VIDEODROME (1983)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Horror / Sci-Fi

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: James Woods / Deborah Harry / Peter Dvorsk

Plot

Max Renn, an executive for a struggling TV station, becomes fascinated by strange video tapes containing films of torture and murder.  As his obsession blurs his ability to separate his own sadomasochistic fantasies from reality, Renn goes on a quest to uncover the source of these videos.

What I Liked

*spoiler alert!*

“Videodrome” obviously intends to say a lot about a great many things: entertainment, art, television, sexuality, violence, pornography, modernity, psychology, addiction, society, technology, capitalism, religion, morality and the ways in which they’re all related.  Whether or not it ever got to (or intended to have) a definitive point is debatable, but writer/director David Cronenberg certainly wasn’t lacking for ambition.  His movie may be a bizarre mish-mash of movie genres and topics, but it never ceases to be as fascinating as it is confounding.

Part of that fascination stems out of the steady but subtle introduction of the film’s stranger elements as the plot moves along.  At the point where Renn’s masochistic lover Nicki (played by Blondie’s Deborah Harry) disappears following a trip to audition for a part in a torture video, the movie feels like a standard 80s thriller.  Then the hallucinations set in, each more disturbing than the next.  By the film’s end we’ve got an international conspiracy to enslave the human mind, living televisions capable of orgasms, virtual reality helmets, and a main character with a gun for a hand and a giant vagina in his abdomen.  It’s all very unsettling stuff, but maybe that alone is Cronenberg’s point.  Man’s ever-increasing detachment and desensitization and all that.  Even if it isn’t his point, there’s certainly the feel that the filmmakers had a tremendous amount of fun making this none-too-subtle techno-sexual nightmare.  Meanwhile the audience, much like Renn, can’t stop watching no matter how much we want to.  After all, just like Renn, we are perpetually trying to figure out what the hell is going on!

What I Didn’t Like

The problem is, Renn seems to figure out what’s going on but the audience never does.  At least I didn’t.  Look, on a movie like this I understand we don’t want all the answers.  Wild, dark psychological thrillers aren’t supposed to wrap everything up nice and neat and leave us feeling good about the world.  Still, a hint at what exactly we just watched for an 87 minutes would be nice.

In case the above descriptions didn’t spell it out for you, this movie is certainly not to everybody’s taste.  Aside from the s&m, gore, and man-vaginas, there’s also a dark absurdist humor that wasn’t intended to appeal to everybody.  And if the humor wasn’t intended, I for one found a lot of it silly, so maybe there’s something wrong with me.  Anyway, in case it needs said again, if you’re into mainstream blockbusters, chick flicks, and feel-good stories – and there’s nothing wrong with that – I suggest avoiding this one.

Most Memorable Scene

I’d have to say watching James Woods lose the pistol he stuck inside of the giant vagina in his abdomen memorable.  Yeah.  Let’s go with that.

My Rating: 3 out of 5