Time for me to go after this white whale yet again, but I swear this time I’m going to harpoon the son of a bitch.

I’ve written before about the videos that used to creep me the hell out in the early days of MTV. Among them were “Icehouse” by Flowers/Icehouse, “Draw of the Cards” by Kim Carnes, and “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie. You’ll note all three of those have a similar aesthetic, and in fact the first two were directed by the same guy, Russell Mulcahy (who went on to direct a movie you might have heard of called Highlander).

There was a fourth one, too, which would have been showing around 81 or 82. In it, a guy is crawling through a sort of post-apocalyptic landscape. He’s pursuing a woman who is holding a large letter “Y” (like a foot long or so). There are these sort of orcs or dwarves or something rummaging around through the debris as well, and I want to say they have, like, little stepladders on their backs? At one point the woman hands the protagonist the Y and it crumbles in his hands.

For years I’ve remembered this video being for the song “Waiting For a Girl Like You” by Foreigner. If it was, though, it’s been thoroughly scrubbed from all history, because the only video for that song I can find is a performance video. So it probably was not that song. I’ve no idea what song it was, though.

I’ve dug around deeply on the Internet and had no luck. I’ve tried in the past mentioning this video on message boards and no one else remembers it. I’ve found a site called Music Video Database and looked up Mulcahy’s credits (as well as those of David Mallet, who did “Ashes to Ashes”), but nothing there panned out to be the video in question.

I’ve taken the quest to Ask Metafilter but so far no one’s figured it out. I’ve gotten on Twitter and tried to involve @MTV, @TheAVClub, and WFMU in the hunt, but no response yet. I even tried asking Russell Mulcahy himself on Twitter! And also Lou Gramm, the lead singer for Foreigner. I don’t know who else I can reach out to for aid!

Does this video sound familiar to you? Any ideas who it might be? I am actually going to open up the comments on this post for people to help out. Don’t be Cold as Ice and play Head Games with me, only give me real ideas! And also, please spread the word far and wide of my Urgent search for this music video. If I have to scour the Internet until I get Double Vision, I’m going to solve this mystery once and for all.

THINGS IT’S NOT:
“You Got Lucky” – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
“Passing Strangers” – Ultravox
“Harden My Heart” – Quarterflash
“Wild Boys” – Duran Duran

UPDATE: I found it!