Glass Candy | Through the Shattered Lens

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.

Regardless, enjoy!

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.

Enjoy!