Ultravox – Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
It opens with a title card.
What's it say?
The title of song and the band.
Now we rotate around a blurry room. The room is blue and quite well lit! However, blurry. We see a person they have very gingery eyelashes.
Is the rest of them ginger too?
I do not know. I've not been able to see the top of their head yet. When we first see them it is just their nose and eye in the frame.
Oh it is now a close-up of their eye.
Now they are tapping their lip with a pencil and back to their face. We still can't see the top of their head but they have a very pointy nose and look a bit like Charles Dance.
Now they are tapping on something metal, possibly the arm of their chair, chewing on the pencil and back to their face. I can see their hair now! They are balding and have tufts of nondescript, slightly gray looking hair sticking out of either side of their head! They look frightened and concerned.
Like some sort of mad scientist?
They are a scientist!
Here is a wider shot of folk sitting in chairs in lab coats I reckon our friend here is one of them. Yes, the camera seems to be zooming in onto one of them. He is rifling through a stack of papers and chewing on his pencil.
Whilst everyone sits in a circle?
Nope, they just appear to be sitting in chairs at random intervals in a room full of giant machines.
Now another person in a lab coat walks up to him. The other person in the lab coat, perhaps his supervisor or somesuch, is talking to him. He points off-screen with his pencil.
Now there is a hand pushing buttons, the whole screen is just buttons and blinky lights!
He flicks a switch.
The supervisor?
I think so?
Or Charles Dance?
I can't really tell it is just the back of them.
Now the singing starts!
That took a very long time.
The switches and buttons and lights are on a large machine with screens all round the top. We see a row of screens now and they've got computerspeak written across them, rows of bright green numbers. A different man, in a lab coat, with short, curly dark hair is there. He looks concerned.
Now we have two men in lab coats walking and talking. There is a man in a business suit apparently standing guard in front of one of the machines. We zoom into his face. He is gazing listlessly into the middle distance.
Back to Charles Dance flipping through papers on a clipboard.
Maybe he left his important papers on his other clipboard, which is why he cannot find them?
Maybe.
He has a little ponytail at the back of his head.
I thought he was balding.
He is, he is one of those folk who has no hair at the top of their head and has grown the rest of it long to compensate.
Now the computer screen proclaims DANGER in bright red letters.
Oh no!
Charles Dance looks up in surprise. Now the screen is saying "Reactor core overheat" Charles Dance jumps up in alarm, flinging his clipboard to one side. He pushes a button and a red light begins to flash.
Now the computer screen is saying "DANGER! This is not a drill" Not has been underlined for emphasis.
Now the red light is flashing throughout the room. Men in lab coats are just freaking out, typing furiously and clicking buttons. The man in the business suit is on the phone and one of the scientists takes the phone from him. He is an old dude with a pencil moustache.
Now the computer is flashing "Explosion Imminent" It is fading into the screen just flashing DANGER, in case our scientists missed that.
I would think the other warning was more relevant, they can probably surmise that there is DANGER.
Now we are somewhere else and a black car is driving very fast. We see a close-up of the man driving. He looks very calm considering there is a power plant about to blow up somewhere.
Is it Charles Dance again?
No, it is some other dude.
Oh, well he probably doesn't know about the power plant then.
We are looking out through the windshield and a bunch of people are running up the road towards him in a panic. He stops the car and looks out his window. There is a TV mounted on a wall somewhere outside his car. It is proclaiming "NEWSFLASH. Nuclear explosion imminent. Stay indoors and await further information"
Because walls will save you from radiation!
The bloke gets out of his car and begins running. He is running in the opposite direction as the people running away so he is probably running towards the explosion out of some misguided sense of heroism.
The fool!
A man falls; the man from the car helps him up lest he get trampled.
How heroic.
Now he is running again.
Now it cuts back to the lab. There are toys scattered around the floor for reasons that I can't fathom. There is a large white phone a lady is using it, she has one of those mushroom haircuts that were so popular around this time. Now we have cut to a close-up of her eyes. She weeps!
Is it her eyes the song speaks of?
Oh, this isn't a lab at all this is someone's house! And she doesn't have a full mushroom haircut she just has her hair back in a messy flouffy ponytail so her bangs look mushroomy. The bloke from the car bursts into their nice 80s flat and hugs the lady. She is wearing mum jeans so maybe that is what the toys are signifying, that she is a mum.
With a child that doesn't know how to put away it's toys.
The hug is going for a long time with a lot of cutting back and forth to their weeping faces.
Now they are playing music’s.
Wait, the car guy and this mum? Or the band?
The car guy and this mum.
They are playing musics on a stereo using a music format I don't recognize. It looks like a mini record inside a cassette player.
They turn up the volumes. Now they are dancing. Still hugging but sort of swaying about like they want to dance but are too distracted by hugs and the impending destruction of their society. Lots of close-ups of their weeping faces.
They kick over a bottle of champagne and it spills across the carpet. That is a waste. There shan't be any champagne after the nuclear holocaust, guys.
Conserve!
I suppose a filthy carpet doesn't matter if you're going to die.
Now they are going into the child's room to peer at its sleeping form. The child is not asleep but peering creepily out over its blankets.
Now the man and the lady are naked and he is wrapping her in a sheet. And now they are lying down in bed.
The same bed as the child? That's not right.
Nope, a different bed. Otherwise it would be inappropriate.
He is pulling the sheet over their faces and now the camera moves down over the wriggling lumps under the sheet. I will tell you right now, it is far easier having sex without worrying about keeping yourself totally covered in a sheet. This is probably not very good sex just desperate impending nuclear explosion sex.
Maybe they think the sheet will protect them from radiation.
Oh, it isn't a bed they've just set up some sheets on the ground near the telly. The TV is still proclaiming newsflash.
A bright blue light explodes through the window behind the TV!
Oh no! The apocalypse has come.
And we pull back to reveal their makeshift bed. I can't see them there but the light flashed so bright and the screen went white too fast for me to tell.
Maybe they went to pay attention to their frightened child instead of boning.
Nope, there is the shape of their corpses under the sheet.
Oh…
Everything is covered in nuclear fallout dust or what have you. The camera is moving around their apartment. There is a close-up of the lumpy shapes under the sheet. And now lots of children's books and toys covered in dust. Now we're lingering over shots of the sheet with its corpses and on to the phone lying off its hook in a corner.
Now it is a tiny screen in the middle of the screen with like old home movies of the couple dancing outside, picking up the child and frolicking with it in the garden, lying on a plaid picnic blanket, just sort of regular sentimental family things.
Now the child is running, the video freezes and begins to bubble and burn.
Doom!
And then it goes white. Then the whole screen fades to white.
And that is the end of the video.
After Thoughts
That was quite sad!
Way to make me sad first thing in the morning Ultravox. I haven't even eaten my egg yet.