Michael Jackson Thriller Music Video: Cast, Director and Making of the Film

By late 1983 Thriller had already produced several hit singles and two landmark videos, Billie Jean and Beat It. The title track was not an obvious single: at almost six minutes, with a spoken-word section by the horror actor Vincent Price, it was unusual radio material. Jackson wanted a video that would work as a short horror film, and he approached John Landis, whose 1981 film An American Werewolf in London mixed comedy and horror in a way he admired.

The idea was not a promotional clip but a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, framed as a film within a film. That ambition is why the finished piece runs around 13 to 14 minutes, including credits, and why it is usually called a short film rather than a video.

The budget, widely reported at around half a million dollars, was far larger than typical for a music video in 1983. Record labels did not usually spend that much on a clip for a song that was already on a successful album. The solution was to make a second product: a documentary, Making Michael Jackson's Thriller, which could be sold to television networks and then released on home video. The rights deals helped cover the cost of the main film.

That decision had a big side effect. The combined home-video release became one of the best-selling music videocassettes of the period, showing record companies that there was a market for owning music video, not just watching it on television.

Rick Baker, who had won the first Academy Award for makeup for An American Werewolf in London, designed the werewolf and zombie make-up and the transformation sequence. Michael Peters, a Broadway choreographer who had also worked on Beat It, created the zombie dance with Jackson. The dance works because it is simple to copy: big, jerky arm movements, hunched shoulders, and synchronised steps that read clearly on camera.

Ola Ray played Jackson's date. Vincent Price's voice-over, recorded for the album, returns over the graveyard sequence. The film opens with an on-screen statement that, due to Jackson's personal convictions, it does not endorse a belief in the occult, a line that reflected his religious background at the time.

Thriller premiered in early December 1983 and was quickly placed in heavy rotation on MTV, which reportedly played it on a set schedule so viewers knew when to tune in. It was also shown on other television outlets and in cinemas. The single, released in January 1984, became Thriller's seventh top-ten Hot 100 hit, making Thriller the first album to send seven singles into the top ten.

In December 2009 the Library of Congress added Thriller to the National Film Registry, the first music video to be selected. The Registry's essay describes it as having changed the way music videos were made and seen.

Before Thriller, most music videos were performance clips or loose visual accompaniments to a song. After Thriller, artists and labels treated videos as events that could carry a story, a star image and a marketing campaign. The high-budget videos of the late 1980s and 1990s, including Jackson's own Bad, Smooth Criminal and Black or White, follow directly from this one.

It also made dance the centre of the Jackson brand. The zombie dance is still performed at weddings, flash mobs and Halloween parties, which is a better measure of its reach than any sales figure.