The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #14: "Videodrome"

2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #14

by Xavier E. Palacios

"Videodrome"

3.5 out of 5

Directed by David Cronenberg

Rated "R"

Max Renn (James Woods) is the sleazy TV president of CIVIC-TV, a lowly television station succeeding by controversially broadcasting taboo, pornographic, and exploitative material prohibited everywhere else. Looking for his network's next lucrative program, Max and CIVIC's satellite operator, Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), pirate the mysterious "Videodrome" transmission: a show that only consists of brutal torture and killings in a sickening red room. Searching for the show's origins to uncover more Videodrome material to profit from, Max unwittingly becomes a victim of an insidious conspiracy. Those who see the broadcast become infected with a cancerous signal that induces ungodly hallucinations where flesh and technology become one and neither, all for the conspiracy's architects to shape the future of a tech-obsessed North America into their vision. As Max begins losing his mind and body to Videodrome, all he has left to fight for is his free will, which, too, begins to decay to the power of altering technology.

I may have heard of this film in passing before, but the picture came to my full attention thanks to a piece from video game and art essayist, Jacob Geller, entitled, "Gross Games about Flesh and Stuff". I figured, since I have not seen a horror film this cinematic year, I should give the piece a watch. (Admittedly, I have not done well, so far, in my continuing diverse film goals as I wanted, but tis only March as of this writing. I feel I have been mostly checking out low-key, cult, poorly received, and or forgotten Hollywood flicks, which is definitely a varied element, but I need to see a foreign language flick very soon). Videodrome is a good flick, and one certainly made for my tastes. Yet, as a whole, while I understand the film's thematic points, I got lost in how the plot supports such conversations. This point is more of an observation than a criticism, and there is too much fine craft to justly give the film a lower rating. Still, I confess some of the film's finer nuances are lost upon me as the flick's story did not click with me.

Technically speaking, Videodrome is excellent. Every time composer Howard Shore's score appears, I get tense. James Woods convincingly plays a sexist, greedy, simple-minded TV executive with everything to lose, and the rest of the cast play their characters very suitably to the film's tone. There is always this audible sense that what seems normal could slip into unreality at any moment; like watching a Videodrome broadcast is the ultimate forbidden fruit with all the implied consequences from such a comparison. The very name of the film's writer and director, "David Cronenberg", conjures in the mind a worry of facing untamable mental landscapes filled with frightening things audiences wished stayed in the pitch-black shadows under their beds. Videodrome's effectively bizarre aesthetic shows why Cronenberg's name is instantaneously iconic.

The film's most uncanny achievement is the element I am sure everyone rightly knows the film best for: Rick Baker's unparalleled special effects. (Plus, the work of all those who designed the Videodrome set; seriously, there is something incessantly unsettling about the rash-colored, salivating relish, and bare facts of that location that upsets my core). Breathing, fleshy television sets. Pulsating cassette tapes. The VCR-like slit Max develops in his abdomen. As if a Junji Ito manga has come to unnatural and throbbing life, Max's hallucinations, where technology, from entertainment electronics to a handgun, become indistinguishable from blood-pumping organs, are utterly astounding. If the film was made and released today and not in 1983, these overwhelmingly credible practical effects, prosthetics, camera-and-editing tricks, and set designs would still be impressive. Here is a film worthy of nightmare fuel, driven by human imagination that invented and brought such grotesque dreams into the tangible world.