Twisted Sister feat. Alice Cooper, "Be Chrool to Your Scuel"

Schoolday of the Dead  

THE VIDEO Twisted Sister featuring Alice Cooper, "Be Chrool to Your Scuel", Come Out and Play, 1985, Atlantic 

SAMPLE LYRIC "Be cruel to your schoo-ool! / 'Cause you may never get another! / Be cruel to your schoo-ool! / In the name of rock n' roll!" 

THE VERDICT Never seen this one before? Not too surprising — MTV rejected it as too offensive at the time, Vh-1 Classic doesn't even air it now, and even Twisted Sister themselves have more or less buried it. 

It's pretty much their Heaven's Gate. What with all the celeb guests — Alice Cooper, obviously, as well as Bobcat Goldthwait; but behind the scenes you've purportedly got Brian Setzer, Clarence Clemons, and most bizarrely, Billy Joel — clearly this production cost a ton. We've moved beyond just like, people who are only famous for being in Animal House (though I know, Niedermeyer goes on to be the Maestro in Seinfeld. But that comes later). I think they pretty much blew their Stay Hungry money on this one. 

And as the opening of this video pointedly reminds us, Dee Snider was feeling pretty self-righteous about censorship as it was, having somewhat inadvertently having become the face (and voice) of heavy metal during the Parents Music Resource Center hearings (no one else from the world of metal really showed up to testify). It's no wonder that after working up this whole song and video only to have MTV pretty much kill it, they decided to shelve the whole thing. 

You also have to imagine that all the non-Dee Snider members of Twisted Sister weren't that into it anyway, as they barely figure in the video to begin with. All they really get to do is open lockers and peek inside. 

Anyway, the video begins with two quotes, both from the September 28, 1985 U.S. Senate Hearings on Rock Lyrics. First, from Dee: "Our videos are simply meant to be cartoons with human actors." Second, from Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC, but really that D is in the old-line, Strom Thurmond southern Democrat sense): "It's just outrageous filth." 

I have to say, I do appreciate that at least at some point, something cool got discussed during one of these things. When I was in college, I had a work-study job at the library, and I worked in the government documents collection. OMG, does the U.S. government pump out a lot of paper. I spent a lot of time shelving the Congressional Record, so I'm glad that at least in 1985 it might have included some of this.

 

Then we get a lengthy vignette featuring Bobcat Goldthwait as a frantic high school teacher. Yeah, I kind of relate to this sequence. Sometimes when I'm teaching, I will just kind of go out of body for a second and be like, "Wait, does what I'm saying make sense at all? Or am I just saying completely random things?" I mean, the answers are always yes, and then no, but it's kind of like how sometimes you'll be driving your car, and suddenly you'll have a moment where you're like 'Oh, whoa, I'm driving right now', almost as if you somehow forgot you were driving? 

I know, I'm making you fear for the educational future of your children or whatnot right now. But really, if you're reading this, you should probably already be worried about your kids, heh heh. 

Anyway, the bell rings, and we get the usual teacher-gets-jostled-about-in-the-crowd-of-students shot. Does this ever really happen, outside of heavy metal videos and charismatic-teacher/principal-turns-around-a-troubled-school movies? I don't remember ever being in such a hurry to leave class that I needed to like, trample somebody. 

Fade to Bob quickly regaining his composure in an incredibly spacious teacher's lounge, with giant windows and ample seating. He grabs his Walkman from a cubby and settles into a couch beside another teacher who's also listening to headphones. The first teacher asks him what he's listening to, and Bob responds by yelling "TWISTED SISTER!" right into the guy's face. 

The other teacher plugs his headphones into Bob's giant Walkman so he can listen too, and suddenly — two full freakin' minutes in — Bob opens his eyes and transforms into Dee Snider. And the other teacher opens his eyes and transforms into Alice Cooper! 

There's spooky blue lighting, and dry ice fog, and naturally the other teachers have become Mark Mendoza, Jay Jay French, etc. I also enjoy how everyone demonstrates their transformation by looking at their palms in astonishment. 

Is that what one does when one wakes up as someone else? At least in Big and 17 Again and The Hot Chick and stuff like that, people react by looking in mirrors and completely freaking out and screaming a lot and stuff. But I think they decided (rightly) that this video was long enough.

 

Dee and Alice head into the hall and yup, the students are zombies. This is like the one heavy metal video about school that doesn't use some kind of A Clockwork Orange-type scenario, but zombies give you the same idea I suppose — less that education is force-fed, but still the same idea that it is somehow mindless. 

Despite the fact that Dee and Alice just push past the zombies, who seem totally harmless and uninterested in eating their brains, it's clearly the zombie footage that got this video nixed. Probably the grossest thing in it is the zombies-making-out scene, which involves one zombie sort of trying to pull the other zombie's jaw off—yup, it looks like when David Coverdale and Tawny Kitaen make out, only with rotting flesh. 

But on the plus, it reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in the best-show-you-haven't-watched, Bob's Burgers — Tina's zombie dream. Seriously, I love everything Jon Benjamin does so much.

Actually, it's not just the making out. A lot of disgusting stuff happens in this video. A student leaves an apple on teacher Dee's desk, and his hand and forearm get left along with it. 

Then again, I feel like worse stuff (and with much more realistic special effects) happens in "Thriller." I mean when that one corpse has all that green stuff come out of its mouth? Gee-ross. Okay, but then Dee acts like he's going to eat the arm, so. Michael Jackson did a lot of weird stuff, but cannibalism (or would this be like, necrophagy or something?) wasn't among it. 

The cafeteria scene is oddly reminiscent of "Hot for Teacher," with the band playing on a raised platform in one corner. But why is the lunch lady serving the zombies rubber rats? Shouldn't she be serving them brains? Or at least cold spaghetti noodles and peeled grapes? (Come on, you never did that when you were a kid? "These were his eyes!")

 

Okay, actually I think the grossest scene in this video is — well I'm not sure what's happening. At first it seems like it's the school nurse, but then you see other kids watching, so maybe it's some kind of bio class. But a zombie teacher is decapitating one zombie student, and then a student in the classroom imitates this by ripping open his own neck and going for what's in there. Yeah, it's early in the morning as I write this and that's making me feel a little queasy. Tracheotomies freak me out. (Wait, are there people who aren't freaked out by tracheotomies? Don't answer that.)

Suddenly Alice is dressed as a doctor too, and he shines his little light in one student's ear and has it come out the other. WTF is going on in this video?! Annnnd now he's got a scalpel out. Sorry Dee, but this is no Wile E. Coyote-style giant Acme anvil. You're getting a little too gruesome with this one. 

Though to his credit, he does use a fire extinguisher on the home ec teacher whose hands are on fire. But now Dee's biting people again. Is he the only real zombie here? 

There's a sequence with a zombie band playing that's pretty straightforward, and I assume is covering for the fact that aside from Alice, they couldn't actually get any of their guest musicians to appear in the video. Hence a zombie stand-in for Clarence Clemons, etc. Apparently this is where the bar was for him (RIP): He'd be in a Lady GaGa video, but not this. 

As the zombie students crowd into the auditorium, Twisted Sister quickly run to replace the zombie band. Speaking of zombies, have I mentioned yet that Alice Cooper looks freakin' exhausted in this video? You can tell the whole time that Dee is so into it, but Alice looks like he's barely even going through the motions.

 

Anyway, the whole zombie crew pours through the halls, and we get a quick meet-the-band sequence actually showing the non-Dee members of Twisted Sister — hey, remember them? 

Then we're back in the now normally-lit teachers' lounge with Bob, who's waking up. Wait, was it all just a dream? He puts his Walkman back in his cubby and heads out into the hall — where he is instantly smothered with zombie hands. Dunt-dunt-DAH! 

I think this video's biggest downfall might not even be the video — it's the song. Now I know I'm no big Twisted Sister fan, but among their singles I think this is actually the weakest. It's clear they love mining the look, feel, and sound of the 50s/pre-Beatles 60s (I mean remember what the other big single from this album was?). But this bizarre homage to the Beach Boys' "Be True to Your School" just doesn't work.  

P.S.: Oh my gosh, even in this already super-long post, I can't believe I forgot the one salient successful element of this video — it was one of the first things Luke Perry was cast in, and Twisted Sister are at times credited with having 'discovered' the future Dylan McKay. Can you believe it? 

I can't for the life of me figure out who he is in this video. He would have been about 19 or 20 when it was shot. My first guess was the kid in the center of the first photo strip, but he seems too young. Then again, Luke was playing high school-aged Dylan whilst in his late 20s/early 30s, so maybe when he actually was that age he looked like he was a tween? My second guess is the self tracheotomy guy (left photo in the bottom strip), though that might be the same guy. What do you all think? 

P.P.S.: Get it? Like the George Romero sequel?

  

Twisted Sister, "Hot Love"

Blond Guys in Black Cars

THE VIDEO Twisted Sister, "Hot Love," Love is for Suckers, 1987, Atlantic

Click here to watch this video NOW!

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!

Twisted Sister, "I Wanna Rock"

We Don't Need No Education

THE VIDEO Twisted Sister, "I Wanna Rock," Stay Hungry, 1984, Atlantic Records

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "I wanna rock! [ROCK!] / I want to rock! [ROCK!] / I wanna rock! [ROCK!] / I want to rock! [ROCK!]"

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION We briefly see a classroom filled with kids talking loudly and throwing paper at each other, then cut to a pair of legs clad in slacks and men's dress shoes striding in authoritatively (the sounds of the kids' ruckus still audible throughout, along with the sound of the shoes hitting the linoleum). Suddenly, all the kids stop what they're doing and face the camera, and one kid runs through the room to grab his seat.

The camera pans up from the feet as the teacher makes it to the front of the room, and in addition to the fact that he's wearing a suit and bowtie, we also recognize that its Niedermeyer, the mean ROTC dude from Animal House. He smiles maliciously at the students. He says "hello, students" and snaps his fingers, making (from the sound of it) a door close and all of the kids sit straight up in their seats.

Taking off his jacket, he continues, "School has begun. The summer is over. I am in command." The students all groan and look down, and he says, "What was that? For that little outburst each and every one of you will spend three hours in detention, today, immediately after school, in the basement." The volume of his voice increases as he speaks, and he begins to walk up one of the aisles between the desks.

He stops beside one desk, and we see him looking incredulous. "What do you think you're doing?" Then we see a chubby rocker kid, with longish brown hair and a jean jacket, looking sheepish. The teacher holds up a hardcover book on which the kid has just scrawled a large "TS" Twisted Sister logo. Continuing to look stunned, the teacher says "Twisted Sister?" He then begins to get pretty histrionic, while the kid nervously looks on. "What kind of a man desecrates a defenseless textbook? I've got a good mind to slap your fat face." With that last line, the teacher, now obviously sweating, grabs the kid's cheek in his hand.



The teacher continues on, now yelling hysterically. "You are destroying your life with that, that garbage. All right, 'Mister Sister,' I want you to tell me, no, better yet, stand up, and tell the class," as he pulls him to his feet. "Whatta you wanna do with your life?" The kid, standing there all pitifully, suddenly cries out in the voice of Dee Snider, "I wanna rock!" and with the first chorus of "rock!" spontaneously transforms into Dee Snider, just as four of his classmates instantly appear as the other members of the band. This causes the teacher to be blasted upward, out of his shoes (which we quickly see on the ground, smoking). His head breaks through to the floor above, which is apparently the gymnasium -- as he looks befuddled, a basketball bounces just in front of his head.

He continues to make panicky faces, and a basketball player (who we see only as a pair of legs) appears in front of him, dribbling a ball. Meanwhile, back in the classroom all the kids have left, and Twisted Sister have made their way to the front of the room, where they grab the teacher's wildly kicking legs. They push him up through the hole in the ceiling, and we see him fly through the air in the gym.

We actually hear him yelling, even though the song has begun. The teacher flies through the basket, taking the net and rim down with him, and we see the scoreboard give Twisted Sister two points (for those keeping score, its Twisted Sister 02, Teacher 00). The teacher, with the net and rim twisted around his head, makes a growly face.



As the first verse begins, we're outside the school where we see a guy laying cement (surely, that won't come into play later!). In the background, we can see a group of people advancing (the video's too poorly lit to really see who it is). For the first big "No!" we see a concert-style shot of a bunch of kids shouting along, then we see Dee in full makeup for his first big "nono, nono, nooo." Okay, now that the people are getting closer, we can see that it's Twisted Sister along with a bunch of fist-shaking kids walking forward. The guy laying cement stops what he's doing to gesture to them to stop.

Then we cut to the teacher, who's up on the roof of this sort of breezeway thing. He sees the crowd coming and looks back with a devious expression. He then crawls toward the other side of the roof. For the second round of "no"s, we're back at the concert again, first seeing Dee, then A.J. Pero, then J.J. French, then Dee again, showing off his pasty midriff. As we launch into the chorus, the teacher jumps off the roof at the kids running by below. Of course, though, he jumps straight into the wet cement that they're all running past.

Dee opens chainlink doors, then we see the teacher lift his cement-covered face with an annoyed look. We then see kids yelling "rock!" along with the chorus. There's one really overexcited blonde kid wearing studded wristcuff-style things who is kind of amazing. They all rock out, and we cut between them and Twisted Sister, who are there with them. We then see the teacher sneaking out toward them, holding a grenade. Smiling, he pulls out the pin, and then throws the pin so it lands right at Dee's feet.

We now see a shot that shows us that all the kids are sitting in bleachers beside a pool, with the band standing in front of them with their backs to the pool. The second verse begins, with Dee and kids singing enthusiastically, then we see the teacher grinning. He holds his hands to his ears waiting for the explosion, then realizes that in one hand, he's holding not the pin but the grenade. He looks over at the grenade in horror. After seeing Dee sing, we then see the teacher trying desperately to throw the grenade away, but for some reason it is stuck to his hand.

As the second chorus begins, with Dee crawling through the railing around the bleachers and the kids in the audience enthusiastically headbanging, the teacher jumps into the pool. On the second "I wanna rock!" we see the explosion lifting him straight up out of the pool with water going everywhere, even though when we see the band the pool water behind them is absolutely placid. The teacher's ascent is stopped by the diving board, which he sort of ricochets off with the bottom of with his head.



For the bridge, Dee & Co. go back inside the school, and now on the "rock!"s we see a line of kids banging their heads into lockers. These are interspersed with shots of Twisted Sister coming down the hallway. We then see the teacher making wily faces, and he starts to sneak through a door holding several sticks of dynamite (we saw him just a few seconds before setting up the detonator thing). As Jay Jay kicks into the guitar solo, we see the teacher crawling along the ground holding the dynamite in his mouth.

In the meantime, a butterfly is buzzing around the uh… I don’t know the word for this… the t-shaped bar you push down on to make the trigger the explosion. It's marked "danger." We see the teacher crawling behind Jay Jay's legs, placing him now somehow onstage behind the band. But outside, the butterfly has settled on the t-shaped thing, and its delicate weight is enough to push it in. The dynamite of course explodes, and the teacher is blasted straight up in the air in a giant plume of smoke. Somehow, this also causes the butterfly to explode (or at least, its wings to snap off).

The teacher is caught by people in the crowd, and the band continue to rock out. The crowd pump their fists with every "rock!" We then see the teacher crawling down one of the school's hallways. He opens a door marked "Principal" and crawls into an office as we see each member of the band yelling "rock!" The teacher pulls himself up on the desk, and the person at the chair behind the desk spins around. It's Flounder, the fat pledge from Animal House. He gleefully says, "Oh boy, is this great!" then sprays the disheveled-looking teacher in the face with a seltzer bottle.



THE VERDICT It's weird how many battles Twisted Sister felt they had to fight, since they're so patently inoffensive. Yes, wearing makeup in a most unattractive way is odd, but it in no way marks them as offensive in the way that the bikini-clad strippers and casual pseudo-occultism of other bands' videos might to some eyes. Never the less, Dee Snider in particular has always been willing to fight for rock, as a mostly self-appointed spokesperson for the metal genre.

It seems a lot of people at the time were not that into him as a voice for metal, but at the same time, you didn't see most of those lads testifying before the Senate, did you (you did however see Frank Zappa and uh, John Denver -- and no, for the record, I'm not happy about having to link to a site that bills itself as a "a conservative news forum," but it was the only place I could find the excerpt -- and honestly whatevs, because Dee has since gone on to make peace with Al Gore).

While I don't always agree with Dee's opinions on things, I will say that he is much more well-spoken than many of these folks as well as being a very thoughtful person, so its not surprising he puts himself into the positions. Hey, he was also the host of the original rock program on MTV, Heavy Metal Mania, which eventually got turned into Headbanger's Ball (sans Dee).

It is weird though that people would go after Twisted Sister, and the fact that they did has got to be all about the makeup. Everything else about them is very, well, teenage, for lack of a better word. Actually, pre-teen. The majority of their hit songs are pretty much about rock, rocking, and one's rights thereto. Their two most famous songs, this one and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are both basically about the struggle between headbangers and various authorities over the right to play music loudly (whether you're the one actually holding the guitar or you're just playing it over a stereo). Both feature almost exactly the same plot, with a hapless young male turning into Dee Snider and the dude from Animal House (in this video as a teacher, in the other as a father) attempting to thwart the band's rocking.

Both videos are very intentionally cartoonish. I have heard Dee Snider say multiple times that they wanted the videos to seem like Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons, and they definitely succeed in that. Honestly, practically the only difference is that we don't see Neidermeyer receiving all his bombs and stuff in big boxes labeled "Acme." They aren’t really violent (they’re actually a lot less violent than the Roadrunner cartoons). They’re basically fun, and definitely made to appeal to a young audience (the kid in this video looks 16 max, the kid in "We're Not Gonna Take It" looks significantly younger, maybe 14).

If I had been the PMRC (shudder, shudder) would I have been worried about the youth of America listening to Twisted Sister? No. Yes, all their songs are about rebellion, but only in a very mild sense. They seem really to be more about affirming the unity of the people listening to the music than genuinely plotting the overthrow of those who would make them "turn it down." "We're Not Gonna Take It" made the "Filthy Fifteen" for its "violence." But bear in mind that Madonna's "Dress You Up" also made it on for "sex"! Trust me, there are much more lewd innuendoes out there than "gonna dress you up in my love."

It's like once they'd made it past W.A.S.P. and Prince and his army of protégés (Prince, Sheena Easton, and Vanity all made the list with easily the dirtiest lyrics of the bunch -- the Prince song, "Darling Nikki," is anecdotally the one that started the whole mess. If only Kristen and Karenna hadn't had that copy of Purple Rain, America might be safe for rock!).

Okay, wait, I am getting off track. Point is, it's like they were looking for anyone to fill out the rest of that list just so they could keep the alliteration going (I guess "Filthy Five" didn't sound threatening enough). I guess the idea of the youth of America putting on blush and eyeliner was enough to make this band scary. It's weird to me because to my mind, hell-o, it's totally possible for guys to look hot in makeup, just look at Poison. But then again, other bands… I guess maybe we should be glad Iron Maiden never recorded a song called "Can I Play with Gender?"