THE VIDEO Vinnie Vincent Invasion, "Love Kills," A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 / The Dream Master Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1988, Chrysalis Records
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Whoa-oh lo-ove keeeelllls / the fire's gone / dying embers sti-ill remain / oh-oh lo-ove keeellls / and now you're gone / girl, I'll nev-err be-ee the sa-ame"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION Here's my prequel to the video: This video, following in the footsteps of Dokken's "Dream Warriors," is for well, not the theme song I guess but for a song from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert here, but I did a little bit of research on this film, and here's what I've found.
At this point in the NOES series, it's "characters by" Wes Craven. He's abdicated the director's seat to some dude named Renny Harlin (a little more digging goes on to show that every NOES movie has been directed by someone new -- this guy in particular, however is going to go on direct such greats as Deep Blue Sea, which starred LL Cool J and intelligent sharks). And yes admittedly, the first film aside, I haven't spent much time watching the NOES series (I am a huge exception to the likes metal : likes horror rule, I can't deal with anything at all scary, and even though most reviewers seem to find this movie more funny than scary, I am certain it's too scary for me). And anyway, all critics seem to agree that in spite of turning out the biggest box office of any NOES film, this one is the beginning of their slide into utter crap sequels.
The movie apparently brings back many of the terrorized teens who prevailed against Freddy in the last installment (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), Kincaid, Joey, and Kristen. A bunch of "we think Freddy's for sure dead" stuff happens, but then the plot really begins with um... a dog peeing. Kincaid falls asleep in the town's junkyard, and his dog pees fire on Freddy's grave (or something). This causes him to reassemble (which we see in the video). Freddy kills him, then shows up as a chick in Joey's waterbed. Guess who he kills next. I couldn't get myself to read far enough into the script to find out what happens to Kristen, but the main girl in these things usually does okay for herself.
Nope, wait -- according to the Times review Kristen totally buys it too. Anyway, none of the actors are well known, and most of them play characters like "buddy in locker room," "jock," "nurse," and uh, "soul from Freddy's chest." Not so sure about that one. Let's just get to the video.
Anyway, there's no fire pee here. Instead, the video opens with a shadowy pan up the silhouette of Freddy, then we see a very pouffy-haired Mark Slaughter stepping into a room beside some hanging lanterns. Mark's wearing a denim vest over a sleeveless white tee. He also was a bit heavy-handed with the eyeliner today. He walks over to a candelabra dripping with tons of white wax and makes puppy eyes at the camera as he peeps over it at us. Then we see some girl from NOES (probably Alice, but I'm not sure) looking across a creepy but colorfully lit room with Freddy visible in the opposite corner. As the camera comes around to show us Freddy waggling his knife fingers at her, we can see that they're in a church. Then we see Mark again, the wider shot revealing that he's wearing ripped jeans and little black... gloves. Yes, gloves. He's still in the room with the candelabra, it's also full of columns, torn fabric, and uh... Christmas lights? Not sure.
As Mark walks around the waving fabric and crooked picture frames, we go back to the creepy church or whatever it is, and there are a bunch of creepy children up in the choir thing, and of course, Freddy's still wiggling his fingers. Then we see some more wiggling fingers -- though these are Vinnie Vincent's, on an acoustic guitar. Before we see him though, we see Mark singing by all of the candles again. He's doing jazz hands with the little gloves, and emoting so sincerely he looks like one of the people who'd get taken out in one of these movies.
Then we finally see V.V. He's pouting and punching his guitar around, and he appears to have the bottom layers of his heavily teased raven mane either braided, covered in beads, or both. Mark really goes nuts (and finally is shown holding a mic), and then we see the whole band together in their creepy room. From far away, all of the draped fabric looks like cobwebs, which is probably the effect they were going for. The camera pans around them, then we cut to a scene from the movie (a teenage boy and girl walk down a school hallway together -- probably Kristen and her bf). After they pass, Mark makes a fist, and we see a row of lockers slashed by Freddy with light coming through them. If I remember correctly (I probably don't), this image was used a lot to promote this movie.
The camera spins and descends on a sleeping girl (I think it's Alice), and a creepy, backlit door opens, revealing Freddy. We then briefly see her standing in a dark room wearing a white dress before spending a while with the Vinnie Vincent boyz, who are indeed gonna rock. We finally see Dana Strum and Bobby Rock briefly, too. Vinnie and Mark lean on each other and sing, and Vinnie maintains a look of total detachment. He looks like Carly Simon on quaaludes, honestly. Maybe it's also that he's super skinny and wearing a black tunic belted by some kind of medallion-festooned deal over what can't be jeans and must be stretch pants of some description and high-heeled black boots. Everybody rocks out for a while, then we see a hand holding a postcard with a picture of Freddy holding up Alice that says, "Greetings from Hell," being lit on fire.
We then see a major shot from the movie: The camera travels through mountains of wrecked cars to find the character who must be Kincaid, then we see Freddy reforming from the pile of bones (we don't see the dog peeing, just its aftermath). He watches and screams in terror and the camera pulls back, showing the junkyard from overhead again. Next we see some stuff from the movie which for me has basically no context; I'm sure it's how random people die, but I wasn't going to pore over the whole script (or actually watch the movie) to figure that out. Anyway, we see a girl frantically crawling around on the ceiling and Kristen (I think) running in and seeing her, then we see a guy on a stretcher being wheeled into a surreally lit emergency room. We see a normal hand pulling on a latex glove, then the surgeon mopping his head with a tissue, then (from the patient's perspective) one of those weird plastic masks coming in (you know, the thing they use to give you anesthesia). The surgeon pulls off his mask... yeah, guess who it is.
Mark briefly emotes, then we see a brunette sitting while the shadows of Freddy's fingers wiggle across her face. A dorky looking girl with glasses stares blankly, and then we see that her worksheet says "Learning is fun with Freddy!" just before her pen begins to drip blood. The brown-haired girl, who I thought was in a completely different place but who I guess is just sitting opposite her, looks like she's going to throw up. Vinnie plays especially theatrically, Mark shrieks, and even Dana (totally in the background the whole time) throws his hair around. Then we see another big scene from the movie -- Alice, alone in a movie theatre, gets caught in a ton of wind and eventually pulled into the screen. Predictably, this leads to much rocking out on the part of Vincent et al., but I'm mostly just wondering why the female protagonists in NOES movies are always wearing these dowdy-looking Laura Ashley dresses.
In between the rocking, we see a boy (maybe Joey) lifting weights, with of course Freddy reflected in the weight (he is frickin' omnipresent, so far as I can tell). Then we see some dorky-looking older woman and a younger blonde over her shoulder. We zoom in on the blonde then switch to her perspective as blood appears on the older woman's back as if she had just been slashed by Freddy. Then we see a quick shot of Freddy's fingers, then the girl (wearing a bikini and probably waking up), then Vinnie V. holding his guitar aloft. Dana finally gets some screen time as we see what I think is one of the more maligned death sequences in the movie -- a girl turns partially into a roach, gets trapped in a roach motel, then dies in a glue trap. Freddy makes a scary face and a girl wakes up, then Vinnie actually smiles a bit as he launches into the solo. The camera lavishes much attention on him as he grinds with his guitar, stares at it in wonderment, holds it up with one hand, etc. Mark dances around with Dana throughout. As he wraps up, we see a shot that implies that they're in that creepy church, only it's a lot better lit for the video than it was for the movie.
Freddy's glove flies through the air, then falls to the ground, and the camera flies through some kind of purgatory type place, emerging with a shot of I think Alice standing outside of "the Freddy house." We see Vinnie and Mark again, then we're in what I believe is the part of the movie where Joey drowns in his waterbed. Yes kids, if some kind of hot siren lady comes singing to you from beneath the surface of your waterbed, don't try to save her. Freddy's fingers rake along a guitar but then -- wait -- yup, it's Vinnie wearing Freddy's outfit. Vinnie vamps the fingers, then we see the real Freddy shoot some kind of lightning or something at a girl, causing her to convulse. Freddy stands under a red light, then Vinnie and Mark both sing before we go back to the movie and see a blonde girl panic, then be thrown backward through some kind of weird room. Vinnie pinwheels, Mark squeals, Freddy beckons, a blonde looks panicked. But there's no big finale. It just kind of ends with Mark going nuts.
THE VERDICT Jeez, I always think I'm not writing as much anymore, then I scroll back up. Damn. I don't know if Vinnie Vincent's mom has this much to say about the Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Then again, if you peruse old issues of Hit Parader et al., you will find that though they don't cover them, many a fan wrote in to ask for more coverage of Vinnie Vincent and proclaim him the most underrated guitarist in metal. Then again, they also had people writing in letters like, "I know you don't normally do this sort of thing, but if you could just print one picture of Fred Coury naked, or at least wearing as little clothing as possible, that would really be great." People also write in who refer to Frankie Banali as an "Italian Stallion."
Okay, so maybe that's a bad example. But I do think that in the scheme of things, Vinnie Vincent and Mark Slaughter are a good pairing. They both fall into the same category for me: I want to like them but somehow, I just can't. In V.V.'s case, I'm sure he's reasonably proficient, but I just can't shake the notion that Kiss hired him basically because his resemblance to Ace Frehley is strong enough that maybe they thought people just wouldn't notice the difference ("Hey, they don't really know what we look like without our makeup on anyway, right?"). And he did have the wussiest Kiss makeup of anyone ("The Warrior"? Really?). Same thing with Mark Slaughter. In spite of the fact that he's quite good looking, and doesn't seem to age much at all over the years, I just can't not see him as way too lame. He's a bit shrieky but overall not a bad vocalist, but he just seems a little... well, humorless is what comes to mind. Sigh. I know he and Dana are all BFF but Dana doesn't even register on my radar. Double sigh.
As for the video: As these things go, it's okay. Unlike "Dream Warriors," it doesn't try to incorporate the band into the action very much. It just intersperses movie shots not quite heavy-handedly enough for it to feel like a preview for the movie. The song is okay, too -- the first verse is especially good, though the pre-chorus just kills me with lameness every time. Mark's voice is just a bit thin to sustain all of his attempts at truly singing. But it's got potential. You know who could have really done this thing up right? Dokken.
P.S. Giant new photos added 4/5/10. It's always amazing to me to go back and look at things I posted five years ago. Do you know what a bitch of a time I had learning about ANOES4 for this post? Seriously, you want to talk about a nightmare. And now it's like boom, two clicks and I've learned the whole plot.