BUG: The EVIL-ution of Music Video
Halloween Horror Special
Title sequence
Director: Corin Hardy
Music Score: Conspirators
Original Illustration: Corin Hardy
El Guapo Stuntteam – Back from the
Grave
Director: Toon Aerts
Production Company: Scum Productions
Belgium, 2007
Cavalera Conspiracy - Sanctuary
Director: Rozan & Schmeltz
Production Company: Partizan
Record Company: Roadrunner Records
France 2008
Animal Collective – Peacebone
Director: Timothy Saccenti
Production Company: Timothy Saccenti
Photography
Record Company: Domino
US 2007
Tom Waits – Let It Rain (unofficial)
Director: Bruce Knox
Kasabian – Vlad the Impaler
Director: Richard Ayoade
Production Company: Warp Films
Record Company: Sony Music
UK 2009
The Hickey Underworld – Blonde Fire
Director: Joe Vanhoutteghem
Production Company: Czar Films
Belgium 2009
Corin Hardy teen horror films:
The Chiddingly Chainsaw Massacre
(1987)
Pentagram (1989)
The Horrors– She Is the New Thing
Director: Corin Hardy
Production Company: Academy
Record Company: Polydor
UK 2007
Spaced excerpt
Director: Edgar Wright
USA/UK 1999-2001
Shaun of the Dead excerpt
Director: Edgar Wright
UK 2004
Hot Fuzz excerpt
Director: Edgar Wright
USA/UK 2007
DON’T
Director: Edgar Wright
USA 2007
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the
Heart
Director: Russell Mulcahy
UK 1983
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster –
Psychosis Safari
Director: Edgar Wright
Production Company: Partizan
Record Company: Island
UK 2003
Liars – Plaster Casts of Everything
Director: Patrick Daughters
Production Company: The Directors
Bureau
Record Company: Mute
US/UK
The Prodigy – Warrior’s Dance
Director: Corin Hardy
Production Company: Academy
Welcome to a very special, seasonal edition of BUG. The BFI’s regular strand
of new music video creativity is delighted to present a pumpkin-full of the
most horrifying, blood-curdling and monstrous vids from the annals of
modern music video – all for All Hallow’s Eve.
This is our Halloween special – The Evil-ution of Music Video – and it’s a
breathlessly scary journey through our favourite horror-themed music
videos – including well-known classics, and much less well-known gems. In
fact, tonight’s show has as many laughs as heart-thumping gory bits, so you
won’t be watching that much from between your fingers (we hope). And we
are also delighted that our guide is Corin Hardy, top British music video
director, horror aficionado and soon-to-be horror movie director – who, we
are assured, will be suitably dressed for the occasion. What’s more, Corin’s
guest is none other than the prince of British comedy horror, Edgar Wright.
He’s the director of classic ‘rom-zom-com’ Shaun of the Dead, the brilliant
Hot Fuzz, seminal TV comedy Spaced, and the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim vs The
World – and when he finds a spare moment, the occasional music video.
Edgar will be discussing his love of horror and its influence on his work with
Corin later in the show.
But in our first section this evening we are reprising a trio of videos that
appeared at earlier BUG shows, starting with the brilliant Back from the Grave
from Belgian garage rockers El Guapo Stuntteam, directed by their
countryman Toon Aerts. This was the second in a planned horror trilogy –
scuppered when El Guapo recently disbanded – based around the band’s
mysterious member, the motorbike-helmeted Captain Catastrophe, who
enacted fire-related stunts on stage while the band played. That’s followed
by a video made last year for Cavalera Conspiracy – the side project of
members of Brazilian ultra-heavy metal outfit Sepultura – by French
directing duo Jeremie Rozan and Martial Schmeltz. This really is a modern
monster horror, where the body count piles up during a band photoshoot.
It’s not for the fainthearted. But then again, neither is the music.
Finally in our first section we have photographer and filmmaker Tim
Saccenti’s remarkable 2007 video for Animal Collective’s Peacebone – it’s a
love story between a young woman and a repulsive alien monster, situated
in sun-kissed American suburbia. Saccenti was inspired by competing
forces in Animal Collective’s music to create a horror teen romance.
Then Corin will almost certainly be introducing the second group of videos
in tonight’s show as the Homicidal Maniacs section. The first is actually an
unofficial animated video for Tom Waits’ Let It Rain – one of the most
emotionally anguished performances that the great man has ever recorded,
and Bruce Knox has fashioned a film to match. Deep in the bayou, a killer
relives an unspeakable, terrible act, and Knox shows just enough to reveal a
true extent of the horror. Then we have Vlad the Impaler – a blood-drenched
trailer for Ricardo Elfio’s classic giallo-influenced Hammer horror from the
Seventies starring brooding, moustachioed Peter Wyngarde-lookalike
Roman Tarasov… or quite possibly it’s a beautifully-rendered new facsimile
of said movie by comedy actor and writer and now regular music video
director Richard Ayoade for Kasabian, starring a scary, sharp implementwielding Noel Fielding, on leave from The Mighty Boosh.
Finally in this section an extraordinary video that was premiered at the last
BUG in September. The Hickey Underworld’s Blonde Fire features a very
unsettling individual with an extraordinary power: he can create something
out of nothing. With considerable flair the director Joe Vanhoutteghem,
takes this idea to its logical, shattering conclusion – and makes the most of
shooting at a location very close to an abattoir. It’s an astonishing watch
that is a genuinely original addition to the Frankenstein legend.
After that, Corin will introduce some of his own work – and will
demonstrate a truism that natural-born filmmakers not only start young,
Record Company: Cooking Vinyl
UK 2009
The Horrors – Sheena Is a Parasite
Director: Chris Cunningham
Record Company: Polydor
UK 2007
Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy
Director: Chris Cunningham
Production Company: Black Dog
Record Company: Warp
UK 1997
Michael Jackson – Thriller
Director: John Landis
USA 1983
BUG thanks…
Corin Hardy
www.mysteriouscat.com
www.academyfilms.com
www.myspace.com/ukconspirators
Edgar Wright
www.edgarwrighthere.com
Hosted by: BFI Southbank
Post-production by: Locomotion
Event Management by: Ballistic
BUG is curated by David Knight & Phil
Tidy [email protected]
[email protected]
For general information about BUG,
contact Louise Stevens
[email protected]
THE BUG TEAM
Chris Blakeston
Stuart Brown
David Knight
Louise Stevens
Miland Suman
Phil Tidy
For regular updates, check out
www.bugvideos.co.uk /
www.promonews.tv
www.twitter.com/BUGmusicvideos
demonstrate a truism that natural-born filmmakers not only start young,
they start by making extremely gory horror films. Corin is one of those
filmmakers, and you are really going to enjoy edited highlights of two films
he made as a Sussex schoolboy in the late Eighties: The Chiddingly Chainsaw
Massacre, made when he was just 14 and shot on Super8mm, and Pentagram,
a video nasty he made when he was 15. And that is followed by Corin’s
award-winning 2007 video for The Horrors’ She Is the New Thing. It’s a
brilliant combination of live action band performance and hand-crafted
animation, in which the band are increasingly terrorized by creatures, and
particularly a demonic girl – every frame hand-drawn by Corin and his
longtime friend David Lupton (the villain in both of Corin’s teen horrors!) in
black and red ink. It’s a remarkable achievement that manages to find grace
and beauty in blood-spattered ultra-violence.
Then Corin welcomes our special guest, Edgar Wright to the stage, for a
chat about his career and to show a selection of horror and exploitationorientated clips from his movies and music videos, including an exclusive
presentation of a superb rarity – plus one of Edgar’s all-time favourite music
videos. So after an influential clip from comedy classic Spaced, expect to see
some white-knuckle moments from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz – the
latter featuring our loveable regular BUG host Adam Buxton. Then we have
a real coup: Edgar has brought with him one of the very few 35mm prints of
DON’T – the fake movie trailer he made for Quentin Tarantino and Robert
Rodriguez’s Grindhouse movies and unseen since the ‘double-feature’ nature
of the project was abandoned. Be prepared to scream with laughter.
Our Edgar Wright special ends with the video that could also be part of the
Grindhouse project – the stylised exploitation-style Psychosis Safari for
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, replete with high speed hi-jinx along the
road to Hell and fake 3D moments. Then we take another vehicle heading to
Hell for Liars’ Plaster Casts of Everything, directed by American director
Patrick Daughters. This is more David Lynch than Tarantino – bizarre and
brilliant. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O (a friend of Daughters’) guest stars
in the video – although it is quite difficult to tell…
In our penultimate section we begin with another video from our host. A
few months ago Corin teamed up with revitalised dance music veterans The
Prodigy and the result was The Prodge’s best vid in years. It broadly falls
into the Gremlins school of horror, although the characters are more
unusual than monstrous: Warrior’s Dance is a brilliantly orchestrated tribal
gathering of cigarette packet men. What looks like extraordinarily
complicated stop-motion work is also extraordinarily complicated and
skilful puppetry. Then we have two videos from one of the acknowledged
directing greats of the medium who has arguably explored horror imagery
in music video more originally than anyone else. We start with a recent
work from Chris Cunningham and another video for The Horrors – a short
sharp eviscera-filled shock to the system featuring brilliant actress
Samantha Morton, which looks amazing on the big screen. And then we
have a true classic from 1997 – Cunningham’s first collaboration with
Aphex Twin, the one and only Come to Daddy.
And so to the climax of The Evil-ution Of Music Video – and what selfrespecting horror-themed music video show at Halloween would be
complete without this one? It’s Michael Jackson’s Thriller, of course. Made in
1983, directed by John Landis, it is widely regarded to be the greatest video
ever made. And after the sad demise of the King of Pop, it is poignant and
appropriate that we should end this BUG Halloween special with arguably
the greatest dance sequence ever committed to screen. By zombies.
Programme notes and credits compiled by the Filmographic Unit, BFI National Library.
Notes may be edited or abridged. Questions/comments? Email [email protected].