THE VIDEO Warrant, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Cherry Pie, 1990, Columbia
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SAMPLE LYRIC "I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cab-iiiiin / I know a secret that I just can't tell / I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin / know who put the bah-days in the wishin' welllll"
THE VERDICT My boyfriend plays guitar, and every time he picks it up when I'm around and starts playing something, I invariably yell, "play the beginning of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'!" He always is all "I don't know it blablabla" and best case scenario I get him to play "Cherry Pie," but perhaps this post will provide the inspiration to tackle the lovely acoustic intro to this song.
Speaking of intros, I have to give fair warning now: This post will undoubtedly be full to bursting with digressions, because there is nothing, literally nothing this video doesn't remind me of. Okay, technically, there are lots of things it doesn't remind me of, but... well... why don't we just get these out of the way now?
As per usual, this reminds me of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and of course, Scooby-Doo. There's an episode of Dynomutt that features Scooby and the gang with a swamp theme -- "The Wizard of Ooze" -- where the villains live in a swamp that looks like this, and turn Big City into Bog City by pumping mud into it.
Even more though this reminds me of the Scooby-Doo episodes that take place in a swamp. In the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? there's an episode with a witch and a zombie haunting a swamp ("Which Witch is Which?"). I feel like the backgrounds from that get more or less re-used for the Scooby-Doo Show episode "The Gruesome Game of the Gator Ghoul" which is, you know, pretty much what it sounds like. Monster alligator haunting a swamp.
There must be something about swamps and monsters -- or maybe I just watch a lot of things with swamps and monsters -- because this video also reminds me of the numerous movies they watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that take place in the south -- "The Giant Spider Invasion" (which I thought was rural Georgia but is apparently Wisconsin) comes immediately to mind (watch it minus Mike and the bots here), but the one that is most similar to this is probably "Boggy Creek II" which involves a Sasquatch in rural Arkansas.
Though not super-similar to other metal videos (closest that comes to mind for me is Alice Cooper's "House of Fire," which also features the light-shining-through-holes-in-house motif), it's definitely similar to other videos that appear to take place in the south. The first one that comes to mind is Damn Yankee's "High Enough," since that also involves law enforcement, shacks, guns, and shirtlessness. It's also though reminiscent of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet"... which though it involves a shack and is about the South wasn't shot in the South. What can I say, I'm from New England and apparently really bad at identifying what's actually in the South (that video isn't even in the US, it's Canada!).
This video certainly isn't helping any. The plot is quite confusing, because a) there are a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards, so it's all out of sequence, b) the lighting is crazy, and half the time there's a big-ass mangrove blocking our view, and c) trying to make sense of what's going on in light of the song's lyrics is damn near impossible. There's no "wishing well" in the video, nor would it make sense for any of the action to have taken place in the protagonist's uncle's cabin.
Anyway, here's the video's plot in order. Small-town cops pull up outside a stilt house in a Louisiana swamp (we know it's Louisiana because the policemen's badges are shaped like the state). The better looking of the two (sort of a working man's Rob Lowe, but from the lyrics we can assume this is Sheriff John Brady) busts into the house and attacks an attractive, bra-less woman. During their struggle, a man comes home and sees what's happening. He rushes in only to be shot by the cop, who then (off-screen, but we see it in shadow) kills the woman as well.
The protagonist (an Eddie Furlong-looking kid typical of the era) and his uncle (think Russell Crowe with a mullet, or a real-life version of 24 from the Venture Brothers) are rowing a rowboat around in the swamp that night, and they see the two cops dump the bodies of the man and the woman into the swamp. They freak out at what they're seeing, and we can infer dialogue from the lyrics ("'Oh my god, Tom, who are we gonna tell / the sheriff he belongs in a prison cell' / 'keep your mouth shut, that's what we're gonna do'").
Once the cops are done with the bodies, Eddie Furlong lookalike and Uncle Tom haul their boat out of the lake, and hurry to a seedy bar, where the Rob Lowe cop is drinking at the bar. They have this moment of mutual recognition, where the camera implies that they have telltale mud on their boots and pants, and that this must let the cop know they've seen him. But based on the general cleanliness of the other bar patrons, either this is not a telltale sign of anything or they were all in the swamp watching the bodies get dumped.
Tom walks up to the bar all casual, but then grabs a shotgun from under the bar and aims it at Rob Lowe. He doesn't see Rob Lowe's partner in the corner (oops, I mean Deputy Hedge), who draws faster, and repeatedly shoots Tom. However, before Tom dies, he gets off a whole bunch of shots that as far as I can tell must spray randomly into the bar. Still none of the other bar patrons seem to have any reaction to the three guns getting drawn, let alone all the shooting.
Eddie Furlong kid runs out of the bar, and here's where it gets even more confusing. The next thing you know, different, apparently non-dirty cops are there, as well as an ambulance, and they're dragging all the corpses out of the swamp. Eddie Furlong ID's the last body, which appears to be that of his uncle (though it's hard to tell because they're a little bit worse for the wear, it definitely doesn't look like the guy who tries to rescue the girl). And that's basically it.
So what the heck happens there at the end? What roused the townspeople to justice? If everyone was so down with the cops being crazy and killing people, why didn't someone just shoot Eddie Furlong? Where did these other cops come from? Did the bad cops dump the uncle in the swamp? The whole thing makes no sense.
As for the non-narrative portion of the video, it's more or less just Warrant playing in an empty room that looks like all those stereotypical "it's the South" buildings -- cane chairs, old ceiling fan, busted apart walls with shafts of light pouring through them. Jerry and Joey are all over this video going berserk with their guitars, but we only see Steven from the side and we barely see Erik at all.
It's mostly Jani Lane, and with good reason -- this video is really his magic hour. I mean, almost all guys have this window in their lives where they look really, really good -- they've gotten tall and muscle-y, but still have the metabolism to pull off eating whatever the hell they want and drinking like fish without getting a gut or a puffy face. Anyway, Jani's really in that window here. Admittedly, it also helps that he's wearing this hat that covers up his vaguely froggy eyes (his worst feature) thus accentuating his fantastic lips (his best feature). All the jazz hands with the random gloves kind of detract from it, but hell, I'll take it anyway.
All in all, though this song completely rocks, I have to question the wisdom of Warrant: Why the hell would they name their song "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? I mean, sure, people recognize it. But they recognize it in a like, hey that reminds me of racism and slavery way. Best case scenario, they associate it with the Civil War. I mean jeez, why not name a song "Anne Frank's Attic" while they're at it!?
Also, I have to admit to having misheard these lyrics basically forever as "nothin' was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / no one but the bodies in the wishing well." Seriously! Forever I've sung "nothing was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / I know a secret that I just can't tell." So who knows how much of the confusion here is my own, and how much can be pinned on Warrant.