THE VIDEO Mötley Crüe, "Too Young to Fall In Love," Shout at the Devil, 1983, Elektra
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Well you're killin' me / your love's a guillotine / why won't you just set me freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-ah / too young to fall in love / (I'm too young!) / too young to fall in love / (much too young!) / too young to fall in loooo-ooooove"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION Drunken sailors paw at a stumbling hooker while extras from a high school production of Les Miserables cavort in Mötley Crüe's creepy 80s meets Mad Max version of China (or possibly Chinatown). A little kid, and then a guy dressed possibly like a monk (or at least in a long robe) encounter one of them, an especially derelict-looking young girl sitting in the gutter.
While an unidentified person eats an unidentified food in a poorly lit room, the kid runs to go tell Nikki Sixx, who is with the rest of the crüe preening in front of wooden blinds. As the mötley lads stand up, ready to take action, we see that the person eating the whatever was actually the girl from the first scene, as the monk-style-dude abruptly announces that dinner's over, pulling her up from the table.
Meanwhile, the crüe's on the move, with Vince Neil (sorry Vince, but this story was priceless -- and it was the #2 link on Google) leading the others down the street from the opening shot in the best 80s meets West Side Story style I've seen since 'Love is a Battlefield.' They are possibly already too late though, as the monk dude is already leading her into much, much fancier rooms, where the doors open automatically to display an array of charming concubines. A fat dude in sunglasses comes out, briefly inspects the goods, then beckons her inward as the automatic doors close, leaving the monk dude outside (and not even paying him a commission!).
Mötley Crüe seem to have given up, as the guys have now taken a break to set up all of their equipment in the same street, and Vince is still crazy gyrating, though he's got nothing on Tommy Lee, who appears to be trying out for the part of Dr. Frank N. Furter as he drums. People talk all the time about guitar face, but seriously, Tommy takes top prize over anybody when it comes to uh, drum face.
As we go into the guitar solo, we're back in the fancy rooms, and at the center of all the concentric doors (sorry, I know I'm not describing these well, but since I don't know the proper architectural term nor do I want to fall back on catch-all terms like "Chinese style," I'm kind of at a loss here), we see the fellow hookers cleaning the main girl up by dumping a bucket of water on her, in a scene reminiscent of both Flashdance and, strangely, Coming to America. (Note that there's no actual parallel scene in the second movie visually, just the idea of exotically clad people err, washing each other).
But okay, the crüe's done messing around, as the little kid shows them into the kitchen. Tommy tries to pause to taste the unidentified food, but Vince is like, "dude, come on," so they keep going. As we reprise the song's opening, we finally get a good view of the old sunglasses dude as he sees the crüe appear in one of the rounded doorways. The girl comes out, now all cleaned up and brandishing a fan. With typical "Yaaaa!" "Hiyaaa!" sound effects, rather androgynous ninjas appear.
The crüe scatter, and as Vince dodges one's blows with his dance moves, Mick Mars dispatches his with a truly half-hearted kick (I know the guy's got a bad hip but come on, please! Okay, seriously though, even if he's a rat-looking bastard and all the stuff about ghost aliens or whatever in The Dirt was crazy, Mick's a total sweetie). Vince gets rid of his ninja foe by kind of shoving the guy's sword back toward him, and Nikki utilizes a similar move. Tommy, however, opts for the classic bitch slap (replete with sound effects).
Their job here apparently done, the boys reunite in the doorway, and for whatever reason it is revealed to us that both the old man and the young girl have on the little two strokes of cheek war paint so often favored by the crüe members, particularly Tommy (as well as Adam Ant). As each bit of face art is revealed, a gong is struck (why?). Nikki makes a "pff, whatever" face and waves like he totally doesn't care, Mick shakes his head and walks off, Vince kind of shrugs and walks away, while Tommy poses for significantly longer (internal monologue: "Dude, I'm the hottest member of this band! I mean I'm married to Heather friggin' Locklear").
The band members move briskly back through the kitchen, brushing themselves off, and at last Tommy gets to try the mystery dish -- or so he thinks. A knife-brandishing ninja (possibly the monk dude from the beginning, but this video has barely any light in it so its hard to tell) takes a swing at him from behind, but Tommy takes him out by swinging a sack of something and hitting him right in the gut. As he finally tastes said mystery food, he makes a face ("Eew!") and spits it out (and yeah, we get to hear him spit), then leaves. The video ends with another gong sound, as the crüe make devil horns and throw gang signs, safely stationed once again before their backlit window shade.
THE VERDICT Okay. So we've got a street urchin recruited for a life of prostitution, and a little boy who tells the band to come rescue her (or something). Because then yeah, the rescue just involves fighting some ninjas, comparing makeup, and then leaving -- they totally don't rescue her. And thought they're "too young to fall in love," they don't seem to be in love with her. And if she's "too young" to be forced into pseudo-sexual slavery, then why don't they save her? Even though the little kid is standing with them again at the end, you can imagine Nikki sort of punching him in the arm like, "dude, that was so not worth it!"
It's kind of the same thing with the song (and in actuality yes, this is one of my favorite Mötley Crüe songs -- if you're going to love this stuff in the first place, you can't be too picky about whose lyrics are more or less misogynistic than others). The lyrics involve a lot of weird, pointless comparisons ("you say our love is like dynamite / open your eyes, it's like fire and ice"). Vince says this unnamed person's love is killing him, her "love's a [metaphorical] guillotine" from which he implores her to set him free, but then by the next verse, it's no longer a metaphor (or a simile -- sorry, I'm not so hot on these things now that I'm out of school). "Now I'm killing you / watch your face turn blue" -- uh, whoa! When did that happen? Weird, if you ask me (and also much more explicit than these things usually get, no matter what the PMRC may have claimed back in the day).
So yeah, in the end, this is a tough call. The video (like the song itself) almost has a narrative, but it doesn't quite work out. This does definitively place it in between older, essentially non-narrative videos ("Live Wire") and later, more explicitly narrative videos ("Dr Feelgood") -- somewhat of a reversal of the trend we see with most other bands, who go from heavily scripted to (what at least are made to look like) more unscripted videos. All I can say is CRRüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüE!