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Thriller (1983) (V)
12 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
perhaps the perfect pop video, 19 February 2005
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom
'Thriller' remains the greatest of the pop music promos to have a plot, great visuals, and a tip-top song to wrap the film around. Michael Jackson was at the top of the tree at this time (and not so altered in his plastic surgery regime for it to matter). Here he is in good form - the song is terrific, he leads the zombies in dance like no other.
Ola Ray plays the girl who watches with incredulity as her sweet boyfriend (Jackson, natch) turns into a werewolf! Then to the pulsing rhythms of the opening line 'It's close to midnight', he stomps around the graveyard with the other zombies and creatures of the night.
The crowning glory of all this is the fruity voice of the great horror star Vincent Price speaking in the middle of the record. Terrific.
12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent., 28 October 2005
Author: Cocacolaguy912-2 from United States
"Thriller" is brilliant. It is a long video, but simply brilliant nonetheless. The song itself is...excellent...add Michael JAckson dancing and you have a golden Phenomenon. Out of all the videos I have ever seen, this is the best. If you have not seen the video yet, then I urge you...
The special effects are amazing for it's time... everything from the wearwolf transformation to the idea of these creepy zombies slowly raising from their graves is grand...spookishly grand that is. Vicent Price has his segment of bone-shivering lines...known simply as "the rap" Ola Ray does good as Michael's girl, and Michael JAckson himself...the dancing, and singing (although not during the video itself) is unmatched...
10/10.
10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Michael Jackson's greatest achievement!, 8 July 2004
Author: Joseph P. Ulibas (sirjosephu@aol.com) from Sacramento, CA
Michael Jackson's Thriller (1983) has to be the greatest video ever made. Dude you have Zombies, gore and a catchy tune, what more can you ask for. John Landis mixed elements from Night of the Living Dead and American Werewolf in London and out came this video. What starts out as a nice evening for a young couple turns into a date from hell, literally. You have dancing zombies, a werewolf in a funky jacket and Vincent Price "rapping". A cool video to a song that everybody in the neighborhood marked out to.
I have to give this one a high recommendation because it has to be the best music video ever made. There hasn't been another one like it.
Check out the "making of Thriller". The documentary has some "interesting" stuff in it.
7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
...THE FUNK OF 40,000 YEARS..., 7 February 2003
Author: jonpd from SAN DIEGO, CA
I grew up watching this music video (I taped it on Beta tape when I was a kid back in 1983) and the making of it as well. I have always loved it, and I still do. As far as I'm concerned, it is the best and most classic music video ever made. Not really worth buying being that it's so short, but if you come across it on one of MTV's Top so-and-so of all time countdowns, definitely record it. It's close to miiiidnight...
5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
The musical legacy in the wake of a waining star., 8 June 2005
Author: Catscanfly from Edinburgh, Scotland
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Aaaaah, Thriller. Masterpiece.
A lot of people tend to think that this music video is one of the scariest things ever shot and remember being terrified by it ever since they saw it when they were a kid in the 80s or early 90s. While i gotta agree that it is really spooky in that spine-tingling, juicy way, it's just always struck me as not so much terrifying as just kind of sad- less a horror than a tragedy.
In one of the moments of sick irony in the MJ story ("It don't matter if you're black or white", anyone?) music fans all round the world watched in 1983 (a time when the only thing freakish about Michael was his incredible talent) with a delicious mix of horror and deep excitement as, in this video, michael strutted his stuff in three separate realities (the movie at the start, the dancing in the graveyard and the cats-eyes embrace at the end) and in each is transformed mysteriously into nightmarish figures of evil.
Little did anyone know that he would spend the next two decades doing so for real.
Well, here we are, 20 years later, asking questions that seem very far away indeed from the eighties: Did Jackson ply a series of children with alcohol and lure them into his bed? Is he nothing more than a lecherous paedophile who has spent millions of dollars tweaking and bleaching the humanity out of his once beautiful face? Is he doomed to spend the next 20 years in jail for perverted sex crimes carried out on young boys?
Who knows? No one does. What's certain though, is that there is nothing his present disgrace can detract from the sheer trail-blazing brilliance of Michael's work as a musician. There's something timeless, ageless and utterly vital in Thriller that stands as an eternal monument to his status as one of the greatest popular music icons of our time.
Be honest- you haven't forgotten how that body of his moved- smooth, fast, jagging and driven to the music, his moves mirrored by his unholy followers from beyond the grave.It didn't matter that he was tall and skinny, wearing that god-awful outfit. He was mesmerising to watch- both beautiful and sinister. It was something just totally different, totally urgent, and totally irresistible.
And hell, his singing- you've never heard someone sing like that. Sure, it was girly, full of crazy improvisations and easy to ridicule- but hey, that is MJ. And the fact is that it doesn't matter. Jackson inspired a whole new vocal style and scores of imitators still in the charts today- but there never was one that was a patch on Jacko.
It was once said of Wagner that "the art can never be absolutely separated from the man". And i think that the same is true of MJ. No matter what the outcome of his trial is, the world won't ever feel the same about this guy. You'll never know for sure what went on in Neverland- and you'd be just as well to keep your kids away from him. I'm sure again that his record sales will drop dramatically and whatever happens the rest of his life is likely to be pretty lonely and miserable. Plenty of folk refuse to abide his Cd's in their house anymore all due to the fact that he's in such disgrace.
This is a tremendous shame, in a way- Michael was a musician of outstanding invention and a performer of breathtaking skill and presence. Does his incredible output deserve to be shunned as Pop art when it's creator is disgraced in numerous lawsuits and painted to be an insane figure of public ridicule?
The answer is, I don't think so. And this is the full force of Thriller's importance and power- anytime I listen to the song or see the video, I really don't care about any sordid allegations.
The fact is that I know nothing of the Defendant that we're watching everyday, with his eyes hidden behind large shades, and his pallid white skin and tiny pointy nose peaking out from between the bouncy black curtains of hair. He may have touched little boys and filled his ranch with sordid porn magazines and fed alcohol to kids he bizarrely hung out with. I don't have a reason to think he didn't- the guy grew up in the kind of surreal showbiz background i can barely imagine.
The Michael I do know something about is the character; the persona. Thriller, Billie Jean, Bad, Smooth Criminal... these are the legacy as the star itself wains. He might be a regular Marlon Brando in his free time- but that doesn't mean i don't want to watch his splendour and appreciate his musical genius. whatever tears he's faking in court, he couldn't fake his talent.
4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Never Before and Never Again..., 3 October 2006
Author: Christopher T. Chase (cchase@onebox.com) from Arlington, VA.
The stars and the planets must've all been in just the proper alignment, the day that THRILLER was conceived. Michael Jackson's album was slaying the charts, John Landis still had a lot of good will built up from his genre pic "An American Werewolf In London", (not to mention his classic comedies ANIMAL HOUSE and THE BLUES BROTHERS) and choreographer Michael Peters was creating some of the most innovative and influential pieces for music videos of that period.
Not before or since has one single piece of film illuminated, exploited or underscored MJ's incredible talent or the more "otherworldly" aspects of his persona quite like THRILLER, the world's most successful (if not officially the first) long-form video, and the most fondly remembered. Also the most expensive at the time, but every penny and every bit of the talent behind its creation and execution is up there on the screen. And how would it not be complete without the "rap" from the original song, provided by the late, great Vincent Price, to add even more cache to the chills already there?
The glory days of one of the world's greatest performers have long since passed, but no one can ever take away the man's towering achievements, of which this is probably the most memorable. If you don't think so, now, remember: Halloween is coming. I won't be one bit surprised when, like other Halloweens before it going back decades, this appears on some Saturday Night Creature Feature special.
As it will next year, and the year after that...
4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
The Greatest Music Video of All Time!!!, 19 August 2004
Author: Callum Healey from Australia
Michael Jackson is amazing. This short film displays the absolute highest standard in music video and no-one will ever be able to out-beat this 'King Of Pop' masterpiece! It shows Michael turning into a zombie and dancing in the street with some spectacular choreography. The story is great, the scenes are marvelous, the music is fantastic and overall the clip is fun, eye-popping, spooky and is a real spectacle. Today everybody is still doing the same thing in music video with dancing and film-based story-lines which he innovated. This ground-breaking video is the toast of MTV and will forever be remembered for what is the greatest music video of all time!!
6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Classic., 12 January 2000
Author: uffe-5 from Sweden
You can say what you'd like about Michael Jackson, but songs like ''Bad'', ''Thriller'' and ''Billie Jean'' has stunned the pop-world. But this is out of the ordinary.
It is more than a music video (I think it is the best ever), to me it is a short 14 minutes cult-classic.
Even better is the influences from George A. Romero's legendary Death-movies. How much can you say about a music video? Michael Jackson-fans have probably already seen it, but I still have got to tell them, and everyone else, about this remarkable and historic video.
4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
True Original., 1 June 2003
Author: Son_of_Mansfield from Mansfield, Pennsylvania.
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Before this clip, music videos were merely to display an artist. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" created a whole new section of music videos which can honestly be called mini movies. "Thriller" follows a couple as they travel to the girl's house from a movie. On the way they encounter zombies announced by the immortal Vincent Price. My favorite part is where the zombies stagger in on the couple and the girl turns to see that Michael has turned into one of them. Then, they do a little dance. The scariest thing about "Thriller" may be the fact that it is consistently more fun and enjoyable than a lot of movies that are made. After twenty years it remains the premier music video.
P.S. My music video Top 5: 5 - Madonna "Like a Prayer" 4 - Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child of Mine" 3 - Nine Inch Nails "Closer" 2 - Peter Gabriel "Sledgehammer" 1 - Michael Jackson - "Thriller"
5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Without a doubt, the best music video ever made, 11 February 2004
Author: Kristine (kristinedrama14@msn.com) from Chicago, Illinois
Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. And with the help of a brilliant director, John Landis, they came up with the coolest music video. The first of it's kind to have a story. Amazing effects. And just an awesome song. Watch "Thriller"! You will not regret it.
10/10
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