The star of our story is Max Renn (James Woods), the general manager of a low-rent UHF television station in Toronto that specializes in the perverse, the obscene, and the sensationalistic. Max is always on the lookout for new programming, but the softcore porn his sales agent has offered up is too tame, too pedestrian. He needs something more shocking and intense.
That's when he makes a discovery that will change his life. While scanning pirated overseas broadcasts for anything they could record and air themselves, Max's techie associate Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) intercepts an anonymous signal he initially believes is from Malaysia. Bearing the simple title of "Videodrome," the show depicts realistic portrayals of torture and murder. The whole thing is just two masked men whipping and beating a naked victim before ultimately killing her. Though torture is all there is to it, Max is excited by it and wants to air it on his channel. He charges Harlan with further descrambling the signal and getting more footage. And in doing so, Harlan learns that the footage is not broadcast from Malaysia, but from Pittsburgh.
While Harlan continues to compile tapes of Videodrome, Max appears on a televised discussion panel regarding how the media influences society. On the panel with him is Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a talk radio host and psychologist. Taken aback by her, Max asks Nicki out to dinner. One thing leads to another, and they end up back at Max's apartment watching clips of Videodrome. It turns out Nicki is really into masochism, and Videodrome scratches her sexual itch.
When Max offhandedly mentions that the show is broadcast out of Pittsburgh, Nicki excitedly claims that she's going to Pittsburgh on business and wants to audition for the show while she's there. Max tries talking her out of it, since the people on Videodrome don't make repeat appearances on the show, but Nicki remains steadfast in her desire.
When Nicki eventually fails to return to Toronto after her trip, Max starts digging deeper into Videodrome. But this investigation has its consequences. Max has begun suffering from frighteningly bizarre hallucinations that still feel oddly realistic. And the further his search takes him, the stranger and more horrifying these hallucinations become. But he soldiers on, eventually being led Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), a philosopher who no longer appears anywhere in person, instead sending videotaped monologues to wherever his presence is requested or required.
O'Blivion's daughter Bianca (Sonja Smith) stops Max from meeting her father, instead assuring him that he'll promptly be contacted via videotape. O'Blivion's recorded message reveals to him some of the truth behind Videodrome, the knowledge of which pushes Max even closer to the edge of sanity. The message also leads him to Barry Carvex (Les Carlson), a shady businessman who knows more about Videodrome than any sane person should. Max increasingly loses the ability to separate fantasy from reality as his hallucinations worsen, and Carvex is somehow at the bottom of it.
Videodrome is a genuinely fascinating movie, a gripping experience from start to finish. It's been a few weeks since I've seen it, and I'm still amazed by how trippy the movie is. The amount of creativity Cronenberg pours into it makes it impossible to turn away from the movie. Any further words I write will fail to do it justice, but please believe me when I say that it's a brilliant flick.
Cronenberg's direction is masterful, really crafting the movie into a work of surrealistic art. "Body horror" might not be everyone's cup of tea, but Cronenberg uses it to maximize the horror of the situation. (Plus it makes the movie a total mind-screw to boot.) Utilizing some impressive cinematography and Rick Baker's gloriously unsettling special makeup effects, Cronenberg takes us deeper into a hallucinatory nightmare one step at a time. It's probably the only movie I can think of that could rival Requiem for a Dream in terms of sheer sanity-challenging intensity. I mean, there's a scene where the main character develops a strange vagina-like orifice on his chest, and he sticks a handgun inside it out of pure curiosity. How many movies have that?!
The script that Cronenberg has written is just as bizarre, feeling at times like it's one big mishmash of all the weird ideas he had at the time. But that actually helps ratchet up the tension, because you never know just what the hell will happen next. However, it's also a wickedly smart piece of work. A lot of critics and reviewers have noted how oddly prophetic Videodrome is, and how much more so it would have been had Cronenberg predicted the rise of the Internet and how ubiquitous online devices have become. The characters go on about how television is the new reality, a new medium through which we'll experience life itself. Isn't that pretty much what the Internet is now? Brian O'Blivion even states that his obviously fake name was created to serve as his nom de plumb in the world of TV, much like how we create fake handles for ourselves online.
I really didn't think much of the "Videodrome is a social commentary" before I actually saw the movie. I mean, critics harp on about how Night of the Living Dead is a commentary on how life in America was changed by the Vietnam War, and the movie is just a bunch of walking corpses eating people. People see what they want to see even when it isn't there. That whole aspect of Videodrome didn't hit me until I started thinking about it after the fact. As truly strange and off-putting as the movie can be, Cronenberg never beats you over the head with a message or anything like that. He just tells the story and assumes the audience is smart enough to figure things out on their own.
And even without any social commentary, Videodrome still works as an effective thriller. You can never tell what's in Max's head and what is real. Who's to say that the "Videodrome" show he's been watching even exists at all? Max could have just gone of the deep end one day and hallucinated the entire movie. The whole explanation behind his hallucinations could have been a hallucination itself! Max might simply be crazy or on the wrong kind of drugs, I don't know for sure. And that's what makes the movie so glorious. You can watch it a hundred different times from a hundred different angles, and they would all feel credible.
Last but not least is the cast, all of whom I felt did exactly what required to make their roles work. Deborah Harry, who is more famous as the lead singer of Blondie, is great in her role. She unfortunately has limited screen time, but Harry plays her part seductively, so much so that you'd understand why Max would be drawn to her. There are some good performances from Les Carlson and Jack Creley as well, but the whole show belongs to James Woods.
Woods is fantastic, giving one the feeling that he's lost inside his own mind. You can see with each passing second that his sanity is slipping away. It's all in his eyes and body language. His character's mental and physical changes over the course of the movie are made all the more believable and convincing by the way Woods approaches the role. Woods makes it his own, and Videodrome is a better movie for having him.
I probably haven't adequately described just how strange Videodrome is. The movie is the kind of strange that will make your brain pack up and leave because it cannot comprehend what your eyes have seen. I'm still not 100% sure what I watched and I saw Videodrome two weeks ago. But what I do know is that Videodrome is a damn fine movie. Long live the new flesh, indeed.
Final Rating: ****
No comments:
Post a Comment