Give Me The Creeps: ‘Land Of Confusion’ Video By Genesis (1986)

Back in the golden age of MTV (when they actually played music videos), one of the most highly watched videos was for ‘Land Of Confusion‘ by Genesis in 1986.  Comprised of puppets from the UK show Spitting Image, it was a marvelous social commentary on the 80’s, centering around then President Ronald Reagan.  Oh yeah – and it completely scared the shit out of me.

To this day, I can’t watch that video without feeling uneasy – and it’s not just because of the uncomfortableness of the giant ape in bed in-between Ronald and Nancy.  Yes, that’s disturbing – as is the random guy eating his own tongue between a hot dog bun, with ketchup and mustard applied of course. Puppets in general creep me out, and this video had creepy puppet overload going on.  I could never look at Phil Collins in the same way after first watching this, not that I really had a fascination with looking at him before this.  Nice touch with the severed puppet heads at the beginning of the video by the way. So kudos to you, ‘Land Of Confusion‘ video…..you were the first (and only) creepy puppet music video to ever give me the creeps.

Give Me The Creeps: Aphex Twin’s ‘Come To Daddy’ Music Video

Remember the good old days of music videos when you could watch a dog piss on a television that’d been left on the street, only to have that television miraculously turn on with a frightening face that kept saying “I want your soul…..I will eat your soul” over and over again?  Yeah, me too.  Welcome to 1997’s headfuck of a music video for Aphex Twin’s, ‘Come To Daddy‘.

I guess I should have warned you if you’d never watched that before.  Anyway, to put it mildly in terms of horrifying music videos, ‘Come To Daddy’ makes Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me‘ look like a Lite-Brite commercial. Which is why it easily earns a spot on my recurring Give Me The Creeps feature.  Not only do we have some horror nods to Hellraiser with the whole “Come to daddy….” line, we get an eating your soul reference from The Evil Dead and a slick Videodrome type TV exiting.

Nothing is creepier though than the numerous little people in the video that all have the grown up face of Mr. Aphex Twin himself, Richard D. James.  It still makes me shudder and it honestly makes me a want a feature length movie based around those little fuckers.  Unfortunately, a 5-minute music video is all we get.  I’m not going to pout though, because in the end it satisfies my urge that I have for watching an old lady get screamed upon for almost 20 seconds by a creature that probably has really bad breath.  And in observance of that alone, I salute you ‘Come To Daddy‘ music video.  Thank you for giving me the creeps.

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