Retro Video of the Week: "Screaming in the Night" by Krokus

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release of Swiss hard rockers Krokus's seventh studio album, Headhunter.  While the band never had what I would consider a "hit" in the U.S., they were well-known in hard rock and metal circles, and Headhunter was their biggest album in the U.S., reaching #25 on the Billboard album chart and going gold in the U.S.

"Screaming in the Night" is not as "hard" as most of the band's output.  It's kind of a plodding rock song, teetering on the brink of power ballad territory.  The video was in decent rotation on MTV, and having never been to Switzerland, I assume it depicts a normal, contemporary Genevan story.  A Bluto-esque warlord in a modern-yet-medieval lakeside mountain village terrorizes and imprisons people who presumably aren't neutral enough.  Lead singer Marc Storace makes out with some new wave Jazzercise chick through prison bars, but Bluto catches her and stabs her in the chest.  Marc then gets chained up and thrown into a small stone pyramid that has a lightning rod on the top.  Good thing, too, because lightning strikes, evaporates the chains, and provides Marc a Canadian tuxedo and some fresh sneakers.  It proves to be the perfect outfit to wear when he discovers a hatch in the pyramid with a ladder that leads to -- you guessed it -- a diner, where Bluto is a line cook and someone resembling Ana Gasteyer is a waitress.  He then sees himself on TV and walks across people's meals on the diner counter toward the TV, where he sings the very song in the video.  Does it get any Swisser than that?