The Untold Truth Of Michael Jackson's Thriller Video

Michael Jackson had a huge 1983. He took both "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" to #1, debuted his signature "Moonwalk" dance move to stunned and delighted fans, sold millions of copies of his album Thriller, and then starred in one of the most popular, famous, and well-produced music videos of all time. Actually, "Thriller" is more of a short film, a nearly 14-minute horror movie about a young man who's "not like other guys" who transforms into a werewolf-like monster, terrorizes his date, and dances like a zombie while looking cool in a red leather jacket. 

The clips promoting "Thriller" helped turn MTV into a vital cultural force, solidified Jackson's stature as the "King of Pop," and significantly raised both the quality and expectations of music videos. "Thriller" remains a classic, as well as an unprecedented moment in music and film, and it wasn't easy to pull off. Here's the inside story on the development, production, and impact of the video for Michael Jackson's spookiest hit.

In August 1983, film director John Landis received a phone call from Michael Jackson. Landis had helmed several big movies, including the horror-comedy An American Werewolf in London, which Jackson so enjoyed (per Vanity Fair) that he wanted the director to tell another werewolf story and helm his "Thriller" video. The singer and the filmmaker met, and Landis dismissed the notion of presenting "Thriller" as a typical, cheaply made music video. Instead, he thought, it would be shot like a real movie, on classy 35-millimeter film stock. A musical number set to "Thriller" (the song) would comprise most of the video, but it would also have a scripted drawing device. Landis and Jackson worked out a story about a guy who takes a young woman on a date and transforms into a bloodthirsty horror movie monster before her very eyes. Jackson was all in, especially after Landis said he could probably get An American Werewolf in London makeup master Rick Baker involved.

One major part of the early concept was rejected. Landis told The Guardian that they initially planned to make Jackson turn into a four-legged creature. "We came to the conclusion that if Michael was going to dance, it would be a hell of a lot easier for his monster to have two legs instead of four." And so, that's what happened, although Jackson's character doesn't, per common knowledge, become a werewolf. According to Baker, he technically portrays a "werecat."

Before any of the "Thriller" fun — monster transformations, choreographed zombie dances, creepy yellow eyes — the video begins with a brief bit of text on screen. "Due to my strong personal convictions," the disclaimer credited to Michael Jackson reads, "I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." That's a pretty serious statement, and one that makes the silly horror movie-inspired fun to follow seem like it's going to be a lot darker and menacing than it is. It's also one Jackson felt personally compelled to include. 

After production on the video wrapped, Jackson was told by leaders of his church (Jackson was a practicing member of the Jehovah's Witness faith) that they thought "Thriller" encouraged demon worship, and if it were released, he'd be excommunicated. Thoroughly upset, Jackson ordered his lawyer, John Branca, to destroy the "Thriller" negatives. Branca wouldn't do it, and he instead locked up the footage and gave Jackson the idea to let "Thriller" out, but just with a denouncing disclaimer tacked on to the start. The singer liked that idea and later told Jehovah's Witness publication Awake that he "just intended to do a good, fun short film, not to purposely bring to the screen something to scare people or to do anything bad."

"Thriller," of course, came from the Michael Jackson album also called Thriller. The record was a major hit that sold millions of copies and spawned numerous hit singles, which, in turn, led to more album sales. The LP is only nine tracks long, and seven of those of those were commercially released singles: "The Girl is Mine," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Human Nature," and "P.Y. T. (Pretty Young Thing)," all hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, with "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" going the extra mile, all the way to #1. 

Title track "Thriller" was the seventh and final Thriller single, released to stores and radio in January 1984, well over a year after the album debuted. The cultural event that was the video for "Thriller" pushed sales of the single, too, and the song hit #4 on the pop chart. The horror mini-movie also directly led to Thriller flying off store shelves again. Millions of people who somehow hadn't yet purchased Thriller were inspired to do so, and during the peak of the video's popularity, the album sold more than a million copies a week, according to Vanity Fair. By the time Thriller's sales cycle wound down in 1984, it was the best-selling LP of all time in the United States, with sales of 33 million.

"Thriller" was a watershed moment in music video. Prior to its production in 1983, music videos weren't taken seriously or considered anything more than a way to cheaply promote a single or an album. Early music videos were usually shot on video, not film, adding a cheap look to a cheap production — a singer or a band might do little more than stand in an unadorned studio and lip-sync to their recording. "Thriller" was one of the first music videos to show that the medium carried the potential for greatness, and not only did critics acknowledge its importance, but they kept doing so for years afterward. 

In 1984, Making Michael Jackson's Thriller won the Grammy Award for Best Video Album, and in a 1999 end-of-the-century countdown, MTV named "Thriller" the #1 music video of all time. Less than two years later, sister network VH1 would also name "Thriller" the top video ever made. In 2009, the Library of Congress added "Thriller" to the National Film Registry, naming it part of its collection of films that should be "preserved as cultural, artistic, and/or historical treasures for generations to come," according to LA Weekly. And yet despite all these fancy awards, "Thriller" didn't win the one prize that seemed like a lock. At the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, "Thriller" surprisingly lost Video of the Year to the Cars' "You Might Think."

The massively successful "Thriller" video was a close collaboration between performer Michael Jackson and director John Landis, although it would seem that of the pair, only Jackson greatly benefited financially from the project. In January 2009, nearly three decades after production on the video wrapped, Landis sued Jackson and his production company for having failed to fork over what was due over the years. "The Thriller video became a worldwide megahit and an iconic pop culture phenomenon that has continued to generate profits for defendants Optimum Productions and Michael Jackson, who have wrongfully refused to pay or account for such profits to plaintiff," the suit read (via The Guardian). 

The suit alleged that Landis didn't receive his promised 50-percent cut of the profits and that Jackson and company acted with "fraudulent, malicious, and oppressive conduct" in withholding what The Hollywood Reporter said amounted to about $2.3 million. Jackson died about six months later, and his estate settled with Landis in 2012.

"Thriller" never really stopped being popular. As of September 2020, the video, hosted by Michael Jackson's official YouTube account, had racked up nearly 700 million views. This is to say nothing of the countless videos, viral and otherwise, of people re-creating the familiar "Thriller" dance moves — particularly the stylized zombie movements — at weddings, block parties, and Halloween celebrations. Certainly the largest example of the phenomenon: In 2009, 13,957 people in Mexico performed the "Thriller" dance all at once, setting a Guinness World Record.

What's likely the most popular second-generation "Thriller" video came from an unlikely place: a prison in the Philippines. According to NPR, government security consultant Byron Garcia instituted an exercise program in the mid-2000s at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. Sessions had been previously sparsely attended, so Garcia introduced elaborately choreographed dance routines, and before long, as many as 1,500 inmates reported to the prison yard to learn some moves. Garcia taped and uploaded videos of the sessions to YouTube, and in 2007, the one of the "CPDRC Dancing Inmates" doing the "Thriller" dance hit big and went viral. As of 2020, more than 59 million people had watched the sea of orange-clad people amble and groove like zombie-monsters.