crystallogic
This is a deeply disquieting film that never loses it's power to make me feel unsettled. It's my favourite Cronenberg picture by a considerable margin, tough admittedly I haven't tried them all yet.You might find, in 2018, the tech to belong in a museum. maybe you don't like TV very much and so the problems of a person finding themselves in the videodrome seem remote to you. but think about it this way, then. What would today's videodrome be like? Nope, this isn't an invitation for some idiot to re-make Cronenberg's film. i'm just saying: surely this film is even more powerful today than it was in 1983? I don't like TV either. Haven't had cable for nearly twenty years! Don't miss it or want it. But ... I, and in fact most of my friends, spend an awful lot of time on the internet. I even got an Android phone, which can be used to view all kinds of video content. We don't need networks anymore. All we need is a distribution system (much cheaper and more flexible than the television network) and the people to make content.I love the notion of a signal activating something in the brain that creates a new "growth" that can lead to mind-altering halucinations, which stay with you and affect your reality even when you're not watching the box. That's brilliant. Also very scary to contemplate. The movie does an excellent job of pushing the "horror" buttons, particularly with regard to Max's situation and descent to becoming a pawn in other peoples' games. I love the way the film sets up this terrible situation and makes the audience itself feel the mounting paranoia. By the end I didn't feel anyone was trustworthy. I feel like Cronenberg revisted a lot of his films in the adaptation of The Naked Lunch, another film I really appreciated, almost as much as this one, really.
Woodyanders
Sleazy small-time TV programmer Max Renn (James Woods in top slimy form) discovers an extremely brutal new show called Videodrome that proves to be all too realistic. Pretty soon Renn finds himself caught up in a nebulous and perilous alternate world of kinky sex, sadistic violence, and deadly political conspiracies. Writer/director David Cronenberg offers a trenchant and uncannily prophetic critique of the media's potentially toxic and damaging influence on people's minds, with a specific emphasis on how the sensory overload from said media can beget a dangerous blurring of the fine line that separates reality from fantasy. Moreover, Cronenberg predicts with alarming accuracy certain aspects of the early 21st century which include the rise in popularity of harsh BDSM adult websites like Kink.com and an advanced technological landscape where everyone has a special name (hmm, that sounds kind of like the internet, now doesn't it?). Debbie Harry makes a favorable impression as the slinky and enticing Nicki Brand, Sonja Smits registers well as the shrewd Bianca O'Blivion, Les Carlson positively oozes as the duplicitous Barry Convex, and Peter Dvorsky smarms it up nicely as no-count pirate Harlan. Kudos also are in order for Mark Irwin's polished cinematography, Howard Shore's spare chilling score, and Rick Baker's strikingly grotesque make-up f/x. The New Flesh lives on!
tankace
Videodrome was made more than three decades ago and dispute the setting of cable TV being nowadays outdated ,the idea it isn't. Far from it, it actually quit prophetic about the evolution of mass entertainment.In the story we follow a sleazy TV programmer, who's programs are of questionable quality to be polite and he tries to find the next best thing in order to get more audience. And the he finds out Videodrome, a show like no other, with an extremely violent imagery. But during his watch he starts to have some disturbing visions and at times it is hard to understand if watch he saw was real or not. In general David Cronenberg is master on making something unsettling feel close to the watcher as if he is facing them and Videodrome is no exception.To the prophetic , the main theme of the movie is how over-exposure in violence can cause significant mental and psychical damage to the brain and body. Now the idea that watch violence in movies and television will make cruel yourself, it is wrong for nowadays we have dozens of violent TV shows and the global crime rate is lower than when Videodrome came out, but I won't disagree with that watching mindless slaughter in your free time it isn't the best way to have a good time. For instance in Game of Thrones a lot of horrible events take place, but the reason they are so painful is that we care about the characters in it, while in Passion of Christ we only see Jesus becoming out of the blue a bloody pulp ( I don't make any religious remark I judge the film as it is) so yes horrific but why?And that is I think what Cronenberg try to warn us. Also if you are bit conspiracy crazy with that film you will either have a blast or go nuts. If you want to watch it do it at your own digression, for it has also scenes for which Cronenberg is famous for.All in all it is a really interesting film and a must watch for anyone with strong opinion about the way violence is presented to the audience, I hypothesis you will find a lot of meat in that flick.
lasttimeisaw
Cronenberg's body horror presciently burrows into the hallucinatory immersion of virtual reality more than 30 years ago, VIDEODROME, its title refers to a series of video images with contents of mondo exploitation, torture and murder, which entice our protagonist Max Renn (Woods) into an almost involuntary addiction to its subversiveness and perverse sexual gratifications. Renn is the president of a Toronto-based television station, which specializes in producing subterranean programs consist of violence and soft-core pornography to a niche market. So, the discovery of Videodrome thrills him to the core, after shares it with his new acquaintance, a luscious radio host Nicki Brand (Harry, in her iconic filmic bravura), whose masochistic proclivity surprises him, Max begins to trace down the original source of Videodrome, which leads him to Bianca (Smits), the daughter of Professor Brian O'Blivion (Creley), one of the in-crowds, but only gets further befuddled by the video cassettes he is offered to watch, which elicit the eeriest hallucination starting from a suddenly animated cassette and a throbbing TV set, into which he can submerge his face, then he rips his own abdomen open and puts a pistol inside. This is a high water-mark for special effects and makeup work, under the supervision of the now legendary Rick Baker, before things turn into more conventional bloodbath and repugnant viscous mutations (quite Cronenberg's trademark) during Max's killing spree when he is brainwashed into slaughtering his colleagues, until he is rescued by Bianca, and enlightened into a "leave the old flesh"rebellion towards those who are behind this largely unspecified conspiracy theory, and finally accepts his predestined fate, to embrace his new flash in a nihilistic finale. By my lights, Videodrome is designed to eliminate those who are easily subjected to what it offers by fostering a certain brain tumor into the addicted viewers, so as to cull the deprived-minded from the mass and make North America strong again, which is an ingenious idea, but under the film's succinct length and Cronenberg's preference of stimulating our ocular sense, it doesn't hit the mark. The cast is utilitarian, James Woods can be very arresting on top of his every-man appearance, emblazoned by his maniac detachment; Debbie Harry, the leading singer of Blondie, is purely designed as a beacon of lust and self-destruction, heightened by the gratuitous nudity, and Peter Dvorsky, as Max's tech-savvy sidekick Harlan, serves as a key conspirator as a well-conceived game-changer. As an analog-era surreal horror, VIDEODROME bears the trappings of the epoch with the now obsolete video cassettes, cathode ray tubes and shoulder-padding garments, but what still remains as a hot-button topic is its savvy forewarning of the televised stimuli on individuals, now predominantly in the form of ubiquitous computer, laptop, pad, cell-phone screens, a trend seems to be unstoppable, it deeply shifts our way of assimilating information and communicating with others, not to mention, in the movie, there is also a prototype of VR helmet, as unwieldy and intimidating as it should be, we are expected to feel scary about it, but now, in 2017, many of us would take that gizmo immediately to luxuriate in a state of euphoria and get a kick into an unmapped un-reality so damning enthralling but also potentially perilous, yet, this is the future, and it is coming, which makes Cronenberg's vintage horror a more reflective and trenchantly ironic fable,
