The The — Angels of Deception

JUL 01 1986 · 12:00

The The — Angels of Deception (1986) Director: Alastair McIlwain Era: Mid-80s UK Post-Punk / Art-Video Era (1986) - Part of the landmark Infected: The Movie visual album suite, produced at the height of MTV's cultural dominance and the peak of Thatcherite Britain political dissent in alternative music. High. 'Angels of Deception' is a constituent part of one of the most formally significant promotional film projects in alternative music history. As a UK-shot, animator-directed segment within the Infected: The Movie suite, it represents a rare intersection of British animation craft, post-punk political art, and the mid-80s peak of music video as cultural form. Its muted, warm, low-saturation aesthetic is a precise visual artefact of 1986 British independent production values and ideological outlook. Context: Released in November 1986, 'Angels of Deception' exists within the politically charged climate of Thatcherite Britain - a period marked by the defeat of the miners' strike, the US bombing of Libya, and the deepening 'special relationship' between Reagan and Thatcher. Matt Johnson's Infected album was an explicit broadside against these forces, and the accompanying visual film was a radical act of promotion: commissioning a music video for every album track was virtually unprecedented at the time, preceding later 'visual album' formats by nearly three decades. The Infected: The Movie suite was funded with approximately £350,000 from Sony/Some Bizzare and screened in independent cinemas worldwide as a theatrical film, treating music video as legitimate cinematic art. McIlwain's UK-shot contribution to the suite grounds the album's global political anxiety in domestic British visual language. Director notes: The 'Angels of Deception' video was one of the final two videos completed for the Infected: The Movie suite, and was filmed in the United Kingdom. The broader Infected: The Movie project had a reported budget of approximately $500,000 USD (also cited as £350,000), with production spanning locations in London, New York, Peru, and Bolivia. McIlwain's animation background (Pink Floyd: The Wall, Heavy Metal) likely informed the visual language deployed in his contribution. The completed film premiered at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, West London, and first aired on Channel 4 on 16 December 1986, followed by an MTV broadcast, before a VHS release in early 1987. The video was later edited into the full Infected: The Movie compilation (IMDb tt2094853, rated 8.4).