Michael Jackson: Thriller (1983) DVD FAN COMMENTARY – Ola Ray – Vincent Price – Director John Landis

Michael Jackson Thriller 1983. Fan Commentary for the John Landis directed music video starring Ola Ray, Vincent Price voice and of course Michael Jackson.

Thriller is a 13-minute horror-themed music video for the song of the same name, released on December 2, 1983. Directed by John Landis, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Jackson, the song was released from Jackson’s sixth studio album of the same name. It was MTV’s first world premiere video. In the UK the video was aired on Channel 4 late at night. Voted as the most influential pop music video of all time, Thriller proved to have a profound effect on popular culture, and was named “a watershed moment for the music industry” for its unprecedented merging of filmmaking and music. Guinness World Records listed it in 2006 as the “most successful music video”, selling over nine million copies. In 2009, the video was inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, the first music video to ever receive this honor, for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant. The track was also listed at number one on “The Top 10 Halloween Songs” by Billboard.

Co-starring with Jackson was former Playboy centerfold Ola Ray. The video was choreographed by Michael Peters (who had worked with the singer on his prior hit “Beat It”), and Jackson. Jackson contacted Landis after seeing his film An American Werewolf in London; make-up artist Rick Baker and composer Elmer Bernstein (who composed incidental music for the video) were also brought from the film to work on the video. The video (like the song) contains a spoken word performance by horror film veteran Vincent Price. “Thriller” was the third and final video for the Thriller album. The red jacket that Jackson wore was designed by Landis’ wife Deborah Landis to make him appear more “virile”. To qualify for an Academy Award as a short subject, the film was shown in a theatrical screening along with the 1940 Disney animated feature Fantasia, in December 1983; however, the video failed to earn an Academy Award nomination.

► Plot

Michael and his date are watching a movie. They leave and take a shortcut through the graveyard on the way home. Michael turns into a werepanther-type creature, and then later a zombie, as he gets down and funky in a tremendous dance scene to the tune of his song “Thriller.”

► Trivia

☆ John Landis made the film because he saw it as a great opportunity to bring back the theatrical short: “I saw it as a chance to resurrect a genre that had once been a Hollywood staple. Music videos were new in 1983, and MTV was just two years old.”

☆ The short film was packaged on home video with The Making of ‘Thriller’ (1983) as “Making Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,'” which became the world’s largest selling music VHS.

☆ The sound of the growling animal during the transformation is the same sound from John Landis’s film An American Werewolf in London (1981).

☆ The song was originally going to be called “Starlight”.

☆ John Landis: [SYNW] “See you next Wednesday” spoken by someone in the movie that Michael and Ola are watching. It’s written in blood on a wall. The phrase “see you next Wednesday” also appears by the theater marquee in John Landis’ film An American Werewolf in London (1981).

► References

According to Kobena Mercer, “the video is strewn with allusions to horror films”. The opening scene is a parody of 1950s B movie horror films, with the characters dressed in the fashions of 1950s teenagers. The metamorphosis of the polite ‘boy next door’ into a werewolf can be seen as a depiction of male sexuality. A sexuality that is depicted as naturally animal, predatory, aggressive, violent and therefore monstrous. Mercer perceived similarities with the werewolf depiction in The Company of Wolves (1984).

The second metamorphosis of the video has Michael becoming a zombie. It serves as an introduction to a dance sequence which features dancing ghouls, corresponding to a song lyric mentioning a masquerade ball of the dead. The scene calls attention to the macabre make-up of the ghouls. Jackson’s own make-up casts “a ghostly pallor” over his skin and emphasizes the outline of his skull. The image itself serves as an allusion to the mask from The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

According to Peter Dendle the zombie invasion sequence of the film is inspired by Night of the Living Dead (1968). The film manages to treat the sequence with enough seriousness to capture the feelings of claustrophobia and helplessness which are essential to the subgenre of zombie films.

© 2017 Copyright – The Loch – The Legends of Cherry Hill

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