Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Shoot! The Greatest Hits
(Warner Music Vision)
Duran Duran affected arch meaning with Nick Rhodes’ cravats and Simon Le Bon’s Franglais appellation. Frankie went a few steps further by delivering their own manifesto, with slogans, T-shirts and three strikingly individual promos: the Borgias-disco floorshow of ‘Relax’, the Cold War hand-to-hand scrap in ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘Power Of Love’, the straight re-enactment of the birth of Jesus that mixed pulp fantasies with gay sex, sensationalist politics and religious myth.
The remainder of this slight, eight-video compilation contains ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’, which cavorts in a Medieval fetish club, and ‘Rage Hard’, where Frankie strike Mad Max poses against an expensive set. They’re fine as richly garnished mini-films, but there’s little to differentiate the likes of ‘Rage Hard’ from Le Bon’s big-budget sci-fi warrior dreams. 6
Steve Malins