Remember when I did a dive so deep into the video for Blue Öyster Cult’s “Shooting Shark” that I got the bends coming back up, blacked out and had to get all my blood replaced with ape blood, and now I’m more animal than man? Remember that? Well, I hope the hospital’s got some spare gibbons available because I’m about to do it again with the video for Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F.”
You remember “Axel F”. It’s the song from “Beverly Hills Cop”, and sure to come to mind any time you’re disabling a police vehicle using fruit-based subterfuge. Younger readers may remember it as one of the signature songs of the benighted ringtone-hawking CGI abomination known as Crazy Frog, who starred in a wild music video involving a hoverbike chase. I have only two things to say on this subject:
I knew Shania Twain. I worked with Shania Twain. And you, Crazy Frog are no Shania Twain;
The original Harold Faltermeyer video is a thousand times more buckwild than Crazy Frog on his best day.
I should point out that “Axel F” has no lyrics, so I have absolutely nothing to which I can compare the narrative of the video. This video had no choice but to be a non-sequitur.
Our story begins in this film noir evidence locker (?) with venetian blinds, where a mysterious figure is lurking around. He stops at the door, marked RESTRICTED, perhaps pondering the very nature of restriction. Or maybe this is his office, and he’s Jerry Restricted, Private Eye.
This must be his office, because he steps inside without unlocking -- or even TURNING -- the door knob, and we see who’s playing the role of Jerry Restricted: Harold Faltermeyer himself, who looks almost exactly like The Undertaker and Paul Bearer are the same guy. Restricted selects a VHS tape from the shelf, and pops it into a home computer unearthed from a neolithic sherd cache.
It’s a copy of Beverly Hills Cop, and, like any red-blooded male, he skips right to the strip club scene. He’s clacking away at the keyboard, lips pursed, intensely watching Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold watch a stripper perform, and I guess that just goes to show that masturbating with a computer was a lot different before the internet.
But hark! What lady by yonder window lurks? I have no idea, because Harold Faltermeyer is literally the only person on this video’s IMDB cast page. But she’s not just here to intrude upon our hero’s midnight crank sesh.
She’s also here to throw the already-tenuous narrative of this video into a violent tailspin by projecting herself into the film AS HE WATCHES IT.
Next thing we know, though, she has dragged the colorized setting of the movie back into Jerry’s monochrome reality, creating a strange, liminal space just on the other side of the venetian blinds. After initiating this wholesale destruction of the walls between dimensions, she summons a spotlight and begins a wanton, noodly dance that I can only describe as the perfect fusion of Michael Jackson and Groucho Marx.
Satisfied with her grim work, she smiles, and then things start to really fall apart.
SMASH CUT to character actor Wally Cox, no longer relegated to Jerry Restricted’s jerk-off monitor. The walls between film and music video grow ever weaker.
And NOW Harold Faltermeyer himself is here, rocking the fuck out on three (3) keyboards. Judging by the color scheme and the piece of Ivan Drago’s space age gym equipment in the corner there, Harold may be conspiring with Flashdance Baggypants up there in playing the song that tears the world apart.
Look, it’s character actor Stephen Berkoff! Silly Stephen, you can’t stop the collapse of reality itself with bullets.
OH NO.
The multiverse is in freefall as a second Harold Faltermeyer -- dressed up as Phil Collins for some reason -- appears, being edited by Jerry Restricted in the studio of the Harold Faltermeyer of Universe A.
Also, I am in Hell.
A fully sentient avatar of Jerry Restricted is now trapped in the story of Beverly Hills Cop and in danger of getting killed, and the Jerry Restricted staring at the screen is going to watch it happen.
Same, bud.
Can anyone tell me if this a special effects failure or is Harold Faltermeyer a hobbit for real?
But suddenly, a twist! Jerry is tickled pink that his tiny self is in mortal peril, and we get the sense that he, too, cannot be trusted. What is this, Three Days of the Condor?
Now we're back in Beverly Hills Cop Cinematic Universe, where Steven Berkoff's character is monitoring the situation from the command center. Eventually, Jerry ejects the VHS, places it carefully on the shelf, and starts moving slowly across the room.
Berkoff looks on with cautious optimism, like a Japanese general watching Godzilla turn around and head back to sea.
We then see Martin Freeman's dad, Wally Cox, doing the same, implying that circumstances are so dire that the Big Bad and Big Good of the BCCU have put aside their differences to combat this existential threat.
They both breathe a sigh of relief as Jerry leaves the Restricted area, his mission evidently complete. But I still have so many questions! Which Harold was the real Harold? Was the dancer real, or merely a hallucination, a projection of Harold's destructive impulses given form?
Why was there exactly ONE shot of Harold-as-Phil?
Wait. What's happening? Where are we going?!
We're back in the movie?
Harold?
Harold! Look out! Those cars can't see you, you're only 14" tall!
HAROLD!
Fuck a Thanos. Jerry Restricted for Avengers 4.
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