Welcome to another new feature at the Chateau: The Third Umlaut! A critique of 80’s metal excess in costume, set design, storyline, and whatever else is ripe for regret. Where bad ideas just get worse, where throwing in more of anything – blood, fire, scantily-clad buttocks – only heightens the artistic travesty. Hence, the third umlaut – something that sounds like it should be totally metal, and…isn’t.
Let’s start this off with a video that features an incoherent mess of barbed wire, femme fatales, animal-print spandex, and one of rock’s most abominable haircuts ever. Hello, Dokken!
We are greeted by a rocker babe doing calisthenics inside a portal to a parallel universe. Is she guarding the entrance? Is she herself trapped? Note the ripped leotard – barbarism was a recurring theme in music videos, regardless of genre, in 1984.
And a very sensual kind of barbarism it was – clothing torn in just the right provocative places, features exaggerated with some serious maneater makeup.
We get quite a few pretty faces on the way in, setting us up for a total bait-and-switch. Pay attention to the hands, that’s foreshadowing. (Yes, really.)
And here’s our frontman, doing the barbaric thing with some ripped spandex of his own, layered even, with the addtion of biker gloves. He is inexplicably singing sideways – perhaps the director wanted to make absolutely sure we register the zebra print on his bicep? This is Don Dokken we’re talking about, after all – who never struck me as the same charismatic caliber as Vince Neil or Stephen Pearcy, and probably needed every last little cool point he could scrounge.
See, like those pants. Wild! Crazy! Instant 1984 cool! Just the thing to slap on a lead singer. And to think this is one of the more pedestrian outfits of the times.
Nikki Sixx and Michael Monroe were much, much more adept at making silly faces onstage – it enhanced their stage personas rather than unraveled them, as is going on here.
OK. So now we go from being onstage to the whole band getting whisked away into an alternate universe, where they end up pushing a dumpster through into one of the less-inspired harem shots that 80’s metal was so notorious for. No whips, no sparkling outfits…
This is the queen? My gods, they really had no budget whatsoever making this thing. This is the chick who’s supposed to shoot lasers out of her eyes, or caress some kind of future-apocalyptic weapon, or at least get an amazing bit of fancy dress out of it. Instead, “just sit so your legs look kind of spidery, honey, and look vaguely menacing.”
This is one of the minions, and she looks hells better. And hey – a semblance of narrative!
Fingernails! Evil female fingernails! Which is a weird theme to focus on – the flames drawing near, love burning bright, consuming Don Dokken’s soul, this song is all about fire.
Which we do get, when the band decides to walk across a giant barbeque grill. Framed by waving hands, setting us up for…
GIANT SMOKING FINGERNAILS ON FIRE!!! Which the band must now climb over to get back to their stage.
AHHHH! Now the fingernails are on stage!! Joined by a pair of dancing girls bookending the band, some fire in the foreground, and, for some reason, a helicopter. And just as quickly as it appeared, narrative slinked back off into the night, perhaps in search of a Cher video.
Jeff Pilson acquits himself admirably, just by not looking overtly ridiculous.
George Lynch? Not so fortunate.
