Music Video: Back From The Grave by El Guapo Stuntteam

The music video has rapidly become a tremendously serious medium. Since the advent of Music TeleVision (or MTV as it’s now universally known) in the early 1980s, it’s gone from a charming rarity to a necessary visual accompaniment. Renowned movie directors from David Fincher to Anton Corbijn got their starts in the field, and some bands elect to try and communicate powerful, heartfelt messages through their videos.

What a breath of fresh air, then, to see something as gleefully deranged as Toon Aerts’ video for Belgian rockers El Guapo Stuntteam’s single ‘Back From The Grave’. The plot? A pair of attractive young ladies play the band’s single backwards, unwittingly summoning the undead – led by a permanently aflame zombie wearing a motorcycle helmet – and subsequently must defend themselves in a small cabin against the armies of the night.

The concept is simple, but the sheer exuberance of Aerts’ video is a joy. Every zombie classic, from Evil Dead to George A. Romero’s canon, is channelled as our unlikely heroines shoot and chainsaw their way through the shuffling horde; the outrageous blood-splatters and dismemberments harking back to a time where zombie films were made to be enjoyed rather than parodied.

The video’s finale, which includes the Belgian band springing from the TV in powder-blue suits, is riotously silly but fits in perfectly with the video’s unapologetically lunatic premise, just as Aerts’ intentionally grainy direction gels brilliantly with El Guapo’s brand of distorted, lo-fi rock.

In an era where so many directors try to make mini-movies out of four-minute videos, it’s refreshing to sit back and watch a talented filmmaker simply enjoy themselves.

Luke Grundy is a fervent assimilator of media living amid the bright lights of London, England. If he’s not watching films or listening to music, he’s probably asleep, eating or dead. An aspiring writer, journalist and musician, he is the creator of movie/music blog Odessa & Tucson and lives for epistemology.