Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Produced by: Pierre David, Victor Solnicki, Claude Heroux, Lawrence Nesis
Written by: David Cronenberg
Starring: James Woods, Deborah Harry
Original Release: 1983
Reviewed By: Sam Christopher
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)
Synopsis: Television station owner Max Renn is obsessed with giving his audience the ultimate viewing experience. Harlan, Max’s “video rat”, searches the pirate channel airwaves and comes up with something called Videodrome, a show in which “contestants” are mutilated and tortured. Max becomes fascinated by the images, even getting his girlfriend, Nicki Brand, interested enough in the show to try and be a contestant herself. Soon Max finds himself in a world of illusion and delusion, first meeting with the “video prophet”, Brian O’Blivian of the Cathode Ray Mission, before finally finding the true meaning of the Videodrome: to create malignant brain tumors in those watching it. Turns out that Harlan is working for Barry Convex, the frontman for the group behind the Videodrome, and that he has been showing Max tapes rather than broadcast signals. And aside from the brain tumor, the video also makes the viewer susceptible to the orders of Convex and crew. Max is sent first to murder his partners at the TV station, then to assassinate Bianca O’Blivian, Brian’s daughter, who also knows the truth. Bianca, however, succeeds in reprogramming Max. She sends him to kill Convex. Later, as Max hides on an abandoned ship in the harbor, a television appears with Nicki on the screen, telling him the only way out is to cast off the “old flesh” and embrace the new. A scene is played on the screen of Max holding the gun to his own head, saying, “Long live the new flesh,” before pulling the trigger, after which the TV spews gore from the screen and explodes. The final segment has Max kneel in front of the fire (that had been on the screen and was now before him) and emulate the television scene, with the screen turning black as the trigger is pulled.
Review/Comments: David Cronenberg. The name means something in the world of sf filmmaking. It means fantastic plots and assiduous attention to detail. It means wild ideas that are usually predictive and virtually always say something about us that we don’t like to hear but probably need to. It means daring battles with the censors of Canada, the pushing and stretching and ripping at boundaries, the constant questioning of preconceived notions on the part of both the officials who think they should be in charge of Art and the audience the director hopes will view and understand his Art. The Cronenberg name is a mark of quality.
Videodrome is as much about twisted perceptions of reality as anything else. We see everything through the eyes of Max Renn (played with a marvelous sense of “jaded innocence” by James Woods), who we’re told has a brain tumor. This brings everything we see into question. Max loses his gun inside his own stomach only to later pull it out and have it grow into his hand, becoming a part of him in a very real way. Later, Convex and Harlan confront Max and decide to program him for murder. The slit in Max’s stomach reopen so the pulsing tape can be inserted. Everything he sees on the television, everything he does, everything that happens to anyone around him—none of it can be trusted and Cronenberg, to his credit, never gives us an out. He never switches the point-of-view to a more objective source. Max is our eyes throughout the picture. This is a decision on the director’s part that vaults this film above the ordinary. It gives the audience an active role by forcing us to think about what was real and what was in Max’s own head. It could easily be that none of it was real. Or perhaps it was all real, the Videodrome program having unleashed an unanticipated side-effect. Cronenberg never tells us; he trusts us to make up our own minds.
I think the most interesting story to me about this film is that the script wasn’t finished when they began shooting. According to Cronenberg, the “money men” back then mainly funded films for a tax shelter. So the end of the year was when all the money would come up and a filmmaker had to be ready to go when the funds were there. Well, he didn’t have the completed script but he did have an idea. James Woods says that’s one thing that makes Cronenberg such a great director, the willingness and belief in his own ability to “shoot his way out” of difficulty. Woods says they shot three or four different endings to the picture before finally settling on one.
I believe this to be Cronenberg’s best film, its closest competition coming from Naked Lunch and Shivers. Like those films, and indeed all of his films, he shows an unflinching and powerful narrative line unencumbered by social mores. Videodrome begins with a simple premise—that television can be used as a catalyst for change—and twists it to the point of lunacy while never losing its ability to take itself seriously. It is a film which was probably too visionary and complicated for its original audience, but has since found a place in the cult market. “Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh.”
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