Videodrome
by David Cronenberg
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DVD details
Actor: Deborah Harry, James Woods, Leslie Carlson, Peter Dvorsky, Sonja SmitsDirector: David Cronenberg
Brand: Universal Studios
Cinematographer: Mark Irwin
Writer: David Cronenberg
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Producer: Claude Héroux
Producer: Lawrence Nesis
Producer: Pierre David
Producer: Victor Solnicki
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-09-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Videodrome
DVD Review: Virtuality and Videodrome
Summary: 4 Stars
Videodrome is a good movie.
I'm not here to write Cronenberg hero worship. There is enough of that here.
I don't aim to delve into the sterile observations on the darker side of humanity. I think others here have indulged that aspect of the film to exhaustion. After all, psychoanalyzing the depth of human depravity, and the way TV and mass-culture desensitizes us was hardly a revolutionary concept, even in 1983. Cronenberg obviously toys with the audience as Brian O'Blivion plays with Jame Woods' character Max, when he says:
- "Why would anybody watch a scum show like Videodrome?
- Why did you watch it, Max?
- Business reasons.
- Sure, Sure."
We're all just detached observers, right?
But this is all well treaded ground.
For all the touting of its special effects, the mundane objects of its fetishism- CRT picture tubes and VCR tapes, are decidedly dated and the movie will feel dated when you watch it. Possibly because the presentation is contextually in the low-fi analog past, a large part of its mesage seems to be lost on many viewers:
What even constitutes reality?
The quantum leap that a hyper-real projected reality will have, when we are no longer simply "observers" of the screen, but immersed in this video world where the real and the unreal are perceptively indistinguishable. This will change us as a society, as a civilization, even as a species.
Videodrome introduces a headset device:
- "Here she is. This is our prototype.
- This is the little number that started it all.
- Max, I would like you to try this on for size."
I will give away part of the movie here- at one point Max never takes the apparatus, the headgear, off (Note the similarity to the plot device used in 2001's Vanilla Sky.). Is this machine really "recording" Max's hallucinations or creating them? From this point forward, Max is stuck in his own virtual world, created from his own mind, and whatever sensory input Spectacular Optical's device is projecting- the infamous "signal", of course. Is it real? Where does the line blur? Is it just one hypothetical future for Max? If it's all projection, does this make it less real? If it is believed to be real by Max, is there really any difference? If other reviewers seemed to have overlooked a central point of the movie, does that mean it doesn't exist?
1983, Videodrome's Brian O'Blivion:
- "After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?"
1999, The Matrix's Morpheus:
- "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
Videodrome foresaw the kind of fully-immersive virtual reality that we are just now beginning to see hints come into being with video game headset consoles and the like. William Gibson's Neuromancer, which coined the term "cyberspace", wasn't published until a year later.
1983 also saw the cinematic release of Brainstorm, which covered some parallel territory. Though exceptionally different in tone and presentation, these two movies make for good contemporary juxtapositions to one another.
I do recommend this movie.
Description of Videodrome
VIDEODROME - DVD MovieLove it or loathe it, David Cronenberg's 1983 horror film Videodrome is a movie to be reckoned with. Inviting extremes of response from disdain (critic Roger Ebert called it "one of the least entertaining films ever made") to academic euphoria, it's the kind of film that is simultaneously sickening and seemingly devoid of humanity, but also blessed with provocative ideas and a compelling subtext of social commentary. Giving yet another powerful and disturbing performance, James Woods stars as the operator of a low-budget cable-TV station who accidentally intercepts a mysterious cable transmission that features the apparent torture and death of women in its programming. He traces the show to its source and discovers a mysterious plot to broadcast a subliminally influential signal into the homes of millions, masterminded by a quasi-religious character named Brian O'Blivion and his overly reverent daughter. Meanwhile Woods is falling under the spell, becoming a victim of video, and losing his grip--both physically and psychologically--on the distinction between reality and television. A potent treatise on the effects of total immersion into our mass-media culture, Videodrome is also (to the delight of Cronenberg's loyal fans) a showcase for obsessions manifested in the tangible world of the flesh. It's a hallucinogenic world in which a television set seems to breathe with a life of its own, and where the body itself can become a VCR repository for disturbing imagery. Featuring bizarre makeup effects by Rick Baker and a daring performance by Deborah Harry (of Blondie fame) as Wood's sadomasochistic girlfriend, Videodrome is pure Cronenberg--unsettling, intelligent, and decidedly not for every taste. --Jeff Shannon
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