THE VIDEO Twisted Sister, "Hot Love," Love is for Suckers, 1987, Atlantic
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Talkin' 'bout hot love, you're makin' me cray-zay / hot love, you're makin' me ba-a-ad / hot love, you're makin' me cray-zee / think I'll go maaaaaaad"
THE VERDICT Summertime, and the videos are cheesy! Well, it's the tail end of July, and even though I personally have another two whole months of summer ahead of me, I'm wrapping up our special summertime videos block. Seven weeks' worth of sun, bikinis, and outdoor concerts -- not too shabby, I'd say.
Let's wrap it up with some Twisted Sister. Now, I know most of this video takes place at night, but come on, the car wash scene? It's totally summer. Not to mention all the late night drag racing. Since it's Twisted Sister (and since we can see the cars' license plates), we know we're in New York (probably Long Island), and obviously, this kind of stuff isn't going to work there in winter. Nope, "Hot Love" is definitely a summertime video.
It's also a pretty cheesy video, but very much within Twisted Sister's wheelhouse -- when they aren't making videos with Niedermeyer from Animal House (aka "the Maestro" from Seinfeld), they're making videos where it feels like it's the 1950s. In this case, we've got two rows of classic cars and kit cars lined up to illuminate a drag strip. A bunch of very 80s-looking guys, plus the members of Twisted Sister who aren't Dee Snider (and who are basically confined to reaction shots in this video) watch as Dee loses the race.
To whom does he lose? Well I'm glad you asked. I'm not good with cars, so I can't tell you anything about her ride except that it's black, and has those little visors over the back windshield that were so cool in the 80s and that no one has had since. She's wearing red heels, and a red miniskirt-belly shirt combo featuring I'm going to say zero underwear, and sort of a ripped apart and then laced up again look. She also has a giant Triumph motorcycles belt that is so large it looks like a fannypack. Her most salient feature? She looks like Christie Brinkley... on crack. No seriously. Have you ever seen that SNL skit with Kelly Ripa, where she highlights her hair with crack? That is more or less exactly how this woman acts.
Dee takes a Polaroid of her, and we're reminded just how unattractive he is -- oy, that is a face only a mother could love. But of course, since it's a heavy metal video, this reasonably attractive blonde woman (who admittedly does have a great body) is all over it. As are the Twisted Sister guys, who make "OMG" faces and give Dee the thumb's up.
Dee starts passing his Polaroid around to show the guys, as if they can't see her standing like ten feet away from them. He starts to approach Christie, but she gets in her car. Dee attempts to give chase, and we see that he shares taste in footwear with Jon Bon Jovi and Punky Brewster (pink Chuck Taylors).
Dee tries to hit on the woman while driving, further cementing the Christie Brinkley connection -- it's not entirely unlike her sequences in National Lampoon's Vacation. Well, except this woman gets a bit dirtier. In an homage to the album's cover, she pulls out a lollipop in the shape of the Twisted Sister logo and pretty much begins fellating it (Love is for Suckers, get it?).
Dee is freaking out and jumping up and down in his car -- he reminds me of the Big Bad Wolf characters in old cartoons, whose like eyes pop out, and then they stamp the floor a bunch while steam pours from their ears, and then their tongues unfold like giant staircases and they have to pack them all back in their mouths. I'm pretty sure, given that this is Twisted Sister, that this is intentional. But oh! Party's over, Dee. We see him making crazy eyes in his rear view as he gets pulled over. Christie laughs at him and waves goodbye, which combined with Dee getting pulled over for reckless driving is the most realistic part of this video.
We then follow Dee as he goes around to various dudes standing around or sitting in classic cars, showing them his Polaroid to try to identify Christie. He doesn't have any luck. But then suddenly, it's daytime. Dee is driving around with Jay Jay French when he slams on the brakes and throws his car into reverse.
Good work, Dee, you've found her. Christie is cleaning her car, in the extremely practical outfit combo of a white miniskirt, black cowboy boots, and a white halter top. We get a lot of close-ups of her cleavage and implied upskirt shots, just to keep things classy. Jay Jay has to bite his thumb he's so excited by the spectacle, while Dee keeps his cool -- he's more interested in checking out her car.
Next comes more or less the most ridiculous shot of the video. After getting extra-sexy with the soap suds and making Jay Jay damn near pass out, Christie does this enormous stretch, and we see that her halter top is being held together -- rather improbably -- by a single black plastic button that is being made to do a lot of work. The camera zooms way in on her cleavage, and then -- uhoh! -- our next shots are of the button landing in a pool of soap suds. Implied nudity! Like I said, classy.
I should also mention that interspersed with the car wash sequences are shots of the band actually performing the song. It's dark, and poorly lit to boot, so we mostly just see individual band members waving their instruments in the air and making ridiculous faces at the camera. Like I said, if you're in Twisted Sister and you aren't Dee Snider, you're barely in this video.
We then get a long sequence of shots of Christie smiling maniacally and counting with her fingers, interspersed with shots of classic cars peeling out, interspersed with semi-opaque shots panning up her body (in the red outfit from the beginning of the video). As she gets crazier and crazier, we also get shots of the band getting crazier and crazier.
Suddenly, for no reason I can discern, her car bursts through a fake brick wall. We get all these quick shots showing her license plate (New York plate "NO JOSHN"), the front of her car, and then another license plate (no visible state but based on the colors and the time period, Pennsylvania plate "HOT LOVE"). Lord only knows why this is like the climactic shot in the video.
We then finally see Twisted Sister performing, although it's so badly lit it's hard to tell what the heck is going on. They are on top of some risers and surrounded by cars, with more cars behind and somehow, up above them. It sort of reminds me of the junkyard from A Nightmare on Elm Street IV in "Love Kills." Except that you can actually see crew members standing on scaffolding operating the spotlights (I'm not kidding), so that kind of takes away from it.
Anyway, it's just the band overselling the bejeezus out of the song, mostly backlit and hard to see anyway. At the last minute, Christie's car pulls up right into an empty spot in front of the center of the stage. We see a close-up of keys dropping into her hand, then the camera pulls back so we can see she is tossing her keys up in the air and catching them, taunting Dee. (Also, she's changed into a strapless pleather minidress.)
Dee, who's now wearing a giant coat and looking vaguely like the Undertaker in a frightwig, suddenly reaches up and catches them before she can. He's super-pleased with himself, and Christie is super-pissed. He pulls out, leaving her onstage making exasperated arm gestures with the band, who are still plugging away.
Dee gives his final "yeah-ahh-ahhh!" through her sun roof. Then the camera pans around her car, and we see that it now has the "Hot Love" plates on it. I'm sorry, catching someone's keys counts as a legal transfer of ownership? Guess I have to remember that. Anyway, the rest of the band is still making faces as Christie walks up to the car. It cuts to the car pulling away, and since she's not there, we have to assume she's in it.
Dee then turns toward the camera looking pleased, and next thing we get Christie now full-on blowing the Twisted Sister lollipop. Honestly, it's one of the more risque things I've seen in one of these videos, and trust me, I've spent a lot of my life watching heavy metal videos. Ew.
It's funny, it makes me remember that a friend of mine had this record at the time, and I was really scandalized by it as a kid. I had very little idea who Twisted Sister were (in fact, in retrospect I was inexplicably confusing them with Swing Out Sister), but I found the album cover very scary, and the sentiment that "Love is for suckers" alarming. Ahh, the innocence of youth.
Fun fact about this album: Even though it's not very good, it's definitely not for lack of effort -- this is a little bit of a who's who of 80s metal. Kip Winger and Reb Beach of Winger, plus Steve Whiteman and Jimmy Chalfant of Kix all contributed backup vocals (and in Beach's case, some guitar, too). Fascinating! But even more so -- and this is allmusic claiming this (click on the name, then click through to "movie entry") -- Luke Perry?!?! Yes, as in Dylan McKay from 90210 -- Luke effing Perry apparently contributed vocals to this album. Wow. All I can say is, WOW.
P.S.: If you're amused by the title of this post, bonus points for your intimate knowledge of 80s metal!