In 1984 the Jacksons released an album called “Victory.” The second single off it was a song called “Torture,” with Michael and his brother Jermaine trading the lead vocals. It climbed to No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, and fans loved it.
Then came the music video, and that’s where things got strange.
Michael sang on the record. But when the cameras rolled for the video, he wasn’t there. Jermaine wasn’t there either. The two voices you hear most belong to the two brothers who skipped the shoot.
That left director Jeff Stein with a real problem. How do you make a Jacksons video when Michael, the most famous face on the planet at that moment, isn’t on set? You can’t simply leave him out. Fans would notice in a heartbeat.
So Stein and his producer John Diaz came up with a fix nobody watching would ever guess. They rented a wax figure of Michael from the Madame Tussaud’s museum and stood it in for him. That waxwork appears in three different scenes, including the big group pose at the end that copies the album cover.
Watch the video below and keep your eyes on “Michael.” Now that you know he’s made of wax, the stiff poses are easy to spot.
The 1984 “Torture” music video, where you can hunt for the wax Michael
That poor wax figure had a rough few days on set. Stein later said it “was put through the wringer.” And one day at lunch, in a moment nobody planned, its head ended up in the salad bowl. The crew never let that one go.
There’s one more treat hiding in this video. The person who taught the Jacksons their dance steps was a young woman just getting her start. She had been a cheerleader for the Lakers, and she took over the choreographer’s job partway through the shoot. A few years later she would have her own No. 1 hits and later still a famous seat on the “American Idol” judging panel.
Her name was Paula Abdul.
So you have a chart hit, two star brothers who sang but didn’t appear, a wax Michael borrowed from a museum and a future pop star running the dance floor. All of it in one video most people have forgotten. Watch it with those secrets in mind and it turns into a whole new kind of fun.