OT - Wake up!

[Neville]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDZPBTjaYxs

[Scott]

Good one Neville. Saved it.

[Neville]

Those Japanese have a real talent for doing sadistic stuff in front of cameras. Somebody should write an essay about it...

[dean]

Now that is just plain harsh really.  Great stuff!

[Neville]

I just love the idea of "thematising" their pranks. LOL

[Flangepart]

Holy Sheep-Dip!
That...proves they have few lawyers in Japan....try that here, and its  law suit city!

[Neville]

Do you think native americans would suit over the er... indian-themed prank? I mean, it describes them as vicious thugs who torture helpless victims.

Oh, you meant the victims. Sorry.

[Inyarear]

I remember seeing something like this on a show called The Best of the Worst: it mentioned that a popular prank for celebrity wake-up calls in Japan is to smuggle as many people in martial costumes as possible into the victim's house and surround his bed before awakening him. (The show then showed some footage from the producers' own version of this prank on the show host: they smuggled a huge number of guys dressed as ninjas into his house.)

Another popular prank for Japanese comedians is "random screaming" in which the comedian (or an assistant of his) lets out a loud scream just when people are least expecting it, and films the victim's flustered reaction for the amusement of a TV audience. (One guy I saw on this show screamed at a biker, causing him to run into the ditch.)

A further prank involves dressing in elaborate costumes that allow the prankster to blend in with the scenery (such as dressing up like a fire hydrant or a tree or a square of sidewalk concrete) and then emerging when least expected and filming the reaction of the spectators. Somebody actually did that one with the sidewalk, by the way.

It's kind of like a more sadistic version of an old American TV show I recall, Totally Hidden Video, in which the pranksters actually had something of a budget for setting up their elaborate pranks so that they could do things like film a fake wedding in which the mother of the "bride" stands up at the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part and "confesses" to her daughter's "adultery" with the victim. (Then the fake minister starts asking the flustered fellow "Well, young man, what do you have to say for yourself?" and things like that.) That show also featured pranks on children with animals wired to seem as if they're talking animals, complete with accomplice adults acting all skeptical when the children claim the animals are talking to them, and the animals "going silent" whenever the adults are around.

I don't know why I never see Totally Hidden Video ever got canceled. It seemed like a funny show to me...

[dean]

The best hidden camera prank I've seen was certainly also the most elaborate.

It was British [I think] and basically somebody faked an meteorite/alien landing in somebody's farm.  Big crowd of people, from military types with vans and guns etc, the press [which helped hide the cameras] and scientists with labs and an animatronic alien inside the meteor, which was in a big crater by the way...

Very funny stuff to see the reactions of the person thinking they are making first contact, but also a very harsh reminder about how funny, and very very nasty, it is to play with people's emotions like that!

[BoyScoutKevin]

"Candid Camera" w/ Allen Funt and Durward Kirby.