Helloween
Hellish Videos: The Complete Video Collection
By Jesse Lynch
Ah, the 80’s. Land of spandex, big hair and even bigger socks stuffed into your spandex pants. A time when you could name your band Helloween and nobody would even bat an eye. After watching the Helloween video compilation, it’s still amazes me that society didn’t crumble like the great Romans from the steady diet of unbridled debauchery and generalized goofiness.
Not to say that this DVD isn’t well put together. The menus are nice and intuitive. There is a long list of videos. There are a few extras, including tour outtakes featuring the musicians in all their European rock star shenanigans. There is even a live video version of “Hey Lord”.
The real hoot here, however, is watching 80’s video making at it’s finest. It seems that, at the time, video directors would use any and every special effect they could get their hands on and put it in the video, whether or not it related to the song in any way. In the first video, “Helloween”, we see people in odd Halloween costumes prancing around a very fake looking forest, seemingly with no other purpose than to do a lot of prancing around an obviously fake forest. We also have tiny electric guitars spinning around the guitarists head and another guitar being hosed with water even though it doesn’t appear to be on fire. Maybe it’s a European thing.
What is boils down to is taste. If you were really into 80’s power metal with some big, stadium sized power ballads then you’ll enjoy this DVD. Even if you don’t, this DVD can be entertaining just to watch some of the earlier years of video making. Plus, some of the music is actually pretty good.
