41 years later, the most brutally unfiltered music documentary ever made still leaves audiences asking: Should someone have intervened?
Few documentaries have dared to expose a band’s unraveling in such raw, unflinching detail. Fewer still have done it while the band was actively falling into a Stonehenge prop. But This Is Spinal Tap, the now-remastered 1984 chronicle of England’s loudest and least OSHA-compliant rock trio, remains a towering (and confusingly tiny) monument to the era of excess.
Now streaming in 4K for the first time, the remaster sharpens every eyeliner smudge, amplifies every passive-aggressive band meeting, and lets you fully appreciate just how many drummers they went through (R.I.P. Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs: devoured by his own bar tab).
“It’s hard to watch,” said longtime fan and former Tap bass tech Sheila Frenz. “You’re seeing the ego death in real time. Also, there’s a moment where Nigel tries to tune his amp by screaming at it. That’s not even in the bonus footage. That’s just… him.”
The new edition also includes 37 minutes of lost interviews, such as David St. Hubbins’ infamous “herbal enlightenment” phase where he insisted the band’s next album be recorded in the key of lavender.
Critics at the time failed to grasp the film’s importance, dismissing it as “a joke,” “satire,” or “clearly not real.” But to this day, Tap’s surviving members insist that everything you see actually happened. “We didn’t mean to be a cautionary tale,” said lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel. “We were just… accurate.”
When asked what he hopes fans take away from the remaster, Derek Smalls paused, stared directly into the lens, and said, “Honestly? Just remember us. Not the puppet Stonehenge. Us.”
The remastered edition is now available on Blu-ray, digital, and a limited-edition format where each copy is sealed inside an amplifier that does, indeed, go to 11.**
