‘We Are Twisted F*cking Sister’ Is A Real Head-Banging Cinderella Story

When I was a wee lad, my sister’s Godmother’s daughter (yes, that’s a real thing) was a bleach blonde rocker babe with a penchant for glammy hard rock bands and the guys that played in them. On her bedroom wall, in between posters of Kiss and Queen, were 3×5 photographs she had taken herself of an unsigned local band playing to throngs of people in a packed club. They were brawny dudes with frizzy hair, platform shoes, bad makeup and women’s blouses. As said in a new documentary feature about them, they looked like “Cinderella’s ugly sisters.” The band was Twisted Sister, it was probably 1976 and it would be another 6 years before anyone outside the greater New York metropolitan area would ever hear of them.

We Are Twisted F***ing Sister! – currently streaming on Netflix – is the new documentary about the pioneering heavy metal band, best known for their anthemic riffing and hilarious music videos. The feature-length film doesn’t try to tell the group’s complete 40 year saga, but rather zeroes in on their early days, when they made their bones on the bridge and tunnel club scene of the mid to late ‘70s. Back then, a hard working, unsigned rock n’ roll band could pay the rent playing 5 nights a week to literally thousands of ecstatic kids, lured by the thrill of live music and enabled by the era’s low drinking age. Twisted Sister would slog it out on this circuit for nearly 10 years before landing a record deal, and seeing any commercial success.

Long known as one of hard rock’s greatest live acts, We Are Twisted F***ing Sister! is built around killer concert footage and interviews with the band, management and fans. Unlike their hipper local contemporaries, Twisted Sister’s experience was rooted in – and routed through – New York City’s outlying areas, a point buoyed by multiple interviews shot in cars as the subject drives from one strip mall to another. As founding guitarist Jay Jay French says at one point, “We were 20 miles away from CBGB’s but we might as well have been 1000 miles away.” By avoiding the rat race and small stages of cool Manhattan clubs, the band expanded their audience exponentially playing a vast network of venues and thrilling audiences with their increasingly outrageous live show which included vomit-inducing drinking contests, mock hangings, and ultimately the demolition of several clubs. Though the action takes place in the outer boroughs and suburbs, it’s still a deep dive into that heavily mythologized “Old New York” where cocky ethnic white guys bust each other’s balls with accents as thick as a Pastrami sandwich, a world that now only exists in bad Martin Scorsese projects.

Like many a band before them, Twisted Sister turned internal strife to their advantage. The competition between founding guitarist Jay Jay French and frontman Dee Snider drove the gregarious but admittedly insecure singer to new heights of songwriting and performance. Likewise, the band’s incendiary live show was ultimately a way to show up fellow musicians. To them, rock n’ roll was as competitive as any sport. Despite all the outward machismo, another interesting aspect the movie illustrates is how much tough ‘80s metal owes to effete ‘70s glam rock. French started Twisted Sister as a “glitter” band, copping The New York Dolls image and playing David Bowie and Lou Reed covers before singer Snider took the band in a heavier direction. It’s a debt that can be also found in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal acts Twisted Sister would share stages with in Great Britain following the UK release of their 1982 debut album, Under the Blade. Despite being able to draw between 3,000 – 6,000 people a show in New York and New Jersey, a major label deal eluded them until the following year. The band finally broke big with 1984’s Stay Hungry album, which would eventually sell over 3 million copies, but the film ends right before their breakthrough.

As a documentary, We Are Twisted F***ing Sister is well done and a lot of fun with a couple crucial flaws. At 2 hours and 16 minutes, it runs about a half hour longer than anyone besides a diehard Twisted Sister fan would find interesting. And ending the movie before the emotional payoff of the band’s ultimate success feels anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Still, in this day and age of shared-today-deleted-tomorrow pop, made on home computers and pitch corrected with Auto-tune, the idea of a flesh and blood band honing their craft and chasing their dream with 10 years of road work, playing every dive bar from Red Back to Patchogue, sets an important example for young musicians, even if it now seems as anachronistic as a Ken Burns documentary about Negro league baseball.

[Watch We Are Twisted F*cking Sister on Netflix]

Benjamin H. Smith is a native New Yorker, a writer, a producer and all around web content type guy. He is also a musician and has played in every bad neighborhood in the United States. He likes guitars. A lot. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.