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It’s cliché to lament about “the days when MTV played music videos,” but it’s true. Those were a magical time, and with all the countless music videos, there was a very specific subgenre that was peppered in for years. By that I mean the movie tie-in music video. Back then, to advertise both a new movie and its soundtrack, they would take one of the tracks and give it its own music video. It usually involved the musician performing their song with a narrative that loosely linked them to the movie’s story, and every few moments they would throw in a montage of sizzle reel movie footage.
As a Gen-Xer, it hurts to see such a specific fixture of TV fade away, falling into obscurity like predatory 1-900 commercials and those overlong ads for glorified mixtapes where they would scroll the track list over clips of a few songs. Gone are the days of the T-800 trying to hunt down Guns ‘n’ Roses, or Cyndi Lauper teaming up with the Goonies to defeat Rowdy Roddy Piper. It was a strange time…. Yet things were strangest when it came to horror movies. With it being October, let’s take a look at the history of the various horror (or horror-adjacent) movie tie-in music videos released throughout the years.
Ghostbusters (1984): “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr.
What better way to start than one of the most iconic movie themes of all time? The video for “Ghostbusters” has Ray Parker Jr. both advertising the group while I guess also being a ghost as he gets all pervy and stalks a woman who is just trying to live in her neon-lit home in peace. It’s all very confusing when you think about it for more than a second, what with the random people popping up behind furniture to yell, “GHOSTBUSTERS!” The payoff to this is Parker casually singing about calling the Ghostbusters while the woman has a very, “Oh, you!” attitude about it.
Also yelling the chorus are random celebrities of the day, many feeling like they would have made fantastic second-string Ghostbusters in a better sequel. I would have watched the hell out of a Ghostbusters 2 starring John Candy and Peter Falk. Among the movie footage, we do get a moment of Parker dancing down the street with the real Ghostbusters, which would be adapted to the end credits of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.
Fright Night (1985): “Fright Night” by J. Geils Band
Things continue to be ‘80s as hell but with a lesser budget as J. Geils Band did the title track for Fright Night. The video mainly deals with the band spending time at home, which also seems to triple as a psychiatrist office and a music venue. They bounce around between desperately closing the windows (which project clips of the movie after they do so) and performing a concert. During the first chorus, Seth Justman pulls off a clap so slick that you can tell how proud he is of nailing it.
The incoherence leads to a final moment where the band shares a bed and realizes that one of them has monster feet. Everyone’s freaked out that one of them is a ghoul, and nobody knows who they belong to. J. Geils Band split up immediately after this video was filmed, so I’d like to believe that this was the official reason.
Friday the 13th Part VI (1986): “Man Behind the Mask” by Alice Cooper
Shockingly, this would be the only Friday the 13th movie to get its own video, but it’s a doozy. A teenager wants to go out on a date, but his father (who is obviously Alice Cooper) refuses to let him borrow the car. So the boy and his girlfriend walk to the theater to see Jason Lives in a cinema filled with Alice Cooper fans. Throughout the movie, Alice Cooper does stuff like take over the feed, jump out from behind the screen while wearing a hockey mask, and pull the teens into the film where they are trapped in a cage.
They do eventually get out of that and return to their seats, acting like this is no big deal. On their way home, Cooper continues to menace them, only to be pulled into the night by Jason himself. Not that it sticks, as the ending reveals Cooper as the boy’s dad. The boy’s name is also Jason, and even he is just as confused about this whole video as we are. Cooper offers to explain it, but the video ends, so screw us, I guess.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (1983): “Dream Warriors” by Dokken
This is one of the rare music videos that does not montage movie footage sprinkled throughout. Instead, it creates an alternate narrative that seamlessly inserts movie footage. It follows protagonist Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) as she has confrontations with Freddy in her nightmares, but the big difference is that she’s really, REALLY into the band Dokken. So into Dokken that they constantly appear in her dreams, garnering reactions of fear, confusion, and eventually acceptance.
It’s a kickass video with a kickass song, culminating in Freddy being defeated by how much Dokken rocks. Freddy himself wakes up from a nightmare, angrily asking us, “Who were those guys?” This is right around when Freddy became a cultural icon with Robert Englund playing up his goofier demeanor. Which leads us to our next video…
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (1988): “Are You Ready for Freddy?” by the Fat Boys / “A Nightmare on My Street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
And now we get to the Great Freddy Rap War of ’88. One of the most ‘80s acts to come out of the ‘80s was the Fat Boys, a trio of upbeat, overweight gentlemen who rubbed elbows with Chubby Checker and the Beach Boys, and also starred in their own screwball comedy called Disorderlies. It’s not that bad! Anyway, they had their own music video for Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which saw them challenged to spend a night in a haunted house, only to be chased out by a rapping Freddy. I call bullshit, as the Fat Boys were very obviously awake for all of this.
They weren’t the only hokey rap team who wanted a spot on the soundtrack. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince put together a single called “A Nightmare on My Street” in hopes of making the cut, but no dice. Will Smith reportedly hugged his uncle while tearfully asking why New Line Cinema didn’t want him. It was still released, albeit with a disclaimer pointing out that it had no relation to the movies. A music video was fully produced anyway, but lawyers kept it from airing. They slapped him with a lawsuit and told Smith to keep Freddy’s name out of his fucking mouth.
Beetlejuice (1988): “Day-O” by Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte had already been singing this song for 30 years, but the séance scene from Beetlejuice was such a big deal at the time and gave the song such a shot in the arm that he ended up making a video for it. This one is like 90 percent movie footage, but it does show some alternate and extended shots from the sequence that didn’t make it into the final film.
Outside of the endless montage, we see occasional shots of Harry Belafonte casually walking the city streets alone while singing this song. Normally, I would chalk this up to them filming Belafonte doing his average day-to-day activities, but the ending has him call a cab, only to be surprised to see a terrible superimposed effect of Beetlejuice as the driver. Between this and Scrooged, 1988 was all about smartass, unhygienic ghosts driving cabs, I guess.
Ghostbusters II (1989): “On Our Own” by Bobby Brown
It took a while, but we finally got to an entry about a rap song that explains the plot of the movie during the end credits. Classic. Bobby Brown had some big shoes to fill with making a new Ghostbusters theme and… he does okay. It peaks at its opening line, which is why he repeats it at various times throughout the song.
Instead of being a charming creeper like Ray Parker Jr., Bobby Brown spends the video commandeering video screens, bus posters, and newspaper front pages all across New York City. Just clips of him, his backup singers, and stuff from the movie itself. Like the first film’s video, random celebrities show up, but this time there’s no hook for them to shout at the camera. Instead they all look confused at Brown’s rampage. Appearances include Christopher Reeve, the Ramones, Rick Moranis, and a giant elephant in the room.
In an unprecedented move, Ghostbusters II actually had two music videos to promote it, with the other starring Run DMC.
Pet Sematary (1989): “Pet Sematary” by the Ramones
Hey, speaking of the Ramones! As the story goes, Stephen King was hanging out with the Ramones and gave them a copy of the book Pet Sematary so that they could write the theme to the eventual movie. What separates this video from the other entries on this list is that there are two different versions of it. The first one was just a meat-and-potatoes Ramones video, with them hanging out all chill in a cemetery while various extras act silly around them. Then the band is buried alive during their performance.
A second version of the video was released, which is mostly the same, only now with random movie clips thrown in. Weirdly, it still doesn’t understand the assignment, as the clips do little to play up the movie itself. If you haven’t seen the movie, nothing shown gives you any idea of what it’s about or why you should even consider checking it out.
Freddy’s Dead (1991): “I’m Awake Now” by the Goo Goo Dolls
Listen, I know I don’t have a job in marketing, but I feel that if you want to promote your film, you probably shouldn’t show people literally falling asleep to it. Yes, that’s how the Goo Goo Dolls start their video, channel surfing and deciding to just watch Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and immediately falling asleep. Then they find themselves dreaming of being in a movie theater where Freddy has them watch the movie anyway. There is no escape from sitting through Freddy’s Dead!
This one lacks the energy and production values of the other Elm Street videos on the list. They film most of the video at an empty theater, trying to do whatever they can to get usable B-roll. It doesn’t help that the band seems bored out of their mind when singing, and even though they’re occasionally stalked by Freddy, they couldn’t even get Robert Englund to show up for it. Eventually, they wake up and find themselves back on the couch, ignoring that Freddy’s clothes are in a pile behind them. Guess he’s busy taking a shower.
The Addams Family (1991): “Addams Groove” by MC Hammer
In the early ‘90s, MC Hammer was at the height of his powers. Sorry, I mean just Hammer. Riding the high of “2 Legit 2 Quit,” Hammer could not be touched. This would be his last major hit, doing the theme to the first Addams Family movie. The video has all the main actors involved as they befriend and/or try to murder Hammer and his crew. Then again, it’s Hammer’s fault for hitting on Morticia and instigating a sword fight with Gomez. Gomez was perfectly happy just smoking a cigar and doing the Alex Wright dance from WCW.
There are two different versions of the video, mostly based on the intro where Wednesday and Pugsley try to behead Hammer with a guillotine. In one version, he escapes by doing a Raiden electric teleport into an iron maiden, then attempts to sneak away. In the other one, his head does get cut off and bounces around the room, completely bloodless and depicted with some really unfortunate early ‘90s CGI. This all spits in the face of the end of the video when he claims that they don’t want to hurt anyone, and are just trying to have fun. Dude, they repeatedly tried to murder you, and you claim multiple times that they like kicking and slapping their friends!
Hellraiser 3 (1992): “Hellraiser” by Motorhead
In 1991, Ozzy Osbourne released “Hellraiser,” a song co-written by himself, Lemmy Kilmister, and Zakk Wylde. Lemmy’s band Motorhead did their own version of it a year later, and even though the lyrics were more about touring endlessly in the name of rock, it ended up working well as a tie-in song to the Hellraiser series and its third movie Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth. The video rules, showing Pinhead and his Cenobites enjoying (?) an otherwise undersold Motorhead concert, where they take a break to abduct and torture one of Lemmy’s fans. Sometime after, Lemmy beats Pinhead in a poker game, seemingly flips him off, and angers the horror villain.
It’s a good time, though they probably show too much movie footage of Pinhead getting his just desserts. Decades later, a new animated video was released that mashed up the Ozzy and Motorhead versions of the song. It has nothing to do with the Hellraiser movies, but it does have Ozzy, Lemmy, and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor saving the world from space demons, so that’s cool.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992): “Love Song for a Vampire” by Annie Lennox
Here we have our second movie about an undead guy plotting to marry Winona Ryder, but at least Dracula waited for her to be legal. Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Dracula and his puffy butt haircut came with this beautiful song by Annie Lennox where she appears so haunting and pale that it’s a genuine surprise she doesn’t have vampire fangs to go with it. Other than her singing in the darkness and playing clips of the movie, there’s not much going on here.
The same could be said for Echo and the Bunnymen’s “People are Strange” video for Lost Boys, which I didn’t give its own entry because there is so little to talk about. Luckily, “Love Song for a Vampire” and earlier entry “Fright Night” knew the secret to making a music video based on a vampire movie: sync up a shot of someone staking a vampire to the music. It works so well if you pull it off.
Addams Family Values (1993): “Addams Family (Whoomp)” by Tag Team
Addams Family Values was a worthy sequel to the original. Its main soundtrack song was not. It’s my belief that the two members of Tag Team overslept one day and one of them realized, “Oh no! We’re supposed to have our Addams Family song done today! We only have 15 minutes!” So they rushed out of bed and repurposed their big hit “Whoomp There It Is” into this… thing.
It feels like a cheaper version of what Hammer’s video was. Much like Hammer played up being in constant mortal danger in the Addams’ home, Steve Rolln sits in an electric chair but that’s about it. They just occasionally return to that same shot. Otherwise, they could only get two cast members to pop in for this, with Christina Ricci being locked into her Wednesday role while Jimmy Workman’s Pugsley steps out of his comfort zone to embrace being in an early ‘90s rap video by wearing a gold chain, backwards hat, and sunglasses.
But hey, it’s not the worst variation of the song.
Deep Blue Sea (1999): “Deepest Bluest”
Deep Blue Sea is mainly remembered for three things: Samuel L. Jackson’s second most hilarious abrupt death scene ever (“Aim for the bushes” being #1), the ending being changed last minute by angry test screening audiences to kill off the main character because they felt she deserved to die, and this outstanding piece of music where LL Cool J repeatedly reminds us that his hat is incredibly similar to a shark’s fin. Is his hat still like a shark’s fin? I’d certainly like to think so.
It’s a tie-in that makes you feel like LL had everything figured out. Not only was he a supporting character in a sci-fi horror movie about sharks that he survived based purely on being so overly likable, but he gets to celebrate it with a music video where scantily clad women dance around him and he gets to wear cool, black contacts. The whole song goes on about him comparing himself to the very same super sharks he helps destroy, but then it gets crazy towards the end where they start having him Animorph into a shark. Why wasn’t that part of the movie?! We’d be on Deep Blue Sea 12 by now if that was a plot point.
Scooby-Doo (2002): “Land of a Million Drums” by Outkast
The Scooby-Doo movie is known for how softened it became over its production, being turned into a more family friendly product, but still having remnants of adult stuff, like innuendos about Shaggy being a stoner. This would carry over into “Land of a Million Drums,” which goes back and forth between thinly veiled weed references and blatant weed references. It’s a wonderful song where Killer Mike suggests that the 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo stole their stash, so they need to contact long-dead actor Vincent Price to supply them with more “Scooby Snacks.” And it was Vincent Price, so I have no doubt that it would have been astounding weed.
It’s a fun celebration of the Scooby franchise, complete with partying at a creepy mansion with a masked villain sneaking around (the bastard son of Judge Doom and Mac Tonight). Matthew Lillard appears to be having the time of his life, reprising his role as Shaggy and being delightfully white throughout the video. Unfortunately, there is very minimal Scooby-Doo, as early 2000s CGI costs money.
Goosebumps (2015): “Bumps Gonna Goose Ya” by MF Bumps ft. Jack Black
To promote the first Goosebumps movie, Nerdist decided to do a throwback to what this list is all about by putting together a tie-in music video complete with all the tropes. Random movie clips thrown in here and there? Check. Appearances from movie characters? Check. Fitting as many references to the IP as possible into the lyrics? Check. Using the song to summarize the plot of the movie? Check. Backup dancers dressed to the movie’s aesthetic? Check.
Malik Forte plays MF Bumps, doing his best attempt at a Hammer pastiche while Jack Black plays RL Stine, but is really just Jack Blacking it up at full power. It’s not Jack’s most successful song from a movie, but it is just peachy regardless. It’s a nice, nostalgic celebration of the silly world of movie soundtrack advertisements that has sadly run its course.
The post The Spooky Horror Movie and Music Video Tie-Ins of the ’80s and ’90s appeared first on Den of Geek.
