Synopsis

Bonnie Tyler wanders through a shadowy Gothic estate that seems to exist inside a dream. She appears as a teacher or spectral presence in a boys' boarding school, where solemn students, fencers, ninjas, doves and white-clad figures emerge in a series of surreal tableaux. Bright-eyed choirboys and sudden flashes of movement give the video an uncanny, almost supernatural atmosphere. As day breaks, the fantasy briefly gives way to reality, though one student's glowing eyes leave the nature of Tyler's vision unresolved.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed at Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water, Surrey, an imposing Victorian institution that had closed in 1980. Its ornate corridors, staircases and halls supplied much of the video's Gothic atmosphere.

• Jim Steinman collaborated on the storyboard. The concept combined a boys' school with deliberately extravagant imagery, including ninjas, fencing, choirboys with glowing eyes and a slow-motion dove sequence.

• Bonnie Tyler later recalled that filming took two days in bitterly cold conditions. Snow was on the ground, and she had to run barefoot during part of the shoot.

• Russell Mulcahy later remembered that Tyler objected to the sequence involving a shirtless boy and a dove. She reportedly stormed off the set, unhappy with what she considered the scene's overly suggestive tone.

• Tyler has said that she never fully understood what the video was supposed to mean. Its vampire-like and dream-vision interpretations have persisted, but the imagery was designed more as a collection of emotional and theatrical impressions than as a literal narrative.

• The video became one of the defining visual spectacles of early MTV, helping establish the song's enduring identity as an extravagant 1980s power ballad. It passed one billion views on YouTube in 2023.