The Doors is a 1991 film about Jim Morrison and The Doors. It was directed by Oliver Stone, and stars Val Kilmer as Morrison, Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson (Morrison's companion), Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, Kevin Dillon as John Densmore and Kathleen Quinlan as Patricia Kennealy. The Doors movie was in development for years with different studios. For a long time John Travolta was the front runner for the part of Jim Morrison and lobbied hard for the part.

Kilmer was reportedly Stone's second choice for the role, the first being British rock singer Ian Astbury, who in fact went on to join the reformed Doors, but turned down the offer to play Morrison out of a reluctance to take up acting (particularly as the lead in a major motion picture despite a lack of experience in the craft). Kyle MacLachlan, a longtime Doors fan, was quoted as saying that he had wanted to portray Morrison himself and firmly believed that he could play the part, but settled for the role of Manzarek after Kilmer was selected.

The film portrays Morrison as the larger-than-life icon of 1960s rock and roll, counterculture, and the drug-using free love hippie lifestyle. But the depiction goes beyond the iconic: his alcoholism, interest in the spiritual plane and hallucinogenic drugs as entheogens, and, particularly, his obsession with death are threads which weave in and out of the film. Attentive viewers (or those who listen to Stone's DVD commentary) witness Death personified throughout the film by Richard Rutowski, who appears in different guises throughout the film, including drag in one scene, an Indian who dances behind Morrison during the band's performance of "Break On Through", and a horse carriage driver in another scene. The film's tagline is: "The ultimate story of Drugs, Sex and Rock 'N' Roll."

The film's soundtrack contains over two dozen of The Doors' songs; in the film, original recordings of the band are seamlessly combined with convincing vocal performances by Kilmer himself. So eerily accurate was Kilmer's portrayal of Morrison, that even the remaining band members sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between his vocal renditions and Morrison's original recordings. In addition to the many themed Doors songs featured, two songs by The Velvet Underground and Nico are also heard throughout the film.

Oliver Stone's homage to 60's rock group The Doors also doubles as a biography of the group's late singer, the "Electric Poet" Jim Morrison. The movie follows Morrison from his days as a film student in Los Angeles to his death in Paris in 1971, at the age of 27. The movies features a tour- de-force performance by Val Kilmer, who not only looks like Jim Morrison's long-lost twin brother, but also sounds so much like him that he did much of his own singing. It has been written that even the surviving Doors had trouble distinguishing Kilmer's vocals from Morrison's originals. Written by Denise P. Meyer