Remember these horror-flavored music videos from back in the day?
Kids nowadays, with their fidget spinners and TikTok, don’t really have the same fondness for music videos that my generation does. If you grew up in the ‘80s or ‘90s, music videos weren’t just a part of youth culture, they were practically a social currency in and of themselves. Like, the idea of just staying inside and watching music videos all day had such broad-based appeal, especially if you lived somewhere where access to diverse types of music was extremely limited. Remember, at one point, the internet and iTunes didn’t exist — your musical options were whatever was on the radio or on sale at K-Mart and that was it.
So yeah, MTV was a big deal for a while. Long, long before it became a channel that played re-reruns of Ridiculousness 24 hours a day, it was the go-to place for rap and alternative rock and heavy metal, if not the only place you could find such “fringe” music. And unsurprisingly, a lot of those music videos borrow very liberally from the world of horror movies — and in some cases, even managed to out-gross, out-gore, and out-terrify the best Hollywood had to offer!
Yeah, we’ve all seen “Thriller” a million times by now. But if you’re willing to take a sharp detour off memory lane, there are plenty of other, somewhat forgotten music videos out there that do their part to give you the willies big-time. In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of at least ten of them … and yep, the videos themselves are embedded in the article so you can rock out and feel creeped out at the same time!
Greg Kihn Band – “Jeopardy” (1983)
Man, this video is so great. It starts off like your usual cheesy mid-‘80s music video, complete with the whole done to death wedding day shtick that seemed like it was in every other clip back in the day. But as soon as our “hero” puts the wedding ring on his betrothed’s finger, BLAM! Instant zombie apocalypse, right there in the chapel. And if that isn’t awesome enough, just wait until he’s attacked by demonic subterranean tentacles and starts playing a piece of wood like a guitar.
Twisted Sister and Alice Cooper – “Be Chrool To Your Scuel” (1985)
Twisted Sister had a ton of great music videos in the ‘80s and so did Alice Cooper. So what happens when you put both of them together in one clip? That’s right, you get an entire high school swarming with the undead, complete with two undead lovers literally eating each other’s faces, severed arms rolling across desks and gurgling teenage ghouls having their throats cleaved open in real time. Plus, you get to hear Bobcat Goldthwait going off on a rant about tacos, pate and eating squirrels for like an entire minute at the very beginning of the video.
WASP – “Scream Until You Like It” (1987)
Well, it’s not everyday that you get to see any music video that makes extensive use of clips from Ghoulies II, but then again, not every band is WASP, either. This tie-in headbanger anthem is just marvelous in so many ways — it’s a lot like Dokken’s “Dream Warriors” clip, to the point it almost seems like it was patterned after it on a beat by beat basis. Just, uh, without Freddy Krueger being in it, obviously. I’m not sure if anybody’s ever said to themselves “you know, I sure would like to see Blackie Lawless have to act alongside a Gremlin-ripoff muppet in a music video,” but hey, if you did … you got your wish.
Candlemass – “Bewitched” (1987)
You know you’re digging deep into the archives when you reach an obscure stoner-goth metal outfit like Candlemass. But trust me, this video is so worth it. This seven and a half minute clip plays out more like a mini straight to VHS neo-Gothic horror movie, complete with dudes dressed up like they were Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula or something. Of course, the highlight is when the lead singer — complete with the world’s poofiest mullet — emerges from the sepulcher to dance around in the snow and annoy women wearing Dungeons and Dragons robes, for whatever reason. If this thing was any cheesier, you could cook it in a fondue pot.
Geto Boys – “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991)
This isn’t just one of my favorite music videos ever, but one of my favorite songs period. The Houston-based gangsta rap pioneers turn an old Isaac Hayes track into an amazing ballad about mental health stigma and horror movie paranoia, with the unrated music video featuring ample nudity, to boot (just so you know, the clip above is the “family-friendly” version — so no worries about catching any stray boobz if you’re browsing Wicked Horror at work.) Maybe calling it a “scary” clip is a bridge too far, but there is no denying its intrinsic Halloween-time appeal — I mean, I could watch Bushwick Bill rob children of their trick or treat bags forever.
Type O Negative – “Black No. 1” (1993)
This song is pretty much THE unofficial song of Halloween if you were a goth kid growing up in the ‘90s. The eleven-minute-long black and white music video is undiluted ephemeral joy with a little bit of everything in it. We’ve got sound effects on loan from The Addams Family, Hot Topic employees doing interpretive dance numbers in the background and, of course, plenty of disturbingly up-close shots of lead singer Peter Steele’s choppers. If you ever wondered what black nail polish sounds like, it sounds like this.
Aphex Twin – “Come to Daddy” (1997)
People are still kinda either/or when it comes to ‘90s electronica: some people dig it, some people think it’s a buncha noise indistinguishable from a malfunctioning air conditioner unit. But with a music video like “Come To Daddy,” it’s a bit of a moot point — in fact, if you don’t like the music, it just makes the creepy atmosphere of the clip that much spookier. I guess the best way to describe this video is what would happen if David Lynch and David Fincher did the world’s strongest shrooms and decided to combine their subsequent psilocybin-induced nightmares into a singular vision. It’s freaky stuff, for sure — and I’m still waiting for Spirit Halloween to mass manufacture a to-scale animatronic of that one eight-foot-tall skinny dude who screams at people.
Robbie Williams – “Rock DJ” (2000)
One of the greatest bait and switch tricks in the history of music videos. The track begins like a lot of late ‘90s clips, with Robbie doing a slow, seductive striptease with a gaggle of female dancers swaying their bodies behind him. And then — the dude starts yanking his own flesh off, ultimately leaving nothing behind but a creepy CGI skeleton. This is about as close as we’ll ever get to a crossover between Ricky Martin and Hellraiser; I’ve got a feeling Clive Barker is a fan of this one for a lot of reasons.
Strapping Young Lad – “Love?” (2005)
The Canadian art metal band manages to knock out two holidays at once with this epic music video. Since it actually is a real love song — albeit one with lyrics like “the paradox of needing” and “make room for breeding” in there, somehow — you could add this to your Valentine’s Day mix and it wouldn’t feel out of place at all. And yeah, it definitely deserves room on your Halloween-time playlist, too. Why? Because the entire video is a loving homage to The Evil Dead series. “Oh, what a feeling!” Devin Townsend sings on the outro. And how right he is!
VAST – “Pretty When You Cry” (2010)
This video came out at a time when YouTube had pretty much supplanted MTV as the go to source for music videos, so I might be cheating just a little here. But I think you’ll forgive me considering how weird this clip turns out. Imagine Pan’s Labyrinth, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and that old Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Cell put in a blender and then dump a nearly indescribable grand finale involving a lot of thermal vision and a lot of people dressed up like zombie puppets on top of it and you’ve got something that’ll have you tapping your toes and saying “WTF” in the best possible way. And almost as scary as the video itself? The fact that it came out 15 years ago and not five months ago.