In what ended up being a fruitless search for reviews in English of the Pixies show I went to in Iceland, I came across this blog that had something to say, and also happened to link to what seemed to be a David Hasselhoff video, which I naturally watched, since I couldn’t do much with “Gestir t?nleika bandar?sku rokksveitarinnar Pixies ? Kaplakrika ? Hafnarfir?i ? g?r ??ttust greina nokkra spennu milli li?smanna hlj?msveitarinnar, ?? s?rstaklega Kim Deal og Black Francis (sem einnig kallar sig Frank Black).”
The video, which is perhaps one of the strangest things I’ve ever watched, is for Hasselhoff’s recording of “Hooked on a Feeling,” and attempts to form a kind of cheese-based antidote to any edge the song might have in the collective consciousness thanks to its appearance in the “Super Sounds Of The Seventies” soundtrack to Reservoir Dogs. The recording itself is beside the point though; it’s the stunningly cheap and shockingly amateur video that’s important.
As I watched it, I wondered if it could actually be real. Curiosity turned to fear, and I finally decided that it was just weird and German enough to be real. I figured it had probably been discussed enough, since it was a two year-old video, and that I didn’t necessarily have anything new to say about it. After watching the entire opus, though, I had changed my mind.
In the video, Hasseloff seems to be going on a trek around the world, using the most video-friendly modes of transportation: sledding down a glacier, flying in the sky, standing on a motorcycle, exploding out of a wedding cake, and others. Did I mention these scenes are all rendered in the poorest-quality green-screen editing possible?
Hasselhoff begins on a glacier, decked out in fur, singing the “Ooka Chaka” opening to the song, but it was during the glacier cruise section that I began to wonder where exactly the video was shot. Certainly scenes in which singing David is superimposed over celebrity tourist David dancing with African tribesmen was shot in Africa, but these shots of glaciers and woods looked a lot like Alaska, I thought. Though it definitely had no reason to be Alaska, certainly.
Shots of Hasselhoff juggling spinning cubes made up of other scenes from the video while standing on a train? Well, they also looked like they were shot in Alaska. But it wasn’t until the final shot of the video, after leather-tux David, motorcycle David, and flying David have all come together, that my suspicions were confirmed.
For no apparent reason, David Hasselhoff’s video for “Hooked on a Feeling” ends with a shot of Hasselhoff singing in front of the skyline of Anchorage, while another floating Hasselhoff dances in the sky somewhere above the ARCO building.
I submit a photo of non-Hasselhoff Anchorage for your comparison, and to encourage thoughts on whether or not Anchorage is better off without a floating tv star in its skies.
You can judge for yourself with a better video quality but poorly-synched version here, or a poor video but more comprehensible version here.
