Review of Videodrome (1983) by Spangle — 27 Sep 2016

Touching on ideas that director David Cronenberg would later bring back again in a different way in eXistenZ such as alternate realities, flesh guns, and being plugged in/controlled through your body. Showcasing significant paranoia about cults, the government, and new technology, Videodrome is a truly unique and thoroughly Cronenberg (read: weird) experience. Packed to the brim with his trademark body horror, this one is quite a ride.

As with his later exercises in eXistenZ, Videodrome showcases oddly solid special effects that seem so real that you could reach out and touch the torso vagina bursting out of Max Renn (James Woods). Many Cronenberg films have these oddly realistic looking body horror sequences that never seem comical, but downright horrifying. The Fly had a lot of these elements as well and it really demonstrates Cronenberg's wheelhouse. He knows body horror better than anybody and he is not afraid to showcase his skill in this arena. In spite of his manipulation of the reality around us and within his typically realistic settings, the films always feel so horrifically real. Though exaggerations of the world around us, films such as Videodrome often mirror seedy elements of our world and bring them to us in a thoroughly visceral manner. While things such as those depicted in this film would not happen, some form of them certainly does (namely cults, non-literal mind control, snuff films, and the "subterrainian market"). Cronenberg has a knack for bringing these elements to the forefront of our mind and is truly horrifying.

The film's usage of alternate realities is also splendid as, once the concept is introduced, you can never truly be sure what is a hallucination. Hell, everything could be. Is there even a show called Videodrome or is Max Renn just psychotic? How much of this happened? Did he ever actually meet Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) and others? There are so many possibilities and this is a prime example of how Cronenberg can mess with your mind. He not only distorts reality through his realistic settings and people juxtaposed against his body horror and unique special effects, but also through alternate timelines. Things that seem so real to Max appear to have been nothing but another hallucination. However, things can certainly go in the reverse and things that appear to be hallucinations could easily be reality. Things he imagined he hallucinated could have truly happened and the hallucination merely convinces him they did not. Weird, I know.

Cronenberg's toying with killing in the name of some movement or cult is another link one can draw to his later film eXistenZ (and I am sure others, that one just happens to be one I watched). In both films, characters kill people in the name of some movement. Here, Cronenberg makes it all the more horrifying by showing that everybody is playing for the same team and is truly being played, as we will soon all be under the control of "Videodrome". This paranoia runs rampant throughout the film as one must one is Cronenberg keeps himself up at night wondering if he is under the control of some mysterious cult that is just waiting for the right moment to use him to further their goals. Poor guy. As it stands, he certainly has me paranoid after watching Videodrome. This film is dripping with paranoia in every shot, especially due to the acting of James Woods. An incredibly natural, everyman type actor (in spite of his clearly negative characterization, he seems relatively normal), his persona really brings a further level of horror to Videodrome. The paranoia he experiences and the violence he is forced to undergo feels so close to us, which makes it all the creepier.

As a whole, Videodrome is a very good body horror film from the master of the subgenre. Gleefully messing with our mind and our concepts of what can and cannot be real in the world and in film, this one showcases all that Cronenberg does well as a director. With significant paranoia, fear, and confusion in every sequence, you simply never know where everyone stands and what is actually occurring, which truly adds to the horror of it all.