Videodrome [R]

Max Renn is the cable station operator for a small and independent station that specialises in providing the public with overly violent and erotic features. Worried that shows are becoming too ‘soft’ Max sets out to find something a little tougher and stumbles across a show called Videodrome, not yet available for public transmission. Max becomes intrigued by the show, but his agent warns him to stay away. Shortly after his first exposure to the show, Max begins to suffer from strange and acute hallucinations and as they grow steadily worse, he determines to find out just what is Videodrome. 

Beginning as a generic thriller and rapidly evolving into something else entirely, Videodrome is one weird fucking film. I’m talking up there with Naked Lunch and Eraserhead! I’m still not entirely sure what I just watched. It has to be said, though, that David Cronenberg has a real knack for making weird and freaky shit compelling. You don’t know why you keep watching, you just know that you do and this is definitely the case with this film. 

Max Renn is the cable station operator for a small and independent station that specialises in providing the public with overly violent and erotic features. Worried that shows are becoming too ‘soft’ Max sets out to find something a little tougher and stumbles across a show called Videodrome, not yet available for public transmission. Max becomes intrigued by the show, but his agent warns him to stay away. Shortly after his first exposure to the show, Max begins to suffer from strange and acute hallucinations and as they grow steadily worse, he determines to find out just what is Videodrome. 

I was seriously hoping to gain some insight from The Book’s opinion of the movie and even there I found no joy as to what the movie is actually about or why it’s even in there. 

The film is a highly charged science fiction gore fest with large injections of the erotic, most of which manifest themselves in Max’s hallucinations. Amongst the videotapes that moan suggestively and billow a little like tender breasts, we’ve got a vagina-like opening that appears in his stomach, as well as scenes of S&M, horrifying gory deaths, and interactions with the TV that’ll make you think twice about sitting too close. Apparently the weirdness climaxed in a scene that was actually cut from the finished piece because it was too disturbing for mainstream audiences in which two female characters grow penises. It’s anyone’s guess as to what any of these disturbing and yet strangely compelling images can mean: it could be a comment on the fascination with television as a mode of entertainment and mass broadcast/communication, it can easily be viewed as an exploration into the dirty, dark, sadistic, and masochistic side of the human mind (indeed a comment on the ways we all get our little kicks), it could just be a comment on niche markets… seriously, who knows? 

Starring James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley, Lynne Gorman, Julie Khaner, Reiner Schwartz, David Bolt, Lally Cadeau, Henry Gomez, Harvey Chao, David Tsubouchi, and Kay Hawtrey, Videodrome is a fucking bizarre movie filled with action, violence, sex, murder, brainwashing, gore, drama, and warped hallucinatory images. A commercial failure, there seems to be a strange symmetry in that this movie could easily fit into a niche market, the very thing it centres upon. There is an audience for this film, I just don’t think I’m included it in.