And then there’s Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. Von Trier is always going to be controversial filmmaker but no one has ever matched his brilliance when it came to capturing the end of existence. In Melancholia, a depressed woman (played in a revelatory performance by Kristen Dunst) finds unexpected strength in the end of the world. As can be seen in the scene below, it’s a beautifully sad film, one that ends on a note of triumphant apocalypse:
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
I wanted to hold off on this video till later, but the sun and the moon made other plans. So, let’s go through it.
Why is Bonnie here in the first place?
Is the bird practicing to be thrown later?
Swinging lamps…
on loan from Harden My Heart by Quarterflash.
Harden My Heart (1981)
It’s safe to look at Total Eclipse Of The Heart…
but don’t look at the total eclipse of the sun today with the naked eye, or you could end up like this guy.
Doors also on loan from Harden My Heart.
Harden My Heart (1981)
It’s a Russell Mulcahy video. You can usually be assured that his videos will contain metaphoric liquids and/or homoerotic imagery.
Is this the same bird from earlier?
The Reflex!
The Reflex by Duran Duran (1984)
It was nice of Godfrey Ho to let Mulcahy borrow some ninjas.
Gentlemen, welcome to The Skulls.
Another thing from Harden My Heart.
Harden My Heart (1981)
Since both videos were filmed in Holloway Sanitarium, I like to think that while Bonnie was upstairs, Ozzy Osbourne was being chased around the basement by a werewolf for Bark At The Moon.
The Judas Priest dancers reaching for Bonnie.
And Bonnie’s reaction…to the entire video.
There’s more Harden My Heart in here, but I choose to show this person upside-down instead.
Definitely Mulcahy.
Pressure.
The Thin Wall by Ultravox (1981)
I love that they almost missed Bonnie with the altar boy.
Exactly how many birds is he supposed to have? We could see some others earlier, and there are a few behind him. Does he just wait around to throw them at people who pass by?
Wild Boys cameo
The Wild Boys by Duran Duran (1984)
Then Bonnie is rescued by an angel from the clutches of Mulcahy.
Or is she?
In reality, it was a bit of both.
Here’s what Mulcahy had to say about this video in the book, I Want My MTV:
I collaborated on the storyboard for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced the song. Jim is fabulously, fabulously crazy. We would banter ideas over a bottle of red wine. I’d say, “Let’s set it in a school and have ninjas in one scene,” and he’d say “Let’s have a choirboy with glowing eyeballs.” We shot it in an old abandoned insane asylum in London. We had one sequence, which was Steinman’s idea, where a shirtless young boy is holding a dove and he throws it at the camera in slow motion. Bonnie came around the corner and screamed, in her Welsh accent, “You’re nothing but a fucking pre-vert!” And she stormed off.
There was nothing perverse intended. The imagery was meant to be sort of pure. Maybe slightly erotic and gothic and creepy, but pure. Anyway, the video went to number one, and a year later Bonnie’s people rang up and asked if I would direct her new video. And I told them to fuck off, because I was insulted about being called a fucking pervert. And I was a little mad because pervert wasn’t pronounced correctly.
So the bird throwing kid was Steinman’s idea. Interesting. Perhaps her comment is why he isn’t shirtless in the video.
I wonder what video Bonnie’s people wanted him to come back to direct a year later. I ask because the video for Faster Than The Speed Of Night, which came out the same year, puts a kid throwing a dove to shame.
Faster Than The Speed Of Night (1983)
Needless to say, regardless of their falling out, this kind of video became Bonnie Tyler’s thing for awhile.
Holding Out For A Hero (1984)
If mvdbase is to believed, she even got Jim Steinman back to co-direct If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man). It’s something you’d hardly notice if you watch the video.
If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) (1986)
If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) (1986)
If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) (1986)
I’m glad she followed up Total Eclipse Of The Heart with similar videos. The songs are great, and the videos make them unforgettable.
There’s so much we could talk about when it comes to part fifteen of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks 2017/Twin Peaks : The Return/Twin Peaks season three —
We could, for isntance, talk about what I call “The Ballad Of Norma And Big Ed.” Nadine (played with an extra spring in her step by the great Wendy Robie) has finally given her long-suffering husband (Everett McGill) his freedom, and he heads right for the Double R and the woman he loves, the woman he’s always loved (Peggy Lipton) — only to have his heart broken one last time when cheeseball Walter (Grant Goodeve) puts in an appearance. Norma sends the slick operator and his franchise operation packing, though, and two minutes later she’s agreed to be Mrs. Big Ed Hurley. I’d like to talk about this. I’d like to talk about it a lot, in…
Jerry Lewis is an acquired taste for many. His unique comic persona isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, especially among the highbrow set (except in France, where for decades he’s been hailed as a genius). He was zany, manic, childlike, and the last of the great slapstick comedians, his career spanning over eighty years. He was a comic, writer, director, actor, singer, businessman, innovator, and philanthropist. Jerry Lewis is a true American icon, and the embodiment of the American dream.
Joseph Levitch was one of those “born in a trunk” kids referenced in many a classic movie. His father was a vaudevillean, his mom a piano player, and by the time he was five Lewis was appearing with his parents onstage at Catskill Mountain resorts. A high school dropout, Lewis did what was known as a “record act” as a teen, where he’d lipsynch popular tunes of the day with comic results. During…
John Candy and Eugene Levy make a great team in the underrated comedy, Armed and Dangerous.
John Candy plays Frank Dooley, a member of the LAPD. One of the first scenes of the movie is Frank climbing up a tree to save a little boy’s kitten and then getting stuck in the tree himself. When Frank discovers two corrupt detectives stealing televisions, Frank is framed for the theft and kicked off the force.
Eugene Levy plays Norman Kane, a lawyer whose latest client is a Charles Manson-style cult leader who has a swastika carved into his head. After being repeatedly threatened with murder, Norman asks for a sidebar and requests that the judge sentence his client to life in prison. The judge agrees on the condition that Norman, whom he describes as being “the worst attorney to ever appear before me,” find a new line of work.
Frank and Norman end up taking a one day training course to act as security guards and are assigned to work together by their tough by sympathetic supervisor (Meg Ryan!). Assigned to guard a pharmaceutical warehouse, Frank and Norman stumble across a robbery. The robbery leads them to corruption inside their own union and, before you can say 80s cop movie, Frank and Norman are ignoring the orders of their supervisors and investigating a crime that nobody wants solved.
Armed and Dangerous was one of the many comedy/cop hybrid films of the 1980s. Like Beverly Hills Cop, it features Jonathan Banks as a bad guy. Like the recruits in Police Academy, all of Frank and Norman’s fellow security guards are societal misfits who are distinguished by one or two eccentricities. There is nothing ground-breaking about Armed and Dangerous but Mark Lester did a good job directing the movie and the team of Candy and Levy (who has previously worked together on SCTV) made me laugh more than a few times.
Armed and Dangerous was originally written to be a vehicle for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It’s easy to imagine Belushi and Aykroyd in the lead roles but I think the movie actually works better with Candy and Levy, whose comedic style was similar to but far less aggressive than that of Belushi and Aykroyd. One of the reasons that Armed and Dangerous works is because John Candy and Eugene Levy seem like the two last people to ever find themselves in a shootout or a car chase. With Belushi and Aykroyd, it would have been expected. After all, everyone’s seen The Blues Brothers.
No, I was not looking to specifically feature this video just to share the story below. This is my favorite Fox music video, and that is the only story about her in the entire book. It’s one of the odder behind-the-scenes stories I’ve heard about the production of a music video. I feel I’d be remiss not mentioning it. The first part gives some insight about how they were planning on selling her, while the second paragraph is the odd part, which you can skip if you wish.
Ann Carli, then senior vice president of artist development at Jive Records, said the following about the video in the book, I Want My MTV:
We signed Samantha Fox–she was one of the biggest Page Three Girls in England. Page Three Girls pose topless in the Sun. She was fairly young, and extremely buxom. RCA wanted to do pinup calendars and take a real skanky approach. I wanted her to be more of a girl next door, so that was a big fight.
Samantha would drink early in the day. She wanted champagne right from the beginning of the day. I made sure her drinks got watered down. At one video shoot, she was constipated. She was bloated and wearing a midriff costume. I had to get a doctor. This is kind of a disgusting story. I don’t want to know what the doctor did, but the problem was solved.
This must be the video Carli was speaking about because I can’t find another video where she was wearing a midriff.
I’m glad it appears that Carli only partially won that fight. Debbie Gibson and Tiffany had already cornered the girl-next-door market. Fox is a nice middle-ground between the way Carli described they wanted to sell her, and the actual way I’ve seen her presented in music videos.
I can’t imagine anyone else at the time being able to pull off wearing a Debbie Gibson hat…
Out Of The Blue (1988)
with a Tiffany-style dress…
I Think We’re Alone Now (1987)
while holding a man’s head next to her breasts…
before pushing his head downward.
I think she did this kind of material well without looking “skanky.”
Cut to 30 years later, and now Gibson, Tiffany, and Fox have all been in SyFy movies. There’s something I’m sure none of them would have expected to happen in their future.
Fox played Ms. Moore in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017).
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017, dir. Anthony C. Ferrante)
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017, dir. Anthony C. Ferrante)
Below, I’ve embedded an interesting little interview she gave last year on Loose Women concerning her sexuality. It puts this video in a different light.
The people accompanying Fox are the group, Full Force. They have worked with numerous artists, such as Bob Dylan. Some, or all, of their members wrote the song.
Scott Kalvert directed the video. He’s done close to 100 music videos. The few that I have seen have this kind of late-80s/early-90s-street look to them. Outside of music videos, he is probably best known for directing The Basketball Diaries (1995).
Donyale McRae did makeup for the video. He seems to have worked on around 35 music videos. He’s worked on a lot of things from Doctor Who to The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)–which means that both him and Kalvert went on to work with DiCaprio.
John Candy and Eugene Levy make a great team in the underrated comedy, Armed and Dangerous.
Through the Shattered Lens 