THE VIDEO Ozzy Osbourne, "Bark at the Moon," Bark at the Moon, 1983, Epic
SAMPLE LYRIC "Those that the beast is looking for / listen in awe and you'll he-ear him / bark at the moo-oon!"
THE VERDICT Halloween is just days away, so obviously it's — well actually, it's probably well past time to start digging out some great Halloween-oriented videos. "Bark at the Moon" is fantastic because well,
a) it's sort of a low-budget combo of the plots of many a classic horror movie in ab) sort of Scooby-Doo way, plusc) the song is meant to be spooky too even ifd) it mostly just makes me think Jake E. Lee is a really talented guitarist.
Personally I was tempted to do "So Tired", but that's just 'cause right now I am so tired.
But this clip's a much better fit. I mean it kicks right off with some kind of weird Phantom of the Opera-ish dude (the low-budget metal video version that is, which is just putting some guy in a robe and painting his entire face white).
"Bark at the Moon" also exploits camera effects as much as possible, starting with the quick-zooms of the different band members in funeral garb. And of course, what video would be complete without those old standbys, colored lighting and dry ice. Throughout the whole video, Jake E. Lee does his thing wearing a frilly shirt amidst some reddish fog.
The plot? Well, let's see. Ozzy is sort of an old-timey mad scientist, with a cool-ass lab full of bubbling beakers and elaborate glass tubing. Though his wife looks alarmed, he is so happy with his latest concoction that he promptly drinks it.
This seems honestly pretty accurate for the Ozzy of the time, if you've ever read his explanation for why exactly he bit the head off that bat. He's an ingest first, ask questions later kind of guy, though in video as in real life, his snap decisions come back to haunt him.
Horrified, his wife runs out of the room while Ozzy appears to choke to death on whatever he just drank. Next thing you know though, guess who's in the red fog with Jake E. Lee. Yup, it's Were-Ozzy, from the album cover. The way they've pasted all the hair on such that it looks like patchy, grown out body hair (especially on his chest) kind of gives an orangutan-type look to it.
His super-sympathetic video wife (a prim blonde who looks nothing like Sharon then or now) promptly has Ozzy put into a straitjacket and hauled off their gated property. The video quality is poor so I'm not 100% on this, but I think it's the other guys in the band who take him away. They toss him into a padded room, just like in a Quiet Riot video.
Next we see Ozzy being tied into some kind of an electric chair. The lighting is very red, so it's hard to tell what's going on. At first he seems really out of it it, but just when all hope is lost, he makes eye contact with the camera and reveals some giant fangs. Uhoh, looks like we're gonna have Were-Ozzy on our hands pretty soon.
And we do! There he is jumping around in the red fog again.
We then jump to a foggy nighttime scene of horses pulling a hearse — wait, did I fail to mention that about half of this video appears to take place in Victorian England? 'Cause it does, hence all the frilly shirts.
Anyway, we see the horses and the coffin, then we cut to an overhead shot of the wife — now the widow, I guess — and a vaguely Anderson Cooper-looking priest checking out the coffin. Dead Ozzy's inside, and Anderson points at him. The widow chucks some rose petals onto his body.
One minute Dead Ozzy is looking peaceful, and then the next we've got some special effects straight out of the Greg Kihn Band's video for "Jeopardy." Yes, Dead Ozzy has morphed into a sort of melted-looking skeleton. Think after the Nazi drinks from the Holy Grail in the last Indiana Jones movie. Or when the ark gets opened in the first one. Your choice. Apparently the early 80s were a big time for melted-looking skeletons.
Then we're at Dead Ozzy's very rainy funeral. Why does it always rain at heavy metal funerals? The widow, the Anderson Cooper priest, and his band members wearing top hats stand around while a bunch of fog floats by.
After some guitar face from Jake E. Lee and some serious drum face from Vinny Appice, suddenly we're back with regular old-timey Ozzy, who I guess is still alive. He's making crazy faces. It's hard to tell where he is, but he keeps opening a door and being blinded by the bright white light pouring through it. He tries other doors, but those are just full of red light.
Is this supposed to be some kind of metaphor?
On his like eighth try you think Ozzy's made it through, but he's just sort of standing there screaming and clutching at the door frame. Is he super afraid of Jake E. Lee? I mean it keeps cutting between Ozzy screaming and Jake E. playing in the red fog. The backlighting and the fuzziness of his hair are making Jake look a little like a Muppet, which though a bit unusual isn't that scary. As Ozzy's struggling around, I could swear they reuse the Vinny Appice drum face footage from like thirty seconds earlier in the video.
Ozzy finally makes it away from all those lit-up doors, and stumbles into a weird candlelit area that appears to be where his coffin was earlier. Actually it kind of looks like that steam tunnel Paul Stanley's dancing around in in KISS' "Who Wants to Be Lonely?" video. And finally — here's the payoff — he is running from Were-Ozzy.
So yes, all the lit-up doors stuff — that was just saving some money with special effects that weren't very special. We were meant to believe it was Were-Ozzy frightening regular old-timey Ozzy all that time.
This is confusing because I thought earlier we were meant to believe that, a la Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, drinking that potion had transformed Ozzy into Were-Ozzy. But then what to make of Dead Ozzy or Melted-Skeleton Ozzy?
Whatever, at least this video has finally gotten cool again. Even if you do get the impression that the actual tunnel they are in is about six feet long, as they appear to keep running through the same doorway past the exact same candelabra over and over again.
Suddenly a cloaked figure appears at the end of the hallway. Another Ozzy? No, it's that weird white-face Phantom of the Opera dude from the opening shots of the video. Whatever he's doing there, it's not slowing down Were-Ozzy. Eventually regular Ozzy stumbles and falls, causing Were-Ozzy to make an extra-menacing face for the camera.
But then nothing really happens. It just cuts back and forth between Jake E. Lee and Were-Ozzy making faces and gesturing in the red fog. Oh no wait, here we go. Something's happening.
We see Ozzy's wife standing next to the gates of I guess a sanitarium as the doctor leads Ozzy out. He unlocks the gates, shakes Ozzy's hand, and lets him out. (As a side note, I like that they apparently chose to release him very late at night.)
Ozzy hugs his wife, then looks back at the building. And what do you know — up on one of the parapets, it's Were-Ozzy.
His wife looks mildly alarmed, but Ozzy just laughs and turns away. He and his wife walk away, and then we get repeated quick-zooms back to Were-Ozzy making scary monster arms up on top of the building.
So WTF happened in this video? Which Ozzy is which? Was it all just a dream — or a hallucination? I'm inclined toward the latter — that Ozzy drinks his potion, it makes him go all crazy, and he has an extended hallucination of being Were-Ozzy/Dead Ozzy/Melted-Skeleton Ozzy. Thus the reappearance of Were-Ozzy at the end of the video is less "was it a dream" and more "was he really cured in that asylum."
The lyrics imply a different story though — that Were-Ozzy is an undead Dead Ozzy who is screaming for vengeance, if you'll allow me to mix my metal metaphors. Long story short though, I dunno. What do you think?
One more fun fact about this video: So the guy who did Ozzy's makeup here and on the album cover is special-effects artist Greg Cannom, who has won a bunch of Oscars for this. He's the same dude who did "Thriller," as well as tons of movie work, from MST3K favorite The Incredible Melting Man to A Nightmare on Elm Street III ("we're the dream warriors!") to uhh... Big Momma's House. And Big Momma's House 2. But you know, also lots of other, better stuff that's less funny to mention.
I read somewhere ages ago that Ozzy got the idea that he would throw on this makeup and wear it every night when he was on tour for this album. But then he realized a) how long it took for it to be applied (ever watch that "Making Of" thing about "Thriller"? They talk about this a lot there) and even more so b) how insanely much it cost to even do like, once.
Anyway, Ozzy wised up on that one, so this video is the only place to see it in action. This also explains why aside from the beast makeup, most of what you see in this video looks unbelievably cheap!
P.S.: I debated among several titles, including a bunch that were plays on The Onion's "One Man and One Wolfman" headline, but wound up going with the obvious.