Videodrome is core science fiction in which director David Cronenberg
truly hit his pace as an innovator of bizarre intellectual concepts. He not
only introduced the first fully realized virtual reality world in a movie, he
did it with more dangerous ideas than had ever seen the light of a film with
major distribution: insidious technology, porn, violence, sado-masochism,
underground video and snuff movies.
They're all in the service of a film concept that in its maturity was
light-years ahead of the competition. Readers of fare like Philip K. Dick's
The
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch possibly felt right at home, but most of
the 'normal' 1983 audience was lost, lost, lost.
Synopsis: Soft-core cable entrepreneur Max Renn (James Woods) is hot for new
material, and his assistant Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) manages to tap into an
illegal transmission of an all-torture-all-murder TV signal called Videodrome.
Max dispatches a porn agent Masha (Lynne Gorman) to find it for his cable
channel, and follows the trail to Bianca O'Blivion (Sonja Smits), the daughter of
video cult visionary Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley). He seems to exist only on
videotape, dispensing weird wisdom about a new world where people will
physically merge with the virtual video world. Max also becomes attracted to radio ps
ychologist Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a masochistic sensationalist who
introduces him to mild S&M. When she finds out about Videodrome, her response is to
seek it out - to become a 'contestant.'
David Cronenberg's erratic films before
Videodrome were a hit and miss
string of exploitative shockers with strong core ideas.
Shivers and
Rabid had grandiose concepts that overshadowed their grindhouse content:
the powerful ideas made an impact beyond the nudity and gore.
Shivers was a gloss on
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but
Scanners hit
the jackpot with a commercial hybrid of Philip K. Dick's
expanded-consciousness world. Loftier concepts gave way to chase scenes and exploding heads,
surefire audience-pleasing material.
Videodrome recycles previous Cronenberg ideas - strange new body
orifices, technological conspiracies to transform mankind and exploding bodies -
and adds the Dickian idea of altered reality.
We experience the
disconcerting hallucinations as Max Renn's mind is altered by the Videodrome video
signal. Max becomes the classic surreal hero of Buñuel, an
Archibaldo de
La Cruz or a
Horrible Dr. Hichcock exploring new conceptual
territory with his eyes wide open. Cronenberg used this big theme to spectacularly
enlarge the limited original concept of
The Fly, making a transformation
into a monster into a voyage of grotesque but miraculous possibilities. Max
Renn is also changing from the inside out, and he too has to learn to embrace an
unknown future he calls 'the new flesh.' Scientific progress blends with
spirituality when the ultimate escape from 'the old flesh' becomes all too obvious.
Cronenberg really hits his directing stride with
Videodrome. His
casting is truly creative. The effects don't overpower the story and the story
doesn't rely on a chase to sustain its thriller framework. The revelations are
paced well, allowing us to accept some really weird happenings as matters of
fact. A television is transformed into a veined and pulsing sexual organ; Max Renn
pulls an organic pistol from a vagina-like slit in his stomach.
James Woods proves himself perfectly suited to playing a basically
sympathetic character that nevertheless is a voyeur and softcore smut peddler. The
little touches he gives the role become funnier on repeated viewings. Deborah Harry
makes a terrific early impact and then exits the film to become a virtual
presence, creating a resentment factor for the Blondie fan-base. Nicki Brand is
one of the few convincing masochists in movies and makes the erotic connection
Cronenberg needs. Like a surreal heroine, she goes straight to the center of
her obsession and never looks back.
Among the excellent supporting players is Lynne Gorman, who Cronenberg
manages to make intriguing just by allowing her to be a woman older than fifty with
a sexual appetite. Cronenberg also shows a comic irony beyond his penchant for
pun-based character names. At one point Max Renn tries on a pair of
dark-framed glasses and for a second 'transforms' into a substitute David Cronenberg.
And during an escape in an alley, Renn passes workers moving a series of doors.
Are they a visual pun for the 'doors' of consciousness?
But what we remember the most are the bizarre highlights where erotic and
technological taboos merge. Max Renn is able to have physical sex with a pair of
lips on a television screen. His 'stomach vagina' hides weapons and itself
becomes a perverse weapon. For these illusions
Cronenberg creates visual representations that go a step beyond classical
film surrealism, with us sharing in the sensations of the surrealist adventurer
instead of merely observing. Some concepts aren't as well established, however;
in one scene Renn's obscene gun-arm (shades of
The Quatermass
Xperiment) is meant to shoot not bullets but instant-growing cancerous tumors.
There's also the gross ending where Max Renn is shown the next step in his
personal evolution by a virtual Deborah Harry, who might as well be speaking to
him from
The Matrix. His crossover is accomplished by
imitating
something he sees on television. Cronenberg's movie ideas in these early films
were way, way out there, but they're always driven by a coherent interior
logic.
Criterion's exhaustive special edition of
Videodrome is clearly a
labor of love. Veteran Karen Stetler is joined by Marc Walkow in the DVD producing
credits. The expected behind the scenes docus and visual galleries are
secondary to the conceptual riches offered by the interviews, commentaries and
essays. The literary voices are Carrie Rickey, Gary Indiana and Tim Lucas, a
frequent visitor to the film's Canadian set. The commentators are Cronenberg, his
cameraman Mark Irwin and his stars Woods and Harry. All are verbally articulate
about the film and its morbidly visionary director. Disc one also has a short
Cronenberg film from 2000.
Disc two has a very good docu about the makeup effects utilizing original
video from the set and overseen by special effects maestro Michael Lennick. There
are also separate audio interviews with makeup effects men Rick Baker and
Lennick. A section called
Bootleg Video includes the complete footage of
the softcore movie hawked to Max Renn and seven uncut minutes of Videodrome
torture sessions, that are less disturbing when seen at full length. The stills
and visual galleries are here. Topping it all off is an original featurette,
and better yet, a 1981 roundtable interview with Cronenberg and fellow directors
John Carpenter and John Landis, all involved at the time in fantastic films.
The least demonstrative of the three, Cronenberg still seems the one with
ideas to back up his fantastic aspirations.
For more information about
Videodrome, visit
Criterion Collection. To order
Videodrome, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
