Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: James Wood, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley
Written by: David Cronenberg
Special Makeup Designer: Rick Baker
Music by: Howard Shore
Taglines: “First it controlled her mind, then it destroyed her body… Long live the new flesh!“
“First it controls your mind…then it destroys your body”
“A shocking new vision”
“A vision of enormous physical impact!”
“A terrifying new weapon”
I’ll preface this review by mentioning that this is one of my favourite movies of all time. I’ve seen it many times over the years, and it’s impressive in that I notice new things every time – not just in terms of its content but in its meaning in relation to modern technology and society.
STORY
James Woods plays Max Renn, a sleazy producer at a 2-bit Toronto cable station. Because they operate with no budgets to create quality content, Renn’s job (which he’s a little too good at) revolves around sourcing and licensing existing content – as Renn says at one point in “softcore sex and hardcore violence”. To help him to this end he has an engineer at the station, Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), running a clandestine pirate operation to pick up signals from foreign and local sources. One day, Harlan picks up a short transmission of “Videodrome” which appears to be nothing a woman being stripped and whipped on an electrified clay wall. It only lasts a few seconds, but Renn is intrigued. Bored of arty Japanese softcore shows, he wants something different and Videodrome appears to be it.
Meanwhile, Renn begins a sadomasochistic relationship with Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a pro-morality personality on TV with a dark side. When Renn shows her a tape of the show, she decides she wants to audition. After she leaves, Renn starts to hallucinate and realises that nothing about Videodrome or the people around him are quite as they seem. With the help of Bianca O’Blivion, the daughter of TV personality Brian O’Blivion (who only appears on TV if shown via a TV set himself) and runs the Cathode Ray Mission (a homeless shelter attempting to rehabilitate derelicts via TVs), he attempts to piece together his world as reality itself starts to disintegrate around him.
OPINION
Videodrome is one hell of an achievement. Made for a minuscule budget in Canada by a journeyman director (this was Cronenberg’s 5th feature since leaving film school, 7th to be released), the movie is extremely well directed although some aspects (such as the bleak, inconclusive ending) are left as ambiguous. James Woods, here in his first starring role, gives one of his best performances. I can’t think of any other actor who could play such a sleazy character but make him likeable at the same time.
The other star of the show is Rick Baker, who pulls out all the stops with some innovative and convincing special effects. While some effects are now obviously latex (such as a gun that melds with Max Renn’s hand and the vaginal slit that opens in his stomach), they are still convincing and uncomfortable due to the strangeness of their design. It’s only recently (thanks to Criterion’s excellent region 1 collectors DVD) that I managed to work out how a sequence was created where Renn puts his head into the TV screen while images play upon it (shown on the Criterion DVD cover above).
The movie’s gory, but it’s the sci-fi elements that really stick with me over the years. Made in 1981, Betamax was the latest technology, massively bulky CRT screens were state-of-the-art TVs and ideas such as the web were a long way off. Yet, Videodrome can be taken as an allegory for pretty much that’s happening online as much as anything else. Brian O’Blivion’s admission that the name he uses is his “TV name” and that everybody would soon have their own TV name seemed ridiculous when I first watched this in the late 80s, yet it now seems prescient about online identities as does the way the Cathode Ray Mission is used. The disintegration of reality and confusion of the “Videodrome” world with the real world can be compared to modern-day people with issues separating from MMORPG worlds. The ambiguous ending also ties into these things – does Max Renn just go nuts and kill himself? Or does he really becomes part of Videodrome’s world and the next stage of evolution? Only Cronenberg knows for sure.
Rating: 
CENSORSHIP
This was one of those movies that, while not strictly controversial outside of Canada, was censored to some degree in a lot of places. The original UK video release was cut to remove some of the sado-masochistic elements of the relationship between Woods and Harry including an explicit ear piercing scene. Some of the gorier moments such as the death of Barry Convex were significantly shortened, as were some aspects of the softcore Japanese movie (the full version shows a dildo being revealed, the cut version cuts just before the head of the dildo is seen – the point? Who knows.)
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Cronenberg would later revisit some of the ideas here, most notably in Naked Lunch and ExistenZbut somehow those movies seem to have dated much more quickly (though they are both very good).
Overall, this isn’t for the faint-hearted but hardcore horror fans can do a hell of a lot worse. If you want a copy, the best version to buy is the fantastic Region 1 Criterion edition, which not only piles on a lot of extras in its 2 discs but also comes in a Betamax-shaped case!
“Long live the new flesh! “
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HOW TO SEE IT
Videodrome is widely available on DVD, but the Region 1 Criterion edition is the one to get. It’s not only loaded with extras, but comes in excellent packaging made to look like a Betamax tape. The UK DVD is usually much cheaper, but is barebones and the R-rated version missing much of the S&M leanings and more over-the-top gore moments. The version shown on UK TV is often uncut, however.
CRITERION REGION 1:
UK REGION 2 DVD:
SOUNDTRACK