The fan-made mashup video might have just peaked with Hell's Club, a zippy, nearly ten-minute movie that edits together a huge array of classic club scenes and iconic characters into one imaginative, kind-of cohesive story, all set to looping multiple remixes of The Bee Gees' notorious "Stayin' Alive" from Saturday Night Fever. Using some smartly-adjusted color tinting and seamless editing tricks, each character appears to be in one expansive, endless nightclub that caters to both Jedi Knights and Tony Montana.
Everyone turned up to this shindig: weary club owner Al Pacino (circa Carlito's Way) peeks through his office blinds to watch Cameron Diaz (circa Charlie's Angels) tear up the dance floor, before getting ambushed by a prowling hitman played by the Terminator himself, while Fever-era Travolta wolf-eyes everyone in between disco moves. Tom Cruise, in his silver fox mode from Collateral, keeps an eye out for trouble as Pacino's bodyguard, while locking eyes with another, bushy brown-haired Tom Cruise, who flips bottles from behind the bar in Cocktail. Later on, Boogie Nights' Dirk Diggler and Roller Girl hustle alongside an uncredited Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams from American Hustle as Basic Instinct's Sharon Stone taunts Casino's Robert De Niro from across the room. Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves' John Wick attempts to protect Pacino as Bodyguard #2, while Keanu Reeves' Neo stays in the background does what he does best: watch blankly. And I haven't even gotten to the recognizable characters and deeply-ingrained movie moments from Airplane!, Robocop, and Trainspotting, among others, that all pop up along the way...
The clip, which has already gone viral with over three-million views in over a week, was lovingly made by self-styled "Parisian mash-up whiz" Antonio Maria da Silva, who has been making movie-related mash-ups for the past seven years. His YouTube page is a veritable treasure trove of bizarre, fan-made movie-movie creations, from Stallone fighting Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee battling Bruce Lee to Terminator taking on Predator and, uh, Gollum singing Barry White. Hell's Club is da Silva's most ambitious endeavor yet and tells an actual story as bullets fly, lives are lost, famous film characters take on mysterious new personas, and Star Wars references abound in this giddy whirligig of a clip.
Okay, but is the story actually any good? If you look at it as a witty, winking tribute to some of movie's most manifest clichés (chaotic shootouts, tearful death scenes, spontaneous dance breaks), then sure, although it all gets to be a bit exhausting after a while, like Marvel bought the rights to fifty random mainstream movies and then tossed them into a blender to make the world's most overcrowded franchise flick. Nonetheless, this a coolly creative and admirably mobile re-envisioning that's totally worth the ten minutes you'd probably spend viewing these same clips at your desk anyway.
Watch it now:
