Mötley Crüe - Mötley Crüe: The End DVD review

The film of their very last show

Mötley Crüe The End DVD cover

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It starts with the usual concert movie clichés – roadies wheeling flight cases; time-lapse footage of the set being built; expectant fans baring tits and tattoos – but Mötley Crüe: The End is no ordinary film.

This is an extravagant document of the band’s last night of existence, and so the cuts come thick and fast and frantic to match the absurdly breathtaking show – and to disguise the one-dimensional nature of the band’s performance. Nimble-fingered guitarist Mick Mars aside, it’s so relentlessly plodding that the interviews, when they come, provide thankful relief.

Tour manager Tim Krieg explains that the four Crüe members have separate dressing rooms, travel apart and stay in different hotels. And you wonder if they can’t bear to be in the same room as each other why should we?

But as the show builds to its demented, fiery summit, and balloons drop and confetti clouds the air and streamers fly and pyro explodes like a million fourth of Julys and the Staples Center begins to look like a cross between the climax of the Republican Party Convention and the set of Mad Max: Fury Road, you can’t help but wish they’d go out for one final spectacular spin around the block.

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.