Videodrome

Starring:James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley, Lynne Gorman, Julie Khaner, Reiner Schwartz, David Bolt, Lally Cadeau, Henry Gomez, Harvey Chao, David TsubÃ´chi, Kay Hawtrey, Sam Malkin, Bob Church, Jayne Eastwood, Franciszka Hedland
Director: David Cronenberg
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

Love 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

Customer Reviews:

In Short...wowtf!.......2007-04-02

i just don't know what to say about this movie...

It's good, don't get me wrong, just that it's one of those movies that messes with your head.

watch this if you need to feel normal...

Don't Touch That Dial.......2007-02-16

"Videodrome" is 24 years old, but the points it makes are just as relevant as ever. Max Renn (masterfully underplayed by a top-of-his-game James Woods) runs a television station that specializes in airing cutting-edge shows (most of which involve pornography and violence). While pirating the airwaves for new, unharvested material, he stumbles across a previously unheard of viewing experience: Videodrome. At first, the show seems like nothing more than a serialized snuff film, but Max soon learns there is more there than meets the eye. Literally.

Like most of Cronenberg's films, "Videodrome" is a viscerally dizzying experience, and one that is bound to leave you scratching your head. For its time, the special effects are well done: televisions pulse like living blocks of veined flesh, guns graft themselves to hands with bone-wires, reality warps and bends until it is completely and utterly unrecognizable. Cronenberg is famous for adopting a sort of gutteral, sinewy take on life, and most of his movies are social commentaries that wield their symbols like gore-covered swords.

"Videodrome" is, most obviously, an unabashed critique of the culture of mass media (and, yes, the movie is aware of the hyper-irony of using a film to decry television). In some ways, this is what makes the flick a wonderful thing to watch -- the underlying message itself isn't spelled out for the viewer. Cronenberg takes pains to blend his motives within his films.

However, the cues he gives the viewer -- the sickening viscera, the fever-dreamish worlds, the overtly metaphorical names (Max, Brian O'Blivion, Nicki Brand, Barry Convex, Moses and Raphael to name a few) -- can sometimes be rather heavy-handed. Cronenberg might be playing around with the audience, but that's not all he's doing, and for viewers with less patience (for those who don't enjoy philosophical sucker-punches, that is) the film may prove more nauseating than entertaining, let alone something to spark thoughtful debate.

Cronenberg snaps a lot of bones and rends a lot of skin in this film, telling the tale of a man trying to come to terms with the duplicity and manipulativeness of his own art (and I use the word "art" loosely). Max once used the tool of television to mold societies, and now that tool has developed a life of its own, has turned on its maker, has become its own legitimacy. Viewing life through the lens of the T.V. screen, "Videodrome" seems to say, means that it is ever harder to understand just what is real and what is not and whether there's a legitimate difference between the two.

Like Max himself, the viewer is enticed further down the corridors of madness with the old-fashioned carrot-on-a-stick trick. The carrot, in this case, is the promise of meaning and cognizance. Although the movie offers some kind of release at the end, it's not necessarily filling. It poses as many questions as answers. But, again, that's Cronenberg for you. For him, it is the ride that counts, the scenery that spins by on the way, and not the sputtering cough of the engine as it is shut off just before the credits roll.

Didacticism, especially when it is dressed with this kind of throbbing, unsettling flesh, can be distasteful for some, and it goes without saying that, for most, Cronenberg is an acquired taste. But beyond the validity of any point he is trying to make with "Videodrome," it must be said that the way he makes that point is certainly compelling. Films like this don't achieve cult status for nothing. Some people may find "Videodrome" a repellent, disorienting experience.

Others will very likely be sucked right in.

Here's the Deal..........2007-02-12

I own Scanners, Dead Zone, Videodrome, and The Fly. Overall, I like these movies, but they all have one thing in common for sure, and that is they all start out good and have a good idea, but by the end of the movie, you are like, "What was that?" or "Why didn't they go this way with the film?" For example, "Scanners", the guy had the ability to do what he could do, but didn't use it convincingly or very well. I felt Ironside in that movie should have been the good guy, not the bad guy, which he played very well I might add. The last scene where him and his brother have a scan off, his transformation was very intense. It could have been used as his comeback on a bad guy, the ultimate Michael Ironside Scan. And with "Videodrome", how cutting edge and creepy it was until he started having the hallucinations(?), then it got way too out of control and over the top, which I've come to expect from a Cronenberg film. But it would have been even better had they kept the over-the-top sci-fi stuff out and made it about the cable company broadcasting such trashy stuff and maybe finding out it was real death they were watching. That could have been the mystery. Finding out where this was going on. They should have stuck with the whole "snuff" t.v./ S&M stuff.

I watched Videodrome last night and was really really into it, until he lost his gun in his stomach, the gun grew into his hand sometimes, and sometimes it wasn't. If you buy this, don't get Criterion version, you might be disappointed. But this release for like 8 or 10 bucks is well worth it, especially for Cronenberg fans. I do believe I'm done buying Cronenberg for now though. I might get "Naked Lunch" or "Dead Ringers". David Lynch movies will be my next project.

My favorite Cronenberg, in order is...Haven't seen any others....

1. The Dead Zone
2. Videodrome
3. Scanners
4. The Fly

still cronenberg's most terrifying movie.......2007-02-03

Videodrome is a sort of look at virtual reality but not in the way you would expect.. It is more of a look at perception and the drug like manifestations of technology on the mind.. One of Cronenbergs best and most startling movies - 'videodrome' will have you very wary of computers, television, and technology long after you thought you shook away the Kafka like anxiety of modern times.. Who knows maybe we are the victims of a similar plot (we really wouldn't know it if we were would we?).. All of Cronenberg's movies confront some aspect of hallucination and perception - making them almost abstract in their significance.

From The Mind Of David Cronenberg.......2006-10-10

Most people I know either like Cronenberg's film's, or vehemently detest his work. I fall in between. Some of his work I enjoy, others I really don't wish to watch again. This film, "Videodrome," is one I initially really liked when I first viewed it. Then, years later I really didn't care for it that much. Viewing it again a few years later I liked it. Maybe it's because what Cronenberg is showing the viewers in this film is a bit of a reflection of our times. When I see many of the films, and especially reality shows that are on the air, it reminds me of this film.

I don't watch Television [very little of it anyway], and had my cable-channel removed 5 years ago when I found that I missed reading. Most of my time is spent in reading: I am a voracious reader. However, when visiting friends or relatives, I see that they are really into these reality shows, and I have always thought it was a little creepy. Just like the main protagonist in the film "Videodrome." When fiction becomes tame and reality becomes a necessary [maybe the voyeurism] then there is a problem [or maybe not]. I don't have the answers.

In Cronenberg's film, we see that James Woods is fixated on obtaining copies of tapes from a pirated cable station. His secret obsession for sex and violence; with torture and murder thrown in, fascinates him, and in his desire to locate the station and tapes he finds himself caught in a web of his own desires. Maybe Cronenberg is saying something here about society itself. I have the Criterion collection DVD, and although have not heard the commentary, I intend to. However, I always like to form my own opinions of what I watch, not the commentators. [With the exception of Akira Kurosawa's film's] I recommend the film, although it is not for all tastes.

Average customer rating:

In Short...wowtf!
Don't Touch That Dial
Here's the Deal...
still cronenberg's most terrifying movie
From The Mind Of David Cronenberg

Videodrome - Criterion Collection
Starring: James Woods , Sonja Smits , Deborah Harry , Peter Dvorsky , and Leslie Carlson
Director: David Cronenberg
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Scanners
Naked Lunch - Criterion Collection
Dead Ringers
eXistenZ
The Fly (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

ASIN: B0002DB50E
Release Date: 2004-08-31

Amazon.com essential video

Description

When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called "Videodrome." As he unearths the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. Renn's ordinary life dissolves around him, he finds himself at the center of a conflict between opposing factions in the struggle to control the truth behind the radical human future of "the New Flesh." Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry in one of her first film roles, Videodrome is one of writer/director David Cronenberg's most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. With groundbreaking special effects makeup by Academy Award®-winner Rick Baker, Videodrome has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and mind-bending science fiction films of the 1980s, and The Criterion Collection is proud to present it in its full-length unrated edition.

Customer Reviews:

In Short...wowtf!.......2007-04-02

i just don't know what to say about this movie...

It's good, don't get me wrong, just that it's one of those movies that messes with your head.

watch this if you need to feel normal...

Don't Touch That Dial.......2007-02-16

Here's the Deal..........2007-02-12

still cronenberg's most terrifying movie.......2007-02-03

From The Mind Of David Cronenberg.......2006-10-10

Average customer rating:

In Short...wowtf!
Don't Touch That Dial
Here's the Deal...
still cronenberg's most terrifying movie
From The Mind Of David Cronenberg

Videodrome [Region 2]
Starring: James Woods , Sonja Smits , Deborah Harry , Peter Dvorsky , and Leslie Carlson
Director: David Cronenberg
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( V ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Scanners
Naked Lunch - Criterion Collection
Dead Ringers
eXistenZ
The Fly (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

ASIN: B00006RHUU

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

In Short...wowtf!.......2007-04-02

i just don't know what to say about this movie...

It's good, don't get me wrong, just that it's one of those movies that messes with your head.

watch this if you need to feel normal...

Don't Touch That Dial.......2007-02-16

Here's the Deal..........2007-02-12

still cronenberg's most terrifying movie.......2007-02-03

From The Mind Of David Cronenberg.......2006-10-10

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