Best Music Movies of 1987

The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.

Los Angeles teenager Ritchie Valens becomes an overnight rock 'n' roll success in 1958, thanks to a love ballad called "Donna" that he wrote for his girlfriend. But as his star rises, Valens has conflicts with his jealous brother, Bob, and becomes haunted by a recurring nightmare of a plane crash just as he begins his first national tour alongside Buddy Holly.

A group of dated appliances, finding themselves stranded in a summer home that their family had just sold, decide to seek their young 8 year old "master".

Originally released as "The $19.98 Home Vid: Cliff 'Em All," Metallica's first video is a tribute to late original bassist Cliff Burton. James Hetfield describes it as "a compilation of bootleg footage shot by sneaky Metallifux, stuff shot for TV that was never used, but we've held onto, home footage, personal fotos and us drunk. But most important, it's really a look back at the 3-1/2 years that Cliff was with us and includes his best bass solos and the home footage and pix that we feel best capture his unique personality and style." 1987.

St. Louis, 1986. For Chuck Berry's 60th, Keith Richards assembles a pickup band of Robert Cray, Joey Spampinato, Eric Clapton, himself and long-time Berry pianist, Johnnie Johnson. Joined on stage by Etta James, Linda Ronstadt and Julian Lennon, Berry performs his classic rock songs. His abilities as a composer, lyricist, singer, musician and entertainer are on display and, in behind-the-scenes interviews, are discussed by Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bruce Springstein, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and others. There's even a rarity for Berry—a rehearsal. Archival footage from the early 1950s and a duet with John Lennon round out this portrait of a master.

It's no exaggeration to say this might be the most intense and groundbreaking 45-minute performance in the history of rock. Jimi Hendrix's debut American set at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival is generally considered one of the most radical and legendary live shows ever. Virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, even though he was already an established entity in the UK, Hendrix and his two-piece Experience explode on stage, ripping through blues classics "Rock Me Baby" and Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," interpreting and electrifying Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," debuting songs from his yet-to-be-released first album and closing with the now historic sacrificing/burning of his guitar during an unhinged version of "Wild Thing" that even its writer Chip Taylor would never have imagined. Hendrix uses feedback and distortion to enhance the songs in whisper-to-scream intensity, blazing territory that had not been previously explored with as much soul-frazzled power.

In this one-hour Christmas special, Fozzie Bear surprises his mother Emily on Christmas Eve by bringing the entire Muppet gang to her farm to celebrate the holidays. Doc and his dog Sprocket, who had planned a quiet Christmas, end up joining the Muppets in their holiday activities and preparations.The Sesame Street regulars, including Big Bird, Bert, Ernie and others, join the festivities, but to Kermit's dismay, the only one missing is Miss Piggy, who has been caught in a snowstorm.

In 1987, to capitalize on his growing success in Europe, Prince toured extensively to promote the album of the same name and sales increased accordingly. However, the United States remained resistant to his latest album, and sales began to drop; it was at this point that Prince decided to film a live concert promoting the new material, for eventual distribution to theaters in America. Featuring the band that accompanied Prince on his 1987 Sign o' the Times Tour, including dancer Cat Glover, keyboardist Boni Boyer, bassist Levi Seacer, Jr., guitarist Miko Weaver, drummer Sheila E. and former member of The Revolution keyboardist Dr. Fink, the film sees the group perform live on stage (although "U Got the Look" is represented by its promotional music video).

Slippery When Wet: The Videos features all the videos from Bon Jovi's breakthrough third album, Slippery When Wet, together with interviews and backstage footage.

A surrealistic journey into the experiences and reflections of a documentary filmmaker as he evaluates the people and places that have made up his life. Alternatively, a 65 minute feature made up of songs from Don Johnson's record of the same name.

A tenor, in suit and tie, with a receding hairline, sings a ballad to his love, “Your Face Is Like a Song,” to simple piano accompaniment.

A concert video of The Cure filmed in Orange, France. 1. Intro 2. Shake Dog Shake 3. Piggy In The Mirror 4. Play For Today 5. A Strange Day 6. Primary 7. Kyoto Song 8. Charlotte Sometimes 9. Inbetween Days 10. The Walk 11. A Night Like This 12. Push 13. One Hundred Years 14. A Forest 15. Sinking 16.Close To Me 17. Let's Go To Bed 18. Six Different Ways 19. Three Imaginary Boys 20. Boys Don't Cry 21. Faith 22. Give Me It 23. 10.15 Saturday Night 24. Killing An Arab

Ah, the '80s! A time of hair bands and their ludicrous MTV videos filled with spandex-clad band members and skimpily clad bimbos. Kiss: Exposed returns us to that forgettable era, as Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons show how to desperately try to remain cock rock's elder statesmen. This 1987 compilation serves up several now-hilarious video clips from Kiss's '80s "unmasked" period, including "Tears Are Falling," "Heaven's on Fire," "Lick It Up," and "I Love It Loud." (Count the fires burning in these classic video relics of days gone by!) Also on hand are Stanley and Simmons themselves, looking properly embarrassed as they act out rock's biggest fantasy: lounging by the pool with a bevy of (mostly) bare beauties. The saving grace is the generous selection of vintage live performances: hearing the band do "Strutter," "Detroit Rock City," "Ladies Room," and "Deuce" in its late-'70s prime is worth wading through the outdated '80s-style power pop... if you're a real Kiss fan, of course.

A rock singer goes to Brazil to shoot a video, but winds up getting kidnapped and enduring a number of seemingly bizarre and hilarious events.

Live Without a Net is a live concert video of Van Halen recorded in New Haven, Connecticut in 1986, and released the following year. It was of their performance on August 27, 1986 at New Haven's Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The 90-minute release removed a few songs from the full performance. While the band attempted to record the previous night, audio problems prevented it from being used, although some video footage from that night would later surface in music videos. The concerts were part of the 5150 Tour, supporting the album of the same name, Van Halen's first with lead singer Sammy Hagar.

One of the earliest Cirque du Soleil releases, filmed during a tour of the troupe's native Canada in 1986 and filled with their trademark costumes, music and extraordinary feats.

Animated characters introduce a compilation of George Pal replacement animation Puppetoon short films from the 1930s and 1940s. Originally released in 80 minutes length, The Puppetoon Movie also exists in a subsequently expanded ten minutes longer version.

The story of Josephine Baker takes us on a fascinating tour of 20th-century race relations on both sides of the Atlantic, yet it leads to no conclusion, and black girls in search of a role-model tend to look elsewhere. Part of her appeal is her startlingly unique appearance. Simply nobody has ever looked or acted like her. She fits no black stereotype. Nor does she look like any recognizable strain of Afro-American. I'd always heard she was half-white, but it seems that her paternity is unknown, and her contradictory claims on the subject don't do much to enlighten us. (We are tempted to imagine quite an exotic mix.) Her origins in sharply-segregated St. Louis, where she is said to have witnessed a lynching, do not seem to have left her embittered. Perhaps she had too much to give. There is a special innocence about that smile, and when she performs her cross-eyed gag, we are lifted into a strange pixie-world, all its own.

Live at Red Rocks is a concert video album by the American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks. It was filmed during Nicks' 1986 Rock a Little Tour. It features special guests Peter Frampton on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on drums. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Performance Music Video in 1987. Originally released as an Enhanced CD-ROM in 1987, it was reissued on DVD in 2007. Song listing: "Outside the Rain" "Dreams" "Talk to Me" "I Need to Know" (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover) "No Spoken Word" "Beauty and the Beast" "Stand Back" "Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?" "Edge of Seventeen".

Cowabunga! The surfing '60s ride into the new wave as Frankie and Annette star in this hip update of their old-time, good-time beach movies. With special appearances by Bob Denver, Tony Dow, Pee-Wee Herman, Jerry Mathers and other familiar faces. Frankie and Annette grow up and have kids in the midwest. They return to LA to visit their daughter who is shacked up with her boyfriend and tries to hide the fact. They begin to have marriage problems when Frankie runs into Connie, who has erected a shrine to him in her night club. Their punk son has joined up with the local surf toughs, and things all come to a head when the toughs challenge the good guys to a surfing duel

Who's That Girl: Live in Japan contained a live date from the Who's That Girl World Tour, filmed at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo, Japan on June 22, 1987. The tour supported her 1986 third studio album True Blue, as well as the 1987 soundtrack Who's That Girl. It was Madonna's first world tour, reaching Asia, North America and Europe. Musically and technically superior to her previous initiative, the Who's That Girl Tour incorporated multimedia components to make the show more appealing.

Live from Paris is a video by U2, recorded at the band's concert at Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris, France on July 4, 1987. The concert was originally released in video form on the bonus DVD in the box set version of the remastered edition of The Joshua Tree, released on November 20, 2007.

Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve concert 12/31/87 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

Shot in Detroit on Halloween during his 1986 tour, all of Alice Cooper's trademark songs are present in this spectacular showcase of entertaining thrills, filled with his legendary straightjacket escapes and boa constrictors, along with several new stage shockers...

Courtney, the younger sister of Valerie, and her friends go to their condo for a weekend getaway, but Courtney can't get rid of the haunting feeling that a supernatural rockabilly driller killer is coming to murder them all.

Barbie and her band, The Rockers preform a charity concert in outer space.

Music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley.

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound (Vivaldi, Bach, Wagner), and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

A documentary of the band's first 12 years with interviews and live footage.

Cleveland siblings rise with a rock band while coping with personal problems.

A Halloween special featuring appropriately-themed rock and roll songs set to scenes from the Disney library of classic animation.

The story of a mysterious woman named Laura, who embarks on a journey to find her true love. The movie's soundtrack is set to four decades of classic rock. Scatman Crothers provides the voice of a living jukebox who narrates the story.

An overview of the early years--late 1970s, early 1980s--of San Francisco punk band Dead Kennedys, with clips from some of their live concerts and footage of landmark San Francisco locations of the punk music scene. Jello Biafra and The Dead Kennedys show why they're the kings of satire in 9 live early performances.

After the first great concert for peace in space, Barbie and her band The Rockers are going to come back home. During the trip back to earth, on the space shuttle, they start to play a song ("Rockin Back"), few seconds later a "time warp" tunnel is forming in front of the Shuttle. Then they see there are a lot of clocks going backward inside the tunnel, at the end of that, the Shuttle lands on a strange airport. After the landing they meet Dr. Merrishaw (probably an astronomer engineer) and his daughter Kim, and learn they are in the year 1959, and then brings them around the city to have a look change. At the end, after a performance at Cape Canaveral, Dr. Merrishaw helps Barbie and the Rockers return to their time. Back in the present, they have a big concert, where Barbie is reunited with an adult Kim and introduced to her daughter Megan.

Nicky escapes from prison somewhere between Alabama and Utah, sometime in the future. He looks for his girl in the bars and hotels. All he can see in his new freedom is that no one cares for the future of human culture.

Several pieces of Frank Zappa's music are set against clay animation by Bruce Bickford.

Short animation on Nina Simone's song "My Baby Just Cares for Me".

A "documentary" about the major influence that a '60s rock singer named Bruno has had on rock music, as attested to by such rock legends as Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson and the Bee Gees, among others.

Singer Paul Simon and several African musicians perform a concert to benefit victims of apartheid in South Africa.

Mozart's famous Singspiel after Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's work "Belmonte und Konstanze", DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL comes to life in the sumptuous setting of Topkapi, the Ottoman sultans' own Istanbul seraglio (palace harem). Belmonte finds his fiancée Konstanze and her English maid Blondchen, who were captured and sold by pirates, in the Mediterranean seraglio of the Ottoman pasha Selim. Belmonte's servant Pedrillo gets him engaged as builder. After Selim tried to enforce himself upon Konstanze, Pedrillo and Blondchen, his own sweetheart, prepare their flight, managing to get Osmin, the pasha's overseer, drunk. Yet Osmin and Selim's guard still capture them, already in the garden; however the touching display of true love melts the pasha's heart, so he lets them go.

To save her father, a girl who always puts others before herself promises to live her life in a lavish castle with a strange beast.

A boy becomes a virtuoso pianist, but when he gets too big-headed the piano decides to teach him a lesson.

Synopsis Includes: The Chain Everywhere Dreams Seven Wonders Isn't It Midnight World Turning Little Lies Oh Well Gold Dust Woman Another Woman Stand Back Songbird Don't Stop Cast & Crew Artists: • Fleetwood Mac Product Information Features: Features Not Specified Video: Standard 1.33:1 Color Audio: ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Stereo

The opening of China to the West has produced images that focus on the more obvious: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the tombs of Sian. But there is another much larger part of China which we have not seen. It's the China of people, its rhythms, its patterns, its colors. This video brings us to the large and timeless world of life in China, as it is lived now and has been for centuries - vast, unchanging, and slightly mysterious. Here is but a glimpse of this other world. This dreamvideo was filmed during the months of October and November of 1986 in and around the following cities and locations: Beijing, Chengdu, Guiyang, Guilin, Yangshuo, Xingping, Yangai, Nanjing, Huangshan Mountain and Hefei.

Sometime in the distant future, a fledgling band gets an opportunity for a breakthrough, if they can make it in time to a faraway planet to perform in a very popular club.

Young Alice returns to Wonderland and is on her way to be crowned Queen, but she must dare to cross Chessland first. On her exciting journey, she encounters a magical jester, the feared Jabberwocky, Humpty Dumpty, Tiger Lily, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

At an old farmhouse, a family mysteriously dissapears at the hands of evil. Years later, hair metal band The Tritons comes to the farmhouse, whose barn now features a 24-track recording studio. Lead singer John Triton gets the band to perform their first night in the farmhouse after dinner, and weird little beasties suddenly appear, and strange things start to happen. Band members (and their tag along girlfriends) begin to act strangely and vanish one by one. Soon, only John Triton remains, and he holds a secret. Finally, the evil shows itself and a battle between heaven and hell ensues....

Sadomasochistic images of self-mutilation.

In Europe several several centuries ago, a group of prisoners about to be executed are freed as part of the celebration of the upcoming marriage of the emperor's daughter, Princess Gilda, to a very rich prince from another country. Sid Caesar composed the song "Clothes Make the Man". Ran 93 minutes on German TV.