Why Is Mel Brooks in This Insane Swedish ‘Die Hard’ Rip-Off?

You ever wonder what would happen if one of the stylish German mercenaries from Die Hard magically burst through your TV into the real world, then started attacking innocent people? Then boy, do we have the obscure, low-budget, legally-questionable Swedish B-movie for you. 

While it’s difficult to track down due to its flagrant disregard for intellectual property laws and general human decency, the gonzo action-comedy Sex, Lies and Video Violence is, at the very least, unique. For starters, the movie opens with this bizarre warning:

Released in 2000 and filmed entirely on your creepy uncle’s old camcorder, Sex, Lies and Video Violence is all about a cinema-obsessed loner named Micke who loves watching VHS tapes of violent movies. After renting Die Hard one night (and a bunch of porn, too) a mysterious green fog appears over his apartment building, like some kind of radioactive fart or Dr. Crusher’s ghost boyfriend from that one god-awful episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For some reason, this gaseous phenomenon causes one of the Die Hard baddies to pass through the TV screen and attack the unsuspecting couch potato, even though he looks absolutely nothing like John McClane and is clearly in a small Swedish apartment, not Nakatomi Plaza.

After the fictional(?) villain disappears into the night, Micke starts seeing more movie characters appear in the real world. Like, literally seconds later, his sister pops by for a visit, and a goddamn Xenomorph bursts through her like an alien Kool-Aid Man.

Micke is forced to track down the errant German goon, Franz, and become an action hero by going full Bruce Willis in publicly accessible locations such as the woods.

This hero’s journey eventually leads to Micke running into… Mel Brooks? Yeah, the real Mel Brooks randomly shows up for all of 10 seconds, screaming about the “terrible terrorist” that’s chasing him. Why does the comedy legend make a cameo in an ultraviolet Swedish movie seemingly held together with scotch tape and chewing gum? It's unclear. Seriously, if anybody reading this is close personal friends with Brooks, or even just like his mailperson, please ask him and let us know.

Brooks isn’t even the only American celebrity to make a cameo here. Later in the movie, Micke, now dressed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, is still on Franz’s trail. He seeks the help of some strangers in line for a hip nightclub – one of whom is inexplicably played by The Crow’s late Brandon Lee, who died in 1993, seven years before this movie was actually released. 

Further thumbing its nose at the concept of copyright and logic, Sex, Lies and Video Violence also contains scenes with Leatherface, and several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dabbling in decidedly un-kid-friendly activities. At one point, Franz attacks Micke along with a gang of Droogs from A Clockwork Orange. The whole movie is like an R-rated version of that one scene from Space Jam: A New Legacy.

The finale then has Franz suddenly turning up while wearing a RoboCop costume – although, as anyone familiar with Japanese chicken nugget commercials or pro wrestling knows, this is far from the oddest appearance RoboCop has made. He battles Micke, who’s still in his Schwarzenegger get-up, in a scene that may be the closest thing we ever get to a Robocop vs. The Terminator movie.

In the end, it turns out that Micke has probably been hallucinating all of these episodes, which the doctor explains is “quite common when you see too much video violence,” so he’s committed to a mental health facility. Of course, none of that really explains that green fog from the beginning, but whatever. Come to think of it, this would also be a pretty fitting ending for the Space Jam franchise.

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