Review of Videodrome (1983) by Blake P — 03 Mar 2016

The films of David Cronenberg - at least the ones billed as products of the "body horror" subgenre - always achieve a certain sort of impressive unpleasantness. Never are they necessarily scary, explosive, or even blackly funny. They stew in a concoction of emotionless carnage and metallic surrealism more ominous and disturbing than directly intense. We sit as an uncomfortable, sullen witness, prone to wincing as there isn't much else to do. It's eerie without the eventual emotional crescendo we might expect in a typical horror closer; it doesn't feel like a horror film so much as it does an inexplicable nightmare you'd rather forget than dwell on.

And so I give props to Cronenberg for making a fright-fest incomparable to his peers, but that doesn't mean I necessarily like "Videodrome." It's too abstractly unpleasant for me to arrantly recommend it, since most will likely have a similar reaction. But it does what it sets out to do quite smashingly, which is to devise a television satire more reflective of a macabre tale of terror than, to be outrageously broad, "Network." Whether you venerate it all or not is up to fate, and I just so happen to be one of the few who feels the need to take a hot shower and watch a couple hours worth of '90s sitcoms after viewing, just to get the unshakable feeling of abhorrence off me.

It stars James Woods as Max Renn, a TV producer who runs CIVIC-TV, an underground Canadian station that specializes in the spotlighting of softcore pornography and brutal depictions of staged violence. Well-aware of audience fascination regarding such horrors, Renn is conscious that his consumers are on the brink of tiring of the same old standardized faux taboos. So his world lights up when he accidentally discovers "Videodrome," a plotless television program from Asia that looks and feels like snuff, torture and murder its most prevalent features. It must be phony, Renn tells himself, but in the context of a David Cronenberg film, we know that this mostly likely isn't the case. But Renn, being too optimistic in a profession that should be cutthroat, foresees the program as being the future of frowzy television.

Before making the final decision as to whether he should air the program or not, though, Renn makes the regrettable mistake of becoming addicted to the series, which ends up being much more sinister than he might have at first believed. As it turns out, the feed is coming from a mysterious location in Pittsburgh, and has, similarly to the supernatural tape in "Ringu," dramatic physical and mental impact on the viewer. Shortly after his introduction to "Videodrome," Renn begins having bizarre hallucinations, ranging from images of his TV coming to life to his stomach disfiguring into something reminiscent of a VCR. Things only grow more grotesque the more Renn delves into the situation.

"Videodrome's" plot thickens as it wears on, covering the devastations of governmental conspiracy, media dependency, and forthrightly strange malice, and their blending together leaves us distinctly uneasy. Never frightened, but aflutter, a feeling of all-powerful danger following our every move, unable to be stopped. Enigma is key to the fears of the film, and the more erratic it gets, the more violent it gets, the more tremulous we become. It isn't hair-raising in varying bursts akin to "Halloween" or "Suspiria"; "Videodrome" has an incessant rumbling of disquiet lingering throughout every scene.

But I hesitate to say that I felt anything but disgust during the entirety of "Videodrome." Watching it again sounds about as appealing as only eating undercooked meat for a week, and I wouldn't want to inflict such pain onto myself or my readers. My experiences with Cronenberg have been nothing less than uneven over the years; I love his spectacularly screwy "eXistentZ," like his take on the gangster movie, "Eastern Promises," and actively loathe his widely praised "Dead Ringers." For once, "Videodrome" carries the feeling of indifference that I so desperately try to avoid when watching movies. I hold it in high regard, its craftsmanship, performances, and imagery intriguingly unwonted. But when reflecting upon a movie, one question always stands out as being most potent: did I like it? No. But there's a lot to admire.