Videodrome (1983) Review
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Just because you know what you can tolerate does not mean you need to any further. You don’t think so? Look at Videodrome. PLOT The 1983 film follows Max Renn, president of the Canadian television station, CIVIC-TV, that specializes in sensational programming. His satellite dish operator Harlan would one day show him a titular plotless series of people being tortured & murdered broadcasted from Malaysia. Impressed, Max demands him to record the following broadcasts. He then dates a sadomasochistic radio host named Nicki Brand who gets so aroused of seeing Videodrome that she leaves to Pittsburgh to audition for it. After this, Max would contact a soft core pornographer named Masha (Lynne Gorman) and ask her to investigate the series. She ends up telling him what’s being filmed is real and is ran by a philosophical movement. When recognizing someone in the videos, media theorist Brian O’Blivion, he goes to a homeless shelter used for marathon viewing and meets his daughter Bianca, who is now running the mission. She explains to him her father’s vision was of a world where television will replace everyday life. He sees another video where he explains that Videodrome is actually a battleground of a socio-political war to control the minds of North America. Hearing this, he hears Nicki’s voice on the tv and chooses to kiss the screen as it undulates. When Max sees Bianca again, she further tells that the rest of the vision involved giving malignant brain tumors from the broadcast signal, but was killed by his own invention when finding out it was being used for evil purposes and recorded many videos beforehand. Returning home, Max places a handgun in a new slit of his abdomen that opens on its own and he is contacted by producer Barry Convex, owner of the eyeglasses company, Spectacular Optical Corporation, that’s his front for an arms company. When meeting in person, he uses a device to record his hallucinations and he envisions being onset whipping Nicki only for the image to transform into Masha. When Max later wakes up in bed, he finds Masha dead and when he calls Harlan to photograph the body as evidence, she disappears. When wanting to see the latest broadcast, Harlan would reveal he’s been working with Convex to recruit him to their cause, hoping to use Videodrome by killing those in North America obsessed with sex and violence. Convex then brainwashes him by placing a Betamax tape into his torso, causing him to kill his CIVIC-TV partners. He almost kills Bianca as well, but she is able to save herself when revealing Nicki was killed on set. She gets to program him to her dad’s cause, causing him to kill Harlan by inserting his hand into his torso, turning it into a stielhandgranate before exploding. When he shoots Convex with hand fused gun, his body suffers of a giant tumor that tears him apart inside before proclaiming “Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh”. Max would hide in the Port Lands as a result of his actions and on a boat does he hallucinate once more and hear Nicki’s voice again on tv, telling him he must leave his old flesh. Proceeding to see a scene of him taking his life before the set explodes, the film ends with him deciding to indeed shoot himself and say “Long live the new flesh” once more. THOUGHTS I remember watching this around the time of its 40th anniversary and I couldn’t find the words then because I was in so disbelief of what I had experienced. I knew a rewatch would be necessary and despite the feeling remaining the same, I feel like I have it figured out. Writer/Director David Cronenberg is more than shock value when it comes to the stories he creates because he knows from a personal experience what life and death can look like in the blink of an eye. It’s already one thing to see a tumor destroy a body in epic proportion, but a hand becoming an old German grenade and a tv undulating sounds like the stuff of nightmares for me thanks to Rick Baker’s excellent makeup team. Even Howard Shore gives a chilling score that goes on par with Mark Irwin’s strong cinematography & gripping editing by Ronald Sanders. I think the narrative of finding a cult behind television is quite compelling because what Cronenberg is sharing how cautionary it really is to consume so much media that it can desensitize us to the point of our empathy wearing off. As long as you know your limits in how much you can take, then you’ll be just fine or you’ll be brain dead if you don’t. It’s very fitting to realize this because in the 21st century, the news isn’t always reliable. James Woods gives a fantastic lead as the hedonist Max Renn because in that mindset, he thinks that is the breakthrough needed for future entertainment without considering that it ain’t for everyone. His obsession with Videodrome is what put the world at risk. Just because he digs it and the girl he likes does as well doesn’t mean everyone else will and the karma bites him back hard when trying to undo his domino effect. Debbie Harry was too interesting as Nicki because she shared the same perspective as Max which makes them connect so quickly, but had she been more cautious with said interest, she too would’ve not had a dark fate in return. With that short amount of time together is why he thinks of her last and chooses to do what’s his last resort of the absolute that can avoid such programming to be in the wrong hands. It does become harder to be sure the more you think about if he did it for the right side. As much visibility there is to depict the right wing self righteousness that Leslie Carlson & Peter Dvorak’s depict back to back as Convex & Harlan, I start to have second thoughts whenever we get to focus on the O’Blivions. Whenever we see Jack Creley’s messages as Brian, you get the sense of him wanting to leave enough crumbs to save the world. But whenever Sonja Smits is present as Bianca, you can’t tell if her devotion to his cause makes her just as detached. At that point, it is up for us to decide if Max’s actions benefitted the world more than herself. If so, then we don’t have anything else to worry of otherwise we’d still be screwed. In short, Videodrome is Cronenberg at his best in exposing the dark parts of our world that not many would notice. If that’s the kind of storytelling you prefer, check this out.
Comments