire, feeding on attention and ennui, drifting through scenes as if constantly debating whether to quote Nietzsche or set something on fire.
Oliver Stone’s Direction: Acid-Soaked Auteurism
Oliver Stone doesn’t do half-measures. This is the man who turned the Vietnam War into a kind of existential poetry slam (Platoon) and turned Wall Street into a cocaine-fuelled morality play. With The Doors, he’s unleashed. Subtlety? Binned. Restraint? Incinerated. Historical accuracy? Optional.
What we get instead is spectacle. A lava lamp of visuals. Frantic cuts. Hallucinatory montages. Morrison wandering deserts. Morrison screaming poetry at the sky. Morrison walking around naked for reasons never quite explained. If Bohemian Rhapsody is the polished Spotify playlist of music biopics, The Doors is the half-melted cassette tape found inside Hunter S. Thompson’s glove compartment.
The Supporting Cast: Floating in the Kilmer Vortex
Meg Ryan plays Pamela Courson, Morrison’s long-suffering partner, a woman whose main job in the film is to weep, scream, or look mildly betrayed in a variety of artistic lighting setups. To be fair, Ryan does her best with what the script gives her, but her character exists mostly as a counterpoint to Morrison’s chaos – sort of like emotional scaffolding.
Kyle MacLachlan shows up as Ray Manzarek, the band’s co-founder and keyboardist, who is portrayed with all the excitement of a man waiting for his Uber. Still, he brings a calm precision that gives the film a rare moment of groundedness – brief though it is. The rest of the band is largely relegated to the status of background furniture.
The Music: Still the Only Sane Part
Here’s where the film redeems itself. The soundtrack is phenomenal. The Doors’ music doesn’t just feature – it dominates. “Break on Through,” “The End,” “When the Music’s Over” – it’s all here, lovingly slathered over slow-motion debauchery and sweaty close-ups. Kilmer’s vocals are mixed seamlessly with Morrison’s originals and the effect is uncanny.
Say what you want about the storytelling, but when The End starts playing during one of Stone’s more apocalyptic sequences, you understand why this band had such a stranglehold on the American psyche. It’s hypnotic, it’s poetic and it makes you want to start a commune or set your furniture on fire.
Artistic Liberties, or: History According to Hallucinogens
Let’s be clear: if you’re looking for a historically accurate, nuanced portrait of The Doors, this film is not your friend. Stone treats facts like Jim Morrison treated sobriety – fleetingly and with great disdain. Timelines are fudged, events are exaggerated and entire swathes of Morrison’s personality are turned into cartoonish archetypes.
But here’s the thing – it kind of works. Because Morrison, in his mythos, was a cartoon. A genius. A shaman. A narcissist. A self-destructive poet-prince. And what better way to explore that than through a biopic that feels like a two-hour acid flashback?
Cinematography and Editing: Beautiful, Bonkers
Robert Richardson’s cinematography is stunning in that “I think I just saw God inside a lava lamp” kind of way. The colours are saturated. The lighting is moody. There are slow zooms, rapid cuts, superimposed faces. It’s an aesthetic fever dream and that’s before the peyote kicks in.
The editing is aggressive. Sequences bleed into each other. Dreams become reality. Scenes dissolve into symbolic madness. One moment you’re watching a concert, the next you’re in a desert having a metaphysical showdown with a Native American spirit guide. It’s like a David Lynch film after too much tequila.
Themes: Fame, Death, Narcissism – the Usual Rockstar Nonsense
The Doors is not subtle about its themes. It doesn’t so much explore them as beat you over the head with them while whispering poetry. The film is obsessed with death, with freedom, with the existential despair of being adored by millions while feeling utterly alone.
It paints Morrison as a reluctant messiah – a man who sees the rot at the heart of the American Dream and reacts by getting wasted in increasingly creative locations. His descent isn’t tragic so much as inevitable, like gravity or someone quoting The Catcher in the Rye at a house party.
Controversies: Rock Stars, Lawsuits and Hurt Feelings
Not everyone loved Stone’s interpretation. Ray Manzarek famously disowned the film, claiming it turned Morrison into a drunken buffoon and downplayed the band’s collaborative nature. He’s got a point. This film might as well be titled Jim Morrison: A Love Story with Himself.
Bandmates were upset. Critics were split. Fans either embraced the chaos or recoiled. But in a weird way, that’s exactly how a Doors movie should land – with the same chaotic, divisive energy as the band itself.
Legacy: A Cult Classic Drenched in Sweat and Ego
Today, The Doors exists in that strange cinematic purgatory of being both adored and derided. It’s a cult classic, a relic of 90s excess and a cautionary tale about what happens when you give Oliver Stone too much budget and not enough restraint.
It’s not accurate. It’s not particularly well-structured. But it feels right. Like Morrison’s lyrics, it’s beautiful nonsense – pretentious, poetic and profoundly watchable in a “what the hell did I just witness?” sort of way.
Trivia: Because Of Course There’s Trivia
- Val Kilmer spent nearly a year preparing for the role, learning over 50 Doors songs.
- He had a wardrobe full of Morrison’s actual clothes. Yes, actual. The smell must’ve been biblical.
- Kilmer performed so well that The Doors’ producer Paul A. Rothchild said he couldn’t tell his voice apart from Morrison’s.
- Oliver Stone initially wanted Jason Patric for the role. Which… just imagine that alternate timeline.
- The film used real concert footage and intercut it with Kilmer’s performance, just to completely melt your brain.
My Final Thoughts: Worth the Trip (Even If It’s a Bad One)
The Doors is messy. It’s indulgent. It’s unhinged. But it’s also kind of brilliant. If you approach it expecting a faithful biopic, you’ll be disappointed. If you approach it like Morrison approached life – with equal parts awe and confusion – you might just love it.
It’s not a film about The Doors. It is The Doors – loud, weird, self-important, magnetic and occasionally full of crap. In short: perfect.
If You Like The Doors, I Recommend These Movies:
- I’m Not There (2007) – Where six people play Bob Dylan, including Cate Blanchett, because sure, why not?
- Walk the Line (2005) – Johnny Cash walks the fine line between genius and the kind of guy who throws up at Thanksgiving.
- Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – A folk singer and a cat walk into a bar. Existential sadness ensues.
The Doors
Jim Morrison
Pamela Courson
Ray Manzarek
Robby Krieger
John Densmore
Paul Rothchild
Tom Baker
Bill Siddons
