Customer Reviews

Physical [VHS]

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The music world's ultimate Diva "OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN", she rules! The Olivia of the 80's was wonderful for me! I was a teenager and she was it for me, no one before or since had mesmorized like she has. She is TOTALLY HOT and I still can't get enough of her.It started with the OLIVIA of the 70's, but boom! Then came the late 70's with GREASE and then the awesome "TOTALLY HOT" album! Then came XANADU in 1980 and then OLIVIA opened the doors wide when PHYSICAL came out! I was captured by her charsimatic charm and beauty! When PHYSICAL was first aired on ABC it was a groundbreaking event. No other artist had done that before,it was the beginning, it was 1981 and the MTV concept hadn't even started!Remember the song, "VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR" ? Well she was a huge radio star in the 70's and video just made her the biggest female superstar into a MegaSuperstar! It was to me the most wonderful time of my life, I had music and tv specials of my favorite entertainer and I was in heaven! I had been a fan of OLIVIA's since she first emerged in the 70's and she is still my favorite! With her movies, TOOMORROW, GREASE & XANADU, she then came out with a truly new wonderful concept with PHYSICAL, it's pure entertainment and she is so full of style and charm and you just can't help but melt looking at her beauty and that true angelic voice! PHYSICAL was a great song, the video was campy and funny and pretty risky for those days, the song itself was banned for it's suggestive lyrics, kinda tame for todays standards! But she was the first and the best and I can watch this video over and over again, I love LANDSLIDE, RECOVERY, MAKE A MOVE ON ME,SILVERY RAIN, THE DOLPHIN SONG,STRANGER'S TOUCH, the entire show is fabulous and I love it so much I have it on VHS & Laser Disc, I wish I had it on DVD!!!! I have all of OLIVIA's works on original VHS & LD! Now I'm patiently waiting to get them all on DVD! The only one I'm missing is SOUL KISS on LD, This I am still searching for. I have 4 original copies of SOUL KISS on VHS, haha... Watch this video for what good music was all about and about the joy it brings you and what music should be today! It's great music and video roll into one outstanding show!

While everyone, to this day, goes on about how innovative and risque Madonna's videos are/were/whatever, almost no one seems to remember that Olivia Newton-John had already been there-done that and Frankly, in this reviewer's opinion, with far more style, cleverness and sophistication. Far before the advent of CGI and multimillion dollar video epics, it is quite astounding the amount of visual imagination and suggestion that these videos utilize. In one short hour, Newton-John spans a vast gamut of characters and genres that leaves one breathless. Where Madonna will frequently repeat certain themes or images for one or more videos, Newton-John is a chameleon. Where Madonna is basically playing variations on--how shall we say it?--a very loose woman, each incarnation of Newton-John is ac/dc jolt of change. Where one video has her carousing with dolphins, another has her in some weird alternative dimension singing about the environment. Where one has her wandering some Freudian nether world, another has her in concert singing to a character who will figure in the video that follows. Where Madonna toys with sexual themes with all the subtlety of a topless bar, Newton-John goes places few have tread before or since with an admirable maturity. One of the previous reviewers mentioned the homosexual theme touched upon in the PHYSICAL video. Maybe so but, in both PHYSICAL and LANDSLIDE as well as briefly in a few others, Newton-John seems to be strongly toying with S/M themes as well as concepts of female domination that are startling intense. With the possible exception of Pat Benatar's work, nothing like it has been done since. It is both amazing for it's time and in that it was being done by a woman who only a few years earlier was presenting herself as the squeaky clean country girl next door who honestly loved you. Yet it is all forgotten by those supposedly who pay attention to modern music.

This is a terrific video. It is definatly ahead of its time with the tecknology and the effects. From the sexy and funny "Physical" video to the innovative and catchy "Landslide" video.

"Physical" Excercise video where Olivia shapes up some very unfit men. At the end, she ends up with one of the fat ones.

"Carried Away" Olivia rolls around on a white carpet in a room full
of mirrors. Beautiful!

"Landslide" Olivia has a crush on a co-worker. She captures him and throws him into jail.

"Silvery Rain" Plays a politician, a drunk, many other parts. weird.

"Hoplessly Devoted to You" Depressed and alone in a deserted bar. She even cries, and you can sense the pain of loss.

These are reviews of just a few of the videos, but the whole thing is wonderful! Buy It.

Olivia Newton John�s �Physical� video is one worth seeing, for several reasons. For the uninitiated, it�s a great introduction to Olivia as a singer and performer and also shows her going for a more �raunchy� and controversial image than some of her previous material. Okay, it might all look a bit tame by today�s standards but it�s still quite risqué and daring in places! It�s also a great momento of the 1980s, summing up the decade stylistically and musically, and it�s something of a landmark � every song from the �Physical� album has a video to accompany it, plus there are a few extra songs/videos in there for good measure like �Hopelessly Devoted� and �Magic�. Admittedly not every one is a success but it�s a brave venture nonetheless and as a whole the video is usually pretty entertaining!

There�s a mix of styles in the videos we get to see in �Physical� � some of which present some kind of story or narrative whilst others are just straight performances of the songs. It�s the latter that are maybe slightly disappointing and not so imaginative� approximately half of the videos show Olivia singing some of her numbers before a night-club audience. This is partly made up for by Olivia doing her best �alluring� looks to the camera, with some close ups of her looking seductive, not to mention an �interesting� spangly black outfit that she wears, complete with �80s headband. The antics of the band are pretty hilarious too, with a moustachioed keyboardist clowning around and some OTT guitar players. Overall the effect is pretty naff and dated...but maybe that�s the point; this video is after all about 20 years old!

The best videos to accompany the songs are the ones where Olivia and the director have devised some kind of plot/story. My own personal favourite is �Landslide� � hilarious, camp as knickers, and with a great theme. In it Olivia plays a kind of devil woman. At the start of the video we see her in a white space-age type outfit, ascending a staircase from the depths of hell whilst black gloved hands grab at her all around. She consults a kind of all-seeing crystal, then we�re suddenly in a modern-day office and Olivia is there, cunningly disguised as a high-powered businesswoman in black with glasses on a chain. Then as we hear the line �I saw him standing there...I turned around and saw the face of an angel...I fell� she looks across the room to see a sultry looking hunk sat at a desk dressed in a suit, who catches her eye! (This was actually her real-life husband at the time). Suddenly Olivia�s transformed into a kinky red leather suit and her and the guy are being naughty in front of some venetian blinds...a great vid which is also interesting in the way it presents the themes of female domination and power � i.e. SHE gets the guy on her terms. You�ll have to watch it to find out what happens.

One of the other classics and one that everyone must be familiar with is the �Physical� video itself. A funky tune with some great lyrics, this has a real tongue-in-cheek/comical feel to it. It takes place in a gym with a leotard-clad Olivia beating a load of overweight chubby guys into shape in a rather cruel fashion! We see her speeding up their running machines and propelling men out of doors in dominating style � GO Olivia! She goes to take a shower (cue some sexy slow-mo shots of her getting doused in water) and on return she finds all of the fatties transformed into trim, muscley studs! There�s an undeniably homoerotic tone at the end as the men all leave the gym � hand in hand!

There are other standout vids too. �Silvery Rain� is Olivia�s comment on the after effects of chemical pollution on our planet's environment. This video seems to me to be highly influenced by Kate Bush�s "Breathing" which was also all about the destruction of the Earth. The scene in the video is a kind of polluted landscape/lake with ill-looking children and bodies floating in the water, whilst Olivia stands inside a kind of dome-lie structure, protected from the destruction around her. She also plays other characters in this video; a power-mad dictator type (presumably responsible for the destruction) and an upper class lady/debutante in a ball gown who is looking the worse for wear! Although quite amusing in its realisation (there are some dated special effects) it�s actually quite a powerful and thought-provoking video, and it�s brave of Olivia to deal with a serious, controversial theme � not every female pop star in her day would have been prepared to do that!

�Stranger�s Touch� is another favourite and a kind of homage to old film noir movies. Olvia plays a kind of femme fatale figure who�s a singer at a night-club and is being trailed by a private detective. I must confess I found the plot to this one rather confusing but it�s well shot, stylish and Olivia looks fab in it. She�s also funny when she sings �What do I doooo � oooh oooh� in imploring fashion.

Overall �Physical� is an entertaining and diverse video which I�d recommend. Whilst not every video to match each song is a masterpiece, there is still a lot of inventiveness and imagination working here. It�s just a shame Olivia isn�t making songs or videos like this anymore!

I Really Dug Olivia Newton-John as a Kid still do.Cuz Her Music Crossed alot of Styles.SHe has Her Own thing.SHe is also a Very Beautiful Lady.I feel She is Very UnderRated.I Agree With the last Reviewer About Her Impact Before Madonna.also How About Her Impact With Musical Styles Compared with Shania Twain? Hopelessly Devoted To You Alone was COuntry,Pop,Adult Contempary,etc.. way Before Shania Came along.If She had have Gotten Promoted the way they do today their's no Telling How Huge She Would Have Gotten.SHe has Real Talent.Unlike Many Today that say they are Country then Cross-Over Her Music&Work did all of the Talking.Magic is also Timeless.SHe is Long Over due.

Way back in 1981 Olivia Newton-John and Video producer Brian Grant came upon an idea to turn Olivia's popular "PHYSICAL" album into a video album. Mind you, this was before MTV made an impact so this was a relatively new concept.

Aired as a TV special in the winter of 1982 and titled OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN-LET'S GET PHYSICAL, this was one of the mainstream publics first views at this kind of concept.

Going back and forth between performance clips and high concept clips this video showcases of where Olivia Newton-John and popular music was at the time.

Among the best clips are Stranger's Touch, which pay homage to the film noir classics of the 1940's and Landslide which shows Olivia's hot side(she was mellow no more!) The most memorable clip is the title clip Physical which shows Olivia leading a group of overweight men. The homosexual theme of the video shocked many a fan at the time.

All in all the video is an entertaining look at the early eighties version of Olivia Newton-John.

Physical is a wonderful video. It is funny, upbeat, interesting, and beautiful all mixed in. If you are an Olivia Newton-John fan, you will watch this over and over again! Even if you are not the biggest Olivia fan, I think that you would still enjoy it.

I'm a mexican fan of the Great "Livy" Newton-John and I'm desperate looking for the videotape "Soul Kiss". I have "Olivia In Concert" and "Physical". Can anyone of you e-mail me and sell me a copy from your original to own one more Olivia tape? Thanx a lot!

This is a fantastic video. When first aired as an ABC one hour music special, it broke new ground by showcasing singers in specially produced music videos. MTV was a fledgling and was quite upset with Olivia for selling to the networks and not to them.

Olivia also released her Physical concert '82 on video, Twist of Fate (featured songs from "Two of a Kind" "Xanadu" and "Greatest Hits Vol 2"). She also released "Soul Kiss" which contains her HOTEST video ever, namely the title song/vidoe.

Original vidoes of Twist of Fate, Physical concert, and Soul Kiss are greatly sought after.

I purchased the physicl video about six years ago, watched it over and over, almost thought I`d wear it out. I have been searching for other music videos by Olivia but no luck finding any,Help me find more. If you like Olivia I highly recommend this one.