Down on Us

{{more citations needed|date=May 2019}} {{Infobox film | name = Down on Us | image = Downonus1sht.jpg | caption = Teaser poster | director = Larry Buchanan | producer = Murray M. Kaplan<br>Larry Buchanan | writer = Larry Buchanan | starring = Gregory Allen Chatman<br>Riba Meryl<br>Bryan Wolf | music = Jeffrey Dann<br>David Shorey | cinematography = Nicholas Josef von Sternberg | editing = Larry Randolph | distributor = Omni Leisure International | released = {{Film date|1984}} | runtime = 117 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = }} '''''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, of the American International 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.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Francis |first1=R.D |title=Richard Bowen: The Source and Circle Sound Studios '60s Progressive Rock with the Source from San Diego, California |url=https://rdfranciswriter.medium.com/richard-bowen-the-source-and-circle-sound-studios-0297b26a09a6 |website=Medium |date=16 January 2025 }}</ref>

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.

==Cast== *Gregory Allen Chatman as Jimi Hendrix *Riba Meryl as Janis Joplin *Bryan Wolf as Jim Morrison

== Reception == ''Variety''<nowiki/>'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".<ref>"Film: Beyond The Doors." ''Variety''. Vol. 337, Iss. 7, (Nov 22, 1989): 20, 22. {{ProQuest| }}</ref>

A review in ''Austin American-Statesman'' called it, "the ''Reefer Madness'' of conspiracy theory movies".<ref>{{Cite news|last=Taggart|first=Patrick|date=1984-09-07|title=Rock movie is conspiracy of bad ideas|pages=23|work=Austin American-Statesman|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/69734986/rock-movie-is-conspiracy-of-bad-ideas/|access-date=2021-02-13}}</ref>

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== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * {{IMDb title|0087171|Down on Us}} * [https://www.manoronmovies.com/BeyondTheDoors.htm Review of ''Down On Us aka Beyond The Doors'' at Manor on Movies]

Category:1984 films Category:1984 drama films Category:Films directed by Larry Buchanan Category:1984 English-language films