Dokken — The Hunter

JUL 01 1985 · 12:00

Dokken — The Hunter (1985) Director: Wayne Isham Era: MTV Golden Era of Heavy Metal (1985) - Peak period of Sunset Strip hard rock crossover into mainstream music television, coinciding with Dokken's commercial breakthrough on Elektra Records with the album Under Lock and Key. High curatorial value as a confirmed 1985 MTV-era artifact directed by one of the era's most influential music video directors at an early stage in his career. The video's partial colorization technique is a rare and documentable aesthetic choice for its period, and the rural-chase narrative offers rich material for both genre and cultural analysis. Represents Dokken at their commercial and creative peak, making it essential for any comprehensive archive of 1980s hard rock visual culture. Context: Released in November 1985, 'The Hunter' arrived at the apex of the Sunset Strip glam metal wave, when MTV was the dominant cultural engine for breaking rock acts. Dokken occupied a unique niche — melodically sophisticated and guitar-forward compared to more flamboyant peers — and Under Lock and Key represented their commercial peak, reaching No. 32 on the Billboard 200. The video's use of partial colorization and a rural-chase narrative distinguished it from standard performance clips of the era, reflecting a growing ambition among rock acts and their directors to use the video format as genuine short-form cinema. Wayne Isham's early heavy metal work in this period laid the groundwork for his dominance in arena rock video aesthetics through the late 1980s and 1990s. Director notes: Confirmed via IMDb (tt8923724) as director of Dokken: The Hunter (1985). The video was produced for Elektra Records in support of the album Under Lock and Key. Per IMDb's documented synopsis, the video employs edited and partially colorized black-and-white footage of the band performing on stage, intercut with a narrative in which the band is hunted by a group of rural men — an early example of Isham's signature blending of live-performance aesthetics with cinematic narrative, a technique he would refine across his extensive 1980s–2000s career. The selective colorization approach was an avant-garde technique for mainstream rock videos of the period.