Stuart Page's work is sometimes controversial, often breathtakingly beautiful, and always memorable. And Killer Clown, one of the most exhilaratingly engaging and original music videos NZ has ever produced, is no exception. The delightful colours, simple special effects and outstanding performances merge to produce a kind of sickly sweet malevolence, rendering this work of art greater than the sum of its parts. 

Blam Blam Blam’s second hit from 1981 was angular and artsy, hook-filled but unsettling: all qualities captured in a theatrical video, directed by Andrew Shaw. Clowns, magicians, fire-eaters and trick cyclists join the band, while actors play out the saga of ‘Don’t Fight It, Marsha’. The actors — including Phillip Gordon (Came a Hot Friday), Michael Hurst and Donogh Rees (Constance) — were directed by Harry Sinclair, who would later join Blam band member Don McGlashan in The Front Lawn. The Len Lye-style scratch effects were by Jenny Pullar, the Blams’ lighting designer.

Band in the forest rock conventions rule, in this music promo from British video director Gina Birch (of post-punk outfit The Raincoats). Band parks their tour van in the forest; band gets out instruments, and plays song in and around (and on top of) van, and on nearby tree stumps; band clowns around and runs through the trees. It's all good natural fun, in the Flying Nun tradition of simple but effective music videos. 

This was the last music video made by 80s band The Crocodiles before they left NZ for Australia. The clip features new band members Jonathan Swartz, Barton Price (who later found success with Aussie band The Models), and future solo star Rikki Morris, then aged 20. Singer Jenny Morris is in leopard print and pink lycra, and Rikki wears a very 80s combo of high-waisted white pants and argyle sweater, as the band clown around in a supermarket (now a Hutt Valley McDonalds). Dave Dobbyn makes a cameo appearance dressed in drag as Morris's mother.

In this charming clip Look Blue Go Purple show they know how to do video clip clowning around as well as the Flying Nun menfolk. It features the Nun trademark grainy imagery, and a touch of Len Lye-style film scratching. Not surprisingly for a song called 'Cactus Cat', there are lots of shots of cactuses and cats, both real and animated. Assorted early Flying Nun luminaries make guest appearances, including a young Robert Scott. Watch out for the so-not-LA Dunedin take on the handbag dog.

Soul songstress Hollie Smith looks gorgeous in a fierce kind of way, in this clip directed by Preston McNeil. Auckland bars Hotel DeBrett and Sale St gleam, and there are clowns, stylish assassins and a mysterious crime. Not to mention celebrity cameos galore — including Danielle Cormack, future Westside actor Pana Hema-Taylor, and music TV hosts Shavaughn Ruakere, Nick Dwyer and Helena McAlpine. Topping it all off: surely the longest credits sequence in the history of Kiwi music videos.

Black, white and red exuberance abound in this award-winning music video from Supergroove. The band's funk-heavy live performance is intercut with scenes of the band clowning around at the Otara Market, on a Three Kings volcano, and crowded into the back of an open-top VW. The hairstyle of vocalist and future Cambridge classics scholar Karl Steven — shaved, aside from an extended fringe arrangement at the front — is a relic from another era. An alternative video made for the same song revolves around the band doing everything backwards.