Videodrome (1983) Review
Max Renn (an excellent James Woods) is the sleazy president of a small television station called CIVIC-TV. In order to survive as a TV station CIVIC-TV provides viewers with soft porn and low-grade violent movies. Renn’s agenda is to push the envelope and find something more extreme to keep and bring more viewers to his channel. Renn refers the matter to Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) a TV pirate he knows. Harlan has come across a signal broadcasting what looks to be real violence and abuse – ‘Videodrome’. Renn’s interest is aroused. He initially challenges that the footage is real and is in fact staged instead but he also knows that this is exactly what his network needs for its viewers.
Max is dating Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a woman he meets when being interviewed on a TV chat show. Max shows Nicki the footage he has obtained. Initially he feels he has shocked her but that is not the case at all. Quite the opposite – the footage sexually arouses her. Exposure to Videodrome has an increasingly negative effect on Max. He has become addicted and consequently a slave to Videodrome’s demands often hallucinating to the point that he fails to differentiate what is reality and what is TV.
Videodrome was a watershed moment for this particular reviewer. Videodrome was first theatrically released in the UK at a time when this reviewer released he finally get away with seeing an ’18’ rated movies at his local cinema, whilst still being under-age of course. Part of my cinematic viewing was still grounded in what passed for the must-see blockbusters for my peer group that year (Return of the Jedi and Octopussy) however when I realised that I could finally get to see the sort of flicks I really wanted to see on the big screen my viewing choices changed. I no longer had to wrangle with my parents over whether I could watch a video rated above my current age. I could pay to see them hassle-free at the flicks. And like Videodrome’s protagonist I was seduced by the voilent and graphic images I saw onscreen and also like Max Renn I started seeking out more gratuitous pleasures to satiate my viewing demands.
And similarly to how the lurid images from a satellite broadcast hooked Renn I was drawn in by Videodrome’s TV advertising campaign gagging for unsettling imagery to fill up my retinas. It appears I was alone in thinking this. The film was a box-office bomb barely making back even half of its $5.952 million budget. Reviews at the time proved to be reactionary rather than meaningful languishing on the more lurid details rather than the salient points Cronenberg’s script was driving at. Now Videodrome seems even more relevant that it was upon its release in terms of how the cathode ray has consumed us into becoming addicted to any old dross that the networks screen effectively control the viewer.
Once described by Andy Warhol as “A Clockwork Orange of the ’80s” Videodrome is as effective and disorientating as it was upon its initial theatrical release. Its relevance has grown along with its criticial and audience appreciation. There was nothing quite like it at the time and arguably only Cronenberg’s own ExistenZ has since aped its imagery and agenda. Videodrome marked a shift from the independent productions he had made his name with up until that point and later saw him bring his trademarks to the more commercial likes of Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone and his wonderful remake of The Fly and chilling Dead Ringers.
At the time of Videodrome’s release much was made in the media of the possible effects of so-called snuff videos and in the UK there was also the furore surrounding what the powers-that-be deemed to be ‘Video Nasties’. ‘Video Nasties’ were flicks that would not only corrupt you and your offspring but also your dog – no really, a government official really did say they would affect your dogs too. Videodrome addressed the absurdity of this notion and about how more conventional media, and the political powers behind it, should be what we are really concerned about in terms of how we willingly let their agenda invade our lives and control us via the cathode ray tube.
