When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors is a documentary written and directed by Tom DiCillio and chronicles the rise and fall from fame of The Doors. The documentary follows band members John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison from their early life, the early beginning in music, and the creation of the band, their albums, and appearances. The documentary attempts to dig deeper into the life of Jim Morrison and provides another look at the self destructive behavior that eventually lead to the end of his life.

The Doors were one of the biggest bands around during the 60s, but they didn’t achieve this just by pure accident. They featured a group of four very talented individuals, one of them being Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison was blessed with the perfect voice and a thirst for fame, but like all positives there is always some negatives. Unfortunately, for Jim the negatives proved to be too much. This documentary scratched on the surface of what the band represented and accomplished in the years that was functional.

Tom DiCillio does a good job with the material at hand. He doesn’t entirely give you a life story to the point that the documentary becomes boring. DiCillio does manage to get the best and worst out of every stage of The Doors. From the beginnings, to the end of the 60s and the effects the counterculture had on the band members, the drugs, and alcohol abuse. DiCillio doesn’t amplify some of these negatives; instead he lets the viewer know that this environment was part of the band’s every day life during the time together.

Tom DiCillio’s documentary wasn’t entirely about the band, but about Jim Morrison who personally I think was the band. His antics and self-destructive behavior, paired with his musical talents were the reason masses attended the shows. DiCillio makes sure that everyone never forgets why Morrison was so successful. Although I was happy with the end product, I can’t help but to mention that this documentary only shows you a small piece of The Doors by showing you a series of video montages and pictures. I was expecting a bit more of an in-depth look, but if anything the documentary catches the essence of the band.

Finally, When You’re Strange is narrated from beginning to end by none other than Johnny Depp. To be honest I felt the narration was excellent. Depp doesn’t need to have a commanding strong voice in order to get the point across. He was simply calm while delivering every tidbit of information. He seemed to be fit for the material that he was dealing with.

When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p VC-1 encode framed at 1.78:1. This documentary, like many others, has a blend of current and older footage. While the bits and pieces of the newer footage looks excellent, much of the documentary is based on older film pieces and you know how some of it will look. Most of the older footage looks very grainy, some of it even fuzzy, but even with the shortcomings the source material most of the way the documentary looks is excellent. Just know that dust, dirt, some video noise, heavy grain is to be expected to appear on archival footage. Overall, the documentary as a whole looks fantastic.

When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors arrives on Blu-ray with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. This is not the most elaborated mix for a documentary out there, but the few things that it does right make it all worth a while. The music, which appears to be somewhat taken from a greatest hits album, sounds excellent. The dialogue never overwhelms the narration by Depp or music going on in the background and it is always clean and clear. My only complaint is that there is no music only track. A PCM 2.0 stereo track is also included. Unfortunately, there are no subtitle options available for this release.

When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors comes with a few extras, but not enough. There was a lot of content from were information could have been grabbed and put together, however, that wasn’t the case. Anyway, check below for a list of supplements.

Interview With…
A conversation with Admiral George S. Harrison, Jim’s father, and Anne Morrison-Chewning, Jim’s sister, share some anecdotes and their views on Jim’s short-lived life. The entire piece is 9 minutes, which I thought was not enough.

Theatrical Trailer

When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors attempts to show the highs and the lows about one of the most popular bands of the 60’s. The documentary tells who were they and how they came to the spotlight as well as how the self-destructive nature of their lead vocalist Jim Morrison ultimately sealed his fate and that of the group. While it doesn’t have the cleanest look, it features a good set of older footage that looks as good as it will ever be and audio that fits excellent for this title. My only complaint is no music only audio track was included. For all that’s worth any fan of the The Doors will not be disappointed with this release.

The screen captures are only a small representation of what the Blu-ray looks like and are not representative of Blu-ray’s true quality.