Latex Movie Review - Physical by Olivia Newton John

While the Latex Movie Review is usually reserved for actual movies, on occasion there will be the odd exception. Olivia Newton John's Physical is not a movie but a collection of music videos. It was released in two formats, the original version and another version reedited as a television special initially shown on the American ABC network. With the invention of the VCR came the idea that music artists would some day move away from the standard vinyl album format and on to video albums. Instead of listening on your stereo system you would be watching your favorite artists perform on your television set. The first attempt was in 1975 with Alice Cooper's The Nightmare, originally released as a made for cable television special which featured a conceptual performance for every song off his album Welcome to My Nightmare and later released on home video. This was followed in 1979 by Blondie's Eat to the Beat which was made specifically for the home video market. A few other true video albums were made since then, but mainly what the record companies released as video albums were collections of already existing music videos with some new linking footage. The death of the video album concept came as a result of the early success of MTV. Where the budget for music videos originally went to the label's best selling artist therefore allowing for video albums with 12 songs, once MTV was a factor the budget for videos had to be spread out between all the label's artists. It was more economical to wait for each artist to gradually build up a library of promo videos and release them as a collection then to shoot a video for an entire album.

Olivia's Physical was released nearly a year before the launch of MTV when video albums were still a possibility. While made specifically for the home video market the production was paid for by reediting the program and releasing it as a network television special. There is a difference between both. Aside from the songs being shown in a different order the television special had extra footage of Olivia introducing some of the songs. ABC was not ready for a special that had nothing but singing and insisted on the linking segments to make the special more traditional. The ABC special version is pretty rare and was only released on laser disc. The original version was released on VHS and Beta-max and did not include the linking segments. But it did have a few songs that had been edited out of the ABC special. Since ABC had a 1 hour time limit which was more like 45 minutes once the commercial breaks were added it meant that not all the songs could be shown. Cut out were the songs Magic, A Little More Love and Hopelessly Devoted to You which were all songs from earlier albums. Olivia's record label wanted to promote songs off of her new album and the older songs were cut.

Olivia: Physical has all the songs that are on the album version, most of which are conceptual. One of the highlights is the title track, the video for which has Olivia training a bunch of obese men in a gymnasium. One could almost say that the video was a parody of The Biggest Loser, but this clip was filmed more than 20 years earlier. The only other video with a narrative is Strangers Touch, an ode to film noir where a detective is hired to follow lounge singer Olivia around. Other videos are high concept with a lot of short scenes that are meant to look cool but make little sense. Recovery has her walking around with a treasure map in a western ghost town while hallucinating images of herself in different costumes interacting with such things as portrait artists, Zulu warriors in gold masks and cages full of men in tuxedos. the video ends with a reveal that she is in a psychiatrist office perhaps telling him of her weird dream. Half of the videos here are performance. Carried Away, Hopelessly Devoted and Falling have her performing on different high concept sets while Magic, A Little More Love, Love Make Me Strong and Silvery Rain ( nearly half the program ) has her wearing the same outfit performing in the same night club. Music videos came a long way since Physical was released. Even the videos released in the late '80s make Physical look dated. There is some campy fun in watching them, and for those of you who were old enough to have watched the program during it's original broadcast watching it again will be nostalgic, but there is only two good reasons to watch the Physical home video. Either because you like Olivia's music, specifically the Physical album, or because you enjoy looking at Olivia when she was still in her prime. Which leads us to the reason behind this review...

THE SCENE:
The video that has attracted many seek out Physical is Landslide which opens the program. Here Olivia wears two fetish costumes, one is a white satin catsuit adorned with Jetsons like appendages, but the outstanding one is a shiny red dress that appears to be rubber ( Hard to tell materials with the extreme lighting of these early music videos ). The Promise ( The Dolphin Song ) which appears halfway through the tape has Olivia wearing a wetsuit shot from both above and below water. She wears other interesting costumes throughout the program that are also worth watching. But one of my favorite moments is a bit of film that appears to have nothing to do with any of the songs. It appears to be behind the scenes footage from the album cover shoot put to slow paced Calypso music. It begins with Olivia in a white t-shirt laying down on the beach and allowing the surf to wash around her. She keeps her belly to the ground so you do not get to see her breasts through her wet shirt, but she is then seen in a red cut t-shirt and white bikini bottoms, once again getting wet, and this time showing her entire body while the wet clothing drapes around her body. It was an amazingly erotic thing to see back in the '80s, especially on network television. NOTE: while Physical is long out of print, the videos from it are included on Olivia Newton John Video Gold Volume 1. I have not previewed that particular DVD yet so I can not tell you if the entire Physical program is shown intact including the original opening and Olivia getting wet in the surf.