Edit: I didn’t notice when I posted it that you have to click the link to the YouTube page in order for it to play. It will play if you click on it.
It’s about time that something Soft Cell related was spotlighted. In this case, it’s a video for a song by the former lead-singer of Soft Cell, Marc Almond.
In his autobiography Almond describes being invited for initiation into Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, and that “not being one to turn down a theatrical moment and a chance to be relegated to the bad book, I immediately said yes.” Noise musician Boyd Rice performed the simple ceremony in “a small grotto in a wood” close to where the Hellfire Club used to meet. Almond states that the ceremony involved “no dancing naked, no bonfires, no blood sacrifice”, but even so “every hair on my neck stood on end and sweat broke out on my top lip.”. Almond would later state in a 2016 interview with Loud and Quiet that the initiation was “a theatrical joke that got a bit out of hand” and that he did not consider himself a Satanist.
The guy who sang Tainted Love was at a Satanic ritual. I never thought I could write that sentence.
The video was directed by Peter Christopherson. He appears to have directed over 100 music videos from the mid-80s through the 90s.
I think I’d have an easier time trying to explain the video for Lullaby by The Cure with its spider-man on ceiling than this one.
Lullaby by The Cure (1989)
But this is one of several that was recommended by Lisa, so here’s what I see.
The poster for The Exorcist.
Looking stoned.
Things I would expect in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain.
Tarman.
Getting hit with a paper airplane…
sends you to The Lawnmower Man dimension.
Doing this fight slow enough causes it to look like they are going to make-out.
Knocking over water will spawn three CGI watermen.
Changing angles teleports cups.
The evil T-1000.
Waxman.
Alternate Waxman.
And the three Jodorowsky things are back.
According to the lyrics, “Hum it, you will remember some of it/But if you solve it, you will remember all of it.” I can do the first, but not the second. I’m just going to assume that like the video for their song Hallways, this also has to do with internal tensions within this band and the prior band, The Unicorns. It’s just a feeling I get about both of them. I could be wrong.
Other videos by Islands seem to be just as weird even if they don’t have horror elements to them like this one appears to have.
I’m not going to pretend I know anything about Bauhaus other than that they are an early gothic rock group and that I’m amazed this video is out there.
It’s a simple stage performance video. The most noteworthy things are lead-singer Peter Murphy’s performance, the use of lighting, and the casket of sorts. It creates a low-budget dark performance that never felt like it was alienating me. I felt pulled in.
A couple of years later this song was used for the vampire film The Hunger (1983). I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve included a video below of the opening credits where they play it.
I also haven’t seen D.W. Griffith’s film The Sorrows Of Satan (1926) yet. That’s where they got the cover art for the single.
I’ll rectify having not seen either of those movies soon. I apologize.
Enjoy this early example of gothic rock. I certainly have. This is a pleasant surprise for me. I was planing to skip the video for today and feature the song Every Day Is Halloween by Ministry–also gothic rock.
It’s pretty bad. This was the first official music video ever released for a song by Misfits. I have two main problems with it.
It looks ingenious and lacks energy. It really does remind me of something like Blair Witch 2: Book Of Shadows (2000) with its Wiccan and Goth characters. They just seemed to be there because that was trendy. I was in school around that time. It was trendy. This feels like it was meant to tap into those trends rather than being their thing anymore. This doesn’t seem to have a reason to exist other than that it was popular. It doesn’t help that they show fans that don’t only in retrospect tell you this was popular at the time. These were the same kind of people you would see trolling MTV, which caused me to turn away from new music till this stuff started to fade away. It could have made up for this by being cheesy and fun like some metal videos of the 80s. It didn’t.
The integration of the Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) footage. As in it isn’t. They just cut to it here and there because she was on the cover of the single–I guess. I hate to reference it again, but take a look at The Number Of The Beast by Iron Maiden. Mallet did a good job. Run To The Hills did it even better. You could edit out the movie footage from this video, and I doubt you would miss it. You can’t say the same of those two Iron Maiden videos.
A few years later, Misfits got Romero to direct a video for their song Scream! I can’t say that song sticks with me anymore than this one will, but the video is done well-enough. I’m not sure what director John Cafiero was thinking. He seems to have only done music videos for two songs–both by Misfits. The other one being American Psycho.
Follow the link at the start for someone making fun of the video. Then watch the video and look for when lead-singer Graves walks his fingers across the top of a gravestone.
Remember that video yesterday for this song by the same group? It was reminiscent of something like Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order. It looked like it could have been put together with grindhouse trailers, but was probably all original footage. It would have quick flashes of things that could be weird or unsettling. It didn’t completely work. Still, it was quite good. This video is none of those things.
In 2016, Glass Candy reworked the song Halloween–cutting about a minute from it–and released it with a new video. That video is a little girl played by Isla Ferrier trying to act creepy while the directors…they certainly are shooting short videos that would do well in a fashion or photography book as static photos. Kind of like what photographers René & Radka actually do. You can go over to their website and see some of their work. It all looks perfectly serviceable for glamour shots. It’s the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in a magazine or as someone’s main IMDb photo. I guess i’m saying it all starts to blend together and is a bit bland to me. It doesn’t automatically translate to shooting a short film. A couple of their other videos do look better even if they are along similar lines.
The closest this video gets to something creepy is the following shot:
Close, but no cigar. That’s because of two problems:
It’s the kind of shot you’d flash to without calling attention to it or have in the background to set an uncomfortable atmosphere. This video lingers on it and makes it the entire thing. Then it also cuts to a close up shot just in case you didn’t see it. It gives us time to get over it and let our mind wander.
It comes in at 1:13 into the video. We have already spent a fair amount of time with her. We’re comfortable with her being there. She’s not this disturbing little girl that we see the for the first and only time. That could leave us wondering who or what that is. Here, she’s a little girl playing around trying to look scary. I don’t think that’s what they were going for with this video.
The part of the video that I have the hardest time with is when she is playing with the webs.
I think, “Mommy, I look scary, right?”
Both of those images on their own probably look just fine. That’s the problem. It doesn’t look like a short film. It looks like a series of behind-the-scenes videos of photography shoots strung together with the song playing in the background. Something like that can work. Check out What If I Go? by Mura Masa. I just don’t think it works here.
It’s not an awful video. It’s a video that didn’t need to exist. I also think that René & Radka need to look more with the eyes of a filmmaker than a photographer. They’re related. They’re not the same.
Pesky artists that I don’t know about having a history and all. How dare they! I need to know better than to go down rabbit holes, and just talk briefly about the video instead. Don’t look into the history of the record label Italians Do It Better. It’s not worth your time.
I guess there is, or potentially was a band called Glass Candy. They appear to be in limbo at the moment. According to the YouTube page for the music video:
Glass Candy’s sinister homage to the John Carpenter classic. A Candy coated gift for all the Ghouls & Goblins in Candyland. Trick Or Treat? Another teaser from ///BODY WORK///. Disorienting walls of synthesizers grasping for their last breath accompanied by Rossini’s most disturbing work to date. Unforgiving arpeggios slash at us like tiny knives in the darkest night, while Ida channels messages from a ouija board…
“It’s Halloween For The Last Time”
This song was intended as an homage to John Carpenter’s Halloween? The masks look more like something I’d expect Jason to be wearing.
The second one is a bit better. I might get that this was intended as a reference to Michael Myers without the description by seeing this one instead of thinking of Scream or Friday the 13th when I see the first one.
Yes, feminizing the mask so much defeats the purpose of the mask from Halloween, but it’s better than the Grim Reaper of Crystal Lake Forest Green up there. I still get the emptiness-behind-the-eyes vibe that I should when I look at this mask.
Back to the YouTube description:
Disorienting walls of synthesizers grasping for their last breath accompanied by Rossini’s most disturbing work to date. Unforgiving arpeggios slash at us like tiny knives in the darkest night, while Ida channels messages from a ouija board…
I’d say the song is like All Tomorrow’s Parties or Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground, but done with a slick Electronica sound instead of one that grates on your ears–in a good way. Then again, I’m not desperately trying to sell this.
My favorite part of the song is the lyric:”It’s Halloween For The Last Time”. It’s never Halloween for the last time. As long as that franchise can still be milked for money, Michael will keep coming home whether it’s to satisfy a Thorn curse or some other nonsense they come up with for another movie. I’d like to think that line is a reference to that fact.
The video plays like something I would expect to have been made by splicing together bits from 1970’s trailers. But it looks like it was all shot for this video.
The parts that I like the most are the quick shots of things like these:
Why are there giants there?
That shot is a little creepy.
This video gets my seal of approval. Director Alberto Rossini did a good job. It does scream of Instagram, but to be fair, Iron Maiden videos did something similar with Old Hollywood movies in the early-80s, it reminds me of Kevin Kerslake’s late-80s videos for Shadow Of A Doubt and Beauty Lies In The Eye by Sonic Youth, and I also think of Fantasy by Aldo Nova. He has directed other videos for Glass Candy in a similar style. Once you’ve watched too many of them, the style starts to loose something–much like the song. That’s unfortunate. Watch and listen in moderation.
There’s another video for a different version of the song that came out in 2016. I’ll say this in advance: It’s not a good sign when I have to poke around to make sure the video I’m looking at isn’t homemade.
I may disagree with Carman’s politics, but it wouldn’t be October without one of his videos. At least so long as one of them applies.
The last time we left Carman, he sent Old Hollywood movie monsters back into his television with the power of Jesus. Before that, he took up vigilantism to clear out a saloon full of demons and Satan himself. One of which was alcoholism that he took down by breaking a bottle over its head. This time Carman accepts a witch’s invitation–as the title says.
While watching this, I like to replace Carman’s inner monologue because of how over the top the warlock is in this video.
He had a Ouija board and Dungeons & Dragons manuals sitting around his house. They got me thinking this guy was a poser who just watched shows like Deception Of A Generation and Doorways To Danger, and was messing with me. But I decided to humor him.
He told me that he was paid to curse someone with AIDS by his aunt. However, people don’t die suddenly of AIDS like it’s a heart attack or something. Plus, the article was about a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.
Then he flashed the Italian hand-sign to give or ward off the evil eye like it was supposed to be intimidating or something. I thought about mentioning that my last name is Licciardello. I didn’t, though. I just knew that at this point I was done with this guy.
So I got all up in his face like I was I really offended by him.
I laid into him really thick with this story of Slimer-like ghosts that would visit him in his old age and drag him to Hell.
His bird exploded for some reason. I’m still not sure what that was about. Regardless, I made my dramatic exit.
You can go on and on with this video. I especially love the house that is a “Nightmare On Elm St. Special.” I’ll have to add that one alongside a TARDIS House.
If you want to find out about why the bird exploded, then hopefully the version with commentary by Carman and the director is still posted below. The two of them make of fun of the video well-enough without my help.
If you take nothing else away from this video, it’s that you probably shouldn’t drink something that is boiling–handed to you by a stranger or not.
And you’re in real trouble if you get this nervous while sitting in a Santa Claus chair.
I did Halloween last year. I figured I should do a Helloween video each October. Why not? It’s especially fitting this year since they released a new lyric video on the 12th in preparation for a Pumpkins United World Tour.
I love the cover of the single:
I don’t have a lot to say about this video because what I like about it is the editing, which is not exactly something that I can get across in words. It also doesn’t make any sense to try since the video is only 4 minutes and 44 seconds long. That said, it reminds me of those music videos from the 1960s that had the band acting like silent comedians in time with the song. In fact, it reminds me of the video for Sound Of The Screaming Day by Golden Earring, complete with the going into the mouth shot.
Sound Of The Screaming Day by Golden Earring (1967)
As for this:
you got me. Perhaps it has to do with then vocalist Kai Hansen wanting out of the band. That’s what Wikipedia says that he said in an interview that they were kind enough not to cite. Or it’s just a thrown pumpkin asking, “And so?” It’s probably the first one.
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, dir. Tom McLoughlin)
I see director Jeffrey Abelson, writer Keith Williams, and Alice Cooper got that Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) was meant to be funny.
I have a couple of questions right up front.
“And he’s after your soul”??? Umm…since when did Jason want your soul? It may have been 5 years since I watched parts 2-10, Freddy vs. Jason, and the remake, but I’m quite sure Jason was never concerned with souls. The closest he got was hopping into bodies in Jason Goes To Hell. That didn’t have to with souls. That was because he needed a Voorhees womb to get into and then pop-out fully grown seconds later to make his second cameo in his own film.
Also, he “knows your house”??? Jason is Santa Claus now? Cooper took some liberties with this song.
I’m not 100% sure why the kid in this video is named Jason. However, the film does make several jokes about the abandoned idea of having Tommy Jarvis become the new Jason, so I’m going to assume that’s the reason.
Jason is basically a stand-in for people who thumb their noses at these kinds of movies. And just in case you didn’t get that, they include the scene where the caretaker says:
Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment.
at the end of the video.
Seeing as Jason didn’t get good grades, much like his movie counterpart doesn’t have any of the following qualities,…
he has to walk to the theater with his date.
Why does this theater have an entrance that makes me think Pinhead is going to walk through it?
A codpiece? He doesn’t even break anything over it in the video. He does smash a bottle on his forehead though.
I’m glad they included the best scene in the movie. Tommy Jarvis deciding he needs to double-kill Jason, and in the process accidentally resurrecting him as a zombie .
It’s all your fault, Tommy. You could have just set fire to his coffin. You didn’t have to open it and poke at his corpse with a metal rod before trying to burn him.
Thanks to this video, we get to see Tarzan-Jason. I don’t remember that happening in any of the movies.
Yes, it turns out to be Alice Cooper pretending to be Jason. Still, Tarzan-Jason is something I could’ve have gotten behind. I’m guessing Cooper was pretending to be Jason because he just can’t let go of the ending of A New Beginning.
Continuity wasn’t a high priority for these movies. Not for the mask though. That must always have the gash in it no matter how much retconning goes on.
While the Cooper fanboy is scared by the film, Jason and his girlfriend eventually get fed up and wander onto the set of the rest of the music video. A lot of weird stuff is going on here.
Cooper is hanging out with a snake.
Cooper apparently had a cage setup to catch his son. What if they had been standing a little off-center?
Someone with wings rising off a horse. Sure.
They escape…somehow. Also, Jason gets Cooper…somehow.
In the end, the twist is that Jason’s father is Alice Cooper because we weren’t supposed to recognize his speaking voice? I guess that works seeing as I’m sure plenty of people didn’t notice Kane Hodder standing outside the corner’s office in Jason Goes To Hell. I didn’t.
But does that mean that Jason never saw his father before now? I’m going with it being that the films are make-believe like Alice Cooper in makeup. Alice Cooper is a man behind a mask too. Within the video, it’s a side his son never saw before.
Dokken had a total of three songs, including Dream Warriors, released for A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). They had their 1984 song, Into The Fire, played at the beginning of the film. I recently watched the movie on DVD, and that was the song played over the opening credits. According to Wikipedia, in theaters, it was also played over the opening credits, but for some reason, the original VHS release used the song Quiet Cool. Maybe there was a rights issue that was resolved by the time they got to the DVD release.
That brings me to the next thing. Not only is this video officially posted, but it’s in 720p. You don’t see that everyday on older videos–no matter how well-known they are. They appear to have done that for all the Dokken music videos that were put up in 2015. I’m really glad they did because it helps this video significantly. I know there’s movie footage in here, but because of the quality of the video, it blends in more with the stuff they shot for the video.
For those of you who haven’t seen Dream Warriors, the film takes place in a mental institution with the last of the offspring of the parents who burned Freddy to death. What happened to Jesse from part 2? Who knows. The best guess people seem to have is that Jesse is the kid they refer to as having cut off their eyelids to escape the nightmares.
A girl named Kirsten, played by Patricia Arquette, has the ability to pull people into her dreams. She’s havnig nightmares about the Elm Street house where Freddy is hanging out with numerous things to remind you of the first film such as a sticky floor.
She ends up getting committed to a mental institution where she meets a variety of different people. The gist is that they all have dreams that transcend their physical conditions, such as the kid in the wheelchair being able to walk, the nerdy kid who plays the movie’s version of D&D actually being a wizard, and Kirsten doing martial arts/gymnastics.
If you go through the different alter-egos of the kids and remember the 1980s, then you quickly realize that they are all things that adults in the 1980s would call hopeless, Satanic, you’re imagining your life away, get real, etc. Despite the emergence of Jokester-Freddy, he does act as a stand-in for parents, faux-Christians, news media, and others who would come up with some excuse to crush the dreams of these kids.
In the end, only a few survive in order to be killed by four screenwriters and director Renny Harlin in the 4th film. At least that’s the way I read it.
Oh, and Nancy is there so that they can leap over part 2 and tell us for sure that her mother did die at the end of the first film. John Saxon also shows up so that we can find out that Freddy’s remains were kept in the trunk of what I swear was the same model car as Christine–no joke.
I understand those parts. Why we needed to find out that Freddy is the child of a nun who was raped hundreds of times–again, who knows.
Anyways, only Kirsten, Freddy, and Dokken are in this music video, so forget about any of that showing up.
The video starts the same way as the movie, with Kirsten making a model house of the Elm Street one. Except this time she remembers to put on protective Dokken wards.
The video gets weird almost immediately because we quickly cut to Dokken being in the house. Did she pull them in?
They seem to be there to bother both Freddy and her. At one point, Freddy even seems to be pissed off that the band is scaring Kirsten more effectively, so he turns one of his stock jump-rope kids that she is holding into a skeleton.
At another point, one of the band members intersects with a scene from the movie to do a guitar solo, which I guess bothers Freddy because he drags him away.
Without the movie in front of me, I’m about 80% sure that Arquette didn’t shoot footage specifically for this music video. Englund on the other hand, definitely did, not only because of his interactions with the band, but because we see Freddy wake up at the end after being defeated by hair metal.
“What a nightmare! Who were those guys?” –Freddy Krueger
I hear you, Freddy. It isn’t fair. Jason gets Alice Cooper and you get Dokken. Don’t worry, he’ll show up as your father a couple of films down the road.
I guess that means we were in Freddy’s nightmare. I haven’t watched parts 5, 6, and 7 yet, so maybe it will make sense then–but probably not. I’m just going to assume that throughout the 1980s, Freddy had nightmares about heavy metal bands.
Through the Shattered Lens 