Creepy. What’s up with David Cronenberg? He’s like obsessed with creepy flesh movies where people are puling themselves apart. Videodrome is a tv show that sends out a signal that makes you hallucinate and then lets people control you. James Woods plays a small-time TV network buyer always on the look out for “cutting edge” programs. He comes across videodrome and gets sucked into a world of S&M, sex, violence, and twisted hallucinations. Debbie Harry plays a sort of muse to the videodrome and you never really know if she is real or a hallucination in Wood’s mind. They get freaky, video tapes turn into breathing flesh, tvs come alive and get sexually turned on, and the line between video and reality disappears. It’s got lots of violence, weird sexual images and Debbie Harry looking hot. Not bad.
It would be interesting to see an update in contemporary culture since television is being replaced by the portable media device and the wireless world. Video tapes are now a dead medium so it really dates the movie. But it’s an interesting idea that reality and the perceptual visual image can be manipulated and blurred to the point where it no longer matters what is “real” or not since it’s all just perception anyway. How much of the news and info do we get now through the filters of the internet and cable? It’s a perception that has expanded to a tremendous range but has also reduced our experiences to something best viewed on a screen in isolation, separated from the world.
Videodrome is dated but it is creepy like all of Cronenberg’s movies. Not for the faint of heart but not overly gross either. An interesting look into early ’80s culture and fears of the future.
