Watching this bizarre TV ad from 1999, it's hard for me not to be put in mind of one of my favourite movies, Barton Fink, the first hour or so of which regularly checks in on the ongoing enmity between the title character and the strangely sinister mosquito with whom he's forced to share a hotel room. The mosquito in Barton Fink is never shown to be anything other than an ordinary mosquito - the most remarkable thing about it is that it's made it all the way to Los Angeles, which one character assures us is not its natural habitat - nor does it, in itself, amount to anything more than a mundane, if persistent, irritation for Barton. Yet the mosquito maintains an awfully unsettling presence for that first hour, in part because it's a minor menace that feels magnified within the empty inertia that defines Barton's initial Hollywood nightmare. It is this eerie, omnipresent force that Barton senses constantly but is never quite able to pinpoint. This Hooch ad focusses on another battle between man and mosquito, in which the balance is tipped thanks to the latter's taste for alcoholic lemonade. And, like Barton Fink, it really attempts to bring out the inherent horror in the notion that your helpless hide is but a waiting buffet to an opportunistic hematophage, this time with an overt savagery that has the 32-second ad playing more like a miniature slasher flick.
The alcopop, a sort of successor to the wine cooler that took off in the mid-1990s, immediately became one of the hot controversies of the day due to concerns that the beverages were being stealthily marketed with a view to enticing underage drinkers. They were the subject of a particularly vicious media outcry in the UK, and so immense was the backlash that many supermarket chains refused to stock the product altogether. Hooch, one of the most prominent alcopop brands, attempted to redress its negative image in 1999 with a campaign of unnerving ads aimed unambiguously at the adult set, albeit adults with a very visceral sense of humor; a sister ad that appeared at the same time had a patron at a trendy bar discovering that his Hooch-infused piss had the power to split urinals in half. The intended message, in both cases, is that Hooch indulgence is not for the squeamish.
As with Barton, we get a sense from the start that the unlucky blood bag in this scenario is being purposely targeted; the constant cutting back and forth between the man and mosquito gives the distinct impression that the latter has selected its prey from the outset, that the confrontation is inevitable and that this unsettled gentleman is up against a force much more powerful than himself. For all of the steely determination of our beastly invader, its mission is very nearly thwarted by the presence of a simple glass pane that stands between itself and its target, but a few gulps of Hooch Lemon are all that's needed to give that perfectly-honed killer instinct the cutting edge. Compared to Barton, who fought his own six-legged nemesis in a dingy hotel room, this man apparently enjoys quite the swanky lifestyle, getting to rest his head inside a chic-looking pad, although the pad evidentially takes on a very different character in the dead of night (it is admittedly hard, though, to imagine the surrounding landscape looking any less forbidding in the light of day). The assorted items that adorn the balcony are tell-tale signs of a leisurely diurnal existence, but the inside of the building seems uncomfortably barren, the drab grey slabs that dominate the interior giving off the sensation more of entrapment than recreation; a sweaty, gnawing claustrophobia that seems contrary to the spaciousness of the abode (in some respects it's not altogether different from how those soap-squirrelling minimalists lived). Unlike Barton Fink, which was all about immersing the viewer in the cut-price seediness of Barton's world, this ad centres upon the horrors of a hematophage encounter in the lap of ostensible luxury, a subversion emphasised in having the mosquito ultimately thwart the man by indulging in the symbols of his own decadence.
The ad ends with the mosquito landing its inevitable "kill", although it possibly oversells its absurdity in the visual punchline, which features a close-up shot of the victim screaming with an almost cartoon intensity (it's not altogether clear to me whether he's screaming in reaction to the mosquito bite, or because he slapped himself while attempting to take out the mosquito). Uncomfortable close-ups were featured prominently in the aforementioned ad set inside a trendy bar, although with nothing quite so jarring over-animated; I guess the visual of that urinal splitting in two was considered absurdity enough. Here, it ultimately works against the creeping atmosphere the ad spent the past 27 seconds sustaining; the sight of that Hooch-drinking mosquito is obviously ludicrous in itself, but there's a certain genuine, understated menace to it - a mounting sense of dread as to how the scenario will ultimately play out, and that overtly comical screaming shot, grotesque as is, always struck me as a tad anti-climactic. Edited from some TV broadcasts was the shot of the victim's female companion waking up screaming, having intuitively sensed that mosquito perform its malign business; compared to Audrey, who was sharing Barton's bed when his own mosquito conflict reached its climax, she might consider herself lucky.
Both the mosquito and urinal ads were directed by Eric Coigneoux. Among his other credits is a French ad for Eco Emballages involving a close encounter between a man and a bear. That one looks as though it might turn ugly, but the outcome is surprisingly wholesome.
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