A Look Back at one of the strangest, most provocative and original films of the 1980's
"Videodrome" could be summed up as a series of nihilistic, paranoid hallucinations from a nihilistic, paranoid individual. Or it could be summed up as an actual reality that the paranoid individual can't shake. Director David Cronenberg might have created the original "Matrix," as mentioned by lead star James Woods, where real life and an alternate reality coexist or merge or neither. My sense is that this is a hallucination that has consumed the protagonist's life and he can't assume one reality or the other.
The title refers to a Malaysian cable signal of an anonymous woman being tortured in a room by masked sadists. Max Renn (James Woods) is a hyperactive, anxious and determined CEO of a Toronto cable station, CIVIC-TV, who wants to broadcast something more than tacky softcore porn with phalluses. Videodrome has potential and Max's trusty engineer of CIVIC-TV's unauthorized satellite dish, Harlan (Tom Dvorsky), says that the grainy signal only lasts less than a minute. Max eventually finds out that Videodrome is about "philosophy" and quite dangerous. This leads to a strange affair with a talk radio personality, Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry), where she likes being scratched on her shoulders with sharp instruments and has no objection to getting her ears pierced by Max. This, coupled with watching Videodrome on his TV, leads to orgasmic pleasures.
Max's addictive viewing of Videodrome leads to its own hallucinatory experiences such as a living, breathing television set with a cathode ray tube that expands. A major moment of unexpected violence is when Max slaps his secretary (Julie Khaner) in the face and then apologizes (we see a split second image of him slapping Nicki). The secretary says he didn't slap her in the face. So is Max hallucinating all the time or is he actually in the torturous world of Videodrome? Things only get more out-of-control when Max wears am enormous video headset that looks like it could take his head off. Then we get the moment that will make you protect your own belly when Max develops a uterine-like slit where videocassettes and guns can be pulled or pushed into! Back in 1983, I had to avert my eyes while watching that repeated moment and I still had to when I recently rewatched it.
"Videodrome" shows sex, pornography and hideous, atrocious acts as a unified whole - there is no separation of sex and violence here. Violence is connected through the physical body and mind and often demonstrates said actions on a TV screen. Spilled guts emerge from exploding televisions and when someone is killed, they either explode or have their guts and intestines emerge in truly nauseating ways. When you have a gun emerging as skin and muscle tissue from the TV's tube itself, you can see how we have all taken violence on that damn tube for granted for far too long. That and living breathing, pulsating VHS/Betamax tapes. Cronenberg suggests there is no escape from this technological monster except through death. "Videodrome" is entertaining and deliberately off-putting. For some, this may be the best of both worlds and for others, it may be too much to, um, stomach.
