A lot of famous horror directors over the years have directed music videos.
Taking a look back at five music videos directed by some of the biggest horror icons EVER!
Music videos — they used to be important, you know.
Long before YouTube and TikTok, music videos gave us our first real taste of dopamine-spiking, instant gratification micro-filmmaking. They were all-out musicals in three and four minute spurts and even now, long after MTV stopped playing them, the really good ones still reside in our collective psyches.
It’s not exactly uncommon knowledge that a LOT of big name directors helmed some of the most memorable music videos of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Some were already established (like John Landis, director of MJ’s Thriller vid) while others would later go on to become mainstream Hollywood heavy hitters (David Fincher, Spike Jones, etc.)
Well, as fate would have it, some big name horror directors got in on the action, too. In fact, some of the greatest horror directors of all time dipped their toes into the music video sphere of influence, and sometimes, with artists and types of music you definitely would not suspect.
“Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol (1983)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
I remember watching this video way back in the day and from my foggy recollections, I don’t recall anything about it, visually, anyway, that would suggest Tobe Hooper was the guy behind the camera. Well, watching it in 2026, it’s beyond evident that Tobe directed this video. I mean, we’re only 20 seconds in or so before we get to see an old dude swinging a hammer around in a kitchen, just like he was Leatherface or something. It’s a weird concept for a music video that doesn’t even remotely tie into the song lyrics — which has long been considered a not-so-subtle ode to onanism — that feels kinda’ like a cross between The Road Warrior and Dawn of the Dead. Meaning, yeah, it’s pretty awesome, actually. There’s a lot of drab oranges and silvers in the video, which is kind of a tell that Tobe was calling the behind the scenes shots. I’m just surprised nobody’s tried to claim Steven Spielberg secretly directed it by now.
“Self Control” by Laura Branigan (1984)
Directed by William Friedkin
If you’re going to hire the guy who directed The Exorcist to film a music video for you, you simply assume it’s going to be spooky. And sure enough, the video for Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” is SPOOKY. It’s kind of like Friedkin took Eyes Wide Shut, The Black Swan, and every slasher movie ever made and rolled it into a five-minute mini-movie with a LOT of avant-garde interpretive dancing and metaphors for sexual frustration in it. We’ve got creepy dolls and back-up dancers kinda acting like zombie and a ton of weird choreography that feels like it’s modeled off any number of Traci Lords movies, but the star attraction here is DEFINITELY the creepy stalker/lover/phantom guy who runs around in a trench coat and a spooky, Michael Myers-like mask trying to woo Laura into his clutches. It’s freaky, it’s sexy, it’s artistic, it’s mystifying it’s … well, it’s a music video made by William Friedkin, alright.
“Cold Metal” by Iggy Pop (1988)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Iggy Pop is one of the undisputed gods of punk rock. Alas, by 1988 he was going through this weird David Lee Roth meets Bob Segar phase where he was writing songs like “Cold Metal,” which were LITERALLY odes to actual metal, in the most hyper-literal interpretation imaginable. Considering Iggy and Sam are both Michigan boys, I guess it’s not too much of a surprise that they’d hook up for this music video, although upfront there’s really nothing idiosyncratically Raimi about the production at all. But we do get a few classical Raimi-isms, including the straight-ahead Evil Dead cam, super up-close shots of Iggy’s eyeballs and teeth and even a guest appearance from the nightmare portal that sucked Ash into medieval times at the end of Evil Dead 2. It’s kitschy stuff, but it’s fun and kinda catchy, in an ironic way. That said: can anyone show me where the Delta ‘88 Oldsmobile makes its cameo?
“Hellraiser” by Motörhead (1992)
Directed by Anthony Hicox
See, this music video is why you NEED the experts at Wicked Horror looking out for you. I came across numerous websites that claimed this music video was directed by Clive Barker, which is straight up malarkey. It was actually directed by Anthony Hicox, who coincidentally, directed the third Hellraiser movie. Like a lot of movie tie-in music videos this one relies heavily on scenes culled from Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, but we’ve also got some original material starring Doug Bradley acting VERY out of character as Pinhead. As in, there’s a scene in the video where he plays cards with Motörhead frontman Lemmy in something of a parody of the chess game with Death (literally) in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. It’s corny and awesome at the same time, which is pretty much what something like this is supposed to be. You can just tell this is from the same guy who gave us Waxworks II: Lost in Time.
“Scream!” by The Misfits (1999)
Directed by George Romero
There’s some cosmic irony in this one. You see, George Romero was actually one of the people asked to direct Scream before Wes Craven signed on, so I guess he DID end up directing a “Scream” after all. There’s a lot of backstory here that would take forever to churn through, but the quick and easy version is that this is an incarnation of The Misfits without Danzig handling lead vocals duties. Instead, it’s some guy named Michale Graves with absolutely god-awful political views. I don’t recall see this one playing on MTV back in the day, for obvious reasons. Not only is the style of music way too abrasive for a post-Columbine pop landscape, the clip itself is insanely bloody, with multiple scenes of the band chomping the faces off of doctors and nurses in a self-homage to the original Night of the Living Dead. Weirdly enough, it’s as close as we got to a ‘90s “…of the Dead” movie from Romero — which is sad for a lot of reasons.