Jeremy (1992)

Pearl Jam's latest video, for the song Jeremy, is like an Afterschool Special from hell. This true-story rockudrama features a raging prepubescent who lets off steam by blowing himself away in front of his sixth-grade classmates (MTV censored images of the young actor placing a gun into his mouth). Prior to this gruesome denouement, the viewer is assaulted with pseudo-subliminal phrases like ''the serpent was subtil (sic)'' typed across the screen. These video blasts wander into artsy-fartsy territory, but when Eddie Vedder yowls the lyric ''Jeremy spoke in class today,'' a chill frosts your cranium to the point of queasy enjoyment. B+