SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 221 - Videodrome (1983)

[europe1]

NOTE to NON-MEMBERS: Interested in joining the SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB? Shoot me a PM for more info!

Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.

Our Director
Weirdmeister 3000

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father, Milton Cronenberg, was a journalist and editor, and his mother, Esther (Sumberg), was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early age (he wrote and published eerie short stories, thus following his father's path) and for music (playing classical guitar until he was 12), Cronenberg graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Literature after switching from the science department. He reached the cult status of horror-meister with the gore-filled, modern-vampire variations of Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), following an experimental apprenticeship in independent film-making and in Canadian television programs.

Our Star
Pervert James Wood

Film Overview



Premise: When he acquires a different kind of show for his station, a sleazy cable-TV programmer begins to see his life and the future of media spin out of control in a terrifying new reality.

Budget: $5.9 million

Box Office: $2.1 million

Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)

* David Tsubouchi, who appears here briefly as a Japanese porn dealer, later became a Minister in the Ontario provincial government. His appearance in this controversial film as a pornographer was exploited by the opposition.

* Three different endings were filmed. The ending used in the film was James Woods's idea.

* The majority of the trailer was created with a Commodore 64 computer.

* David Cronenberg had to double James Woods for the scene in which Max Renn has a helmet put on his head because Woods was afraid that be might be electrocuted by said helmet.

* The videotapes used in the film (at least as key props) are Betamax format. This is because VHS cassettes were too large to fit into the false stomach for special effects scenes.

* Most of the major characters in the film make their appearance in the film from a television screen.

​

Members: @europe1 @MusterX @Scott Parker 27 @HTTR21 @Bullitt68 @Yotsuya @jei @HARRISON_3 @Bubzeh @the ambush @SalvadorAllende @moreorless87 @HenryFlower @Zer

 

[Mike]

Haven't seen it but read about it at one point. The plot synopsis sounded utterly insane IIRC

 

[JayPettryMMA]

If it's amenable to @europe1 and the rest of the SMC, I would be willing to host a Watch Party of this film live some night soon (maybe Thursday?). Can't be Friday night (Bellator) or Saturday night (UFC) but if there's interest, I'm game. Just putting it out there.

Long live the new flesh.

 

[BisexualMMA]

Good movie... Cronenberg is an odd cat. Debbie Harry was something else back in the day.

 

[europe1]

If it's amenable to @europe1

I'm 100% amiable but.... I don't know at all if I'll be able to attend

 

[HenryFlower]

Spoiler

 

[JayPettryMMA]

I'm 100% amiable but.... I don't know at all if I'll be able to attend

The SMC can decide on a time, and it could be for instance Saturday afternoon before the UFC card so that some people that live in other parts of the world don't have to stay up all night.

And if it's too late and most of you have already watched this, no worries. It just came to mind tonight after we watched The Road Warrior. We can circle back, I'm always happy to work with the SMC.

 

[Hogey]

Watched it again over a month ago with a few friends that have never seen it. Great movie, everyone enjoyed it. James wood is awesome and so is cronenberg

 

[Bullitt68]

I had a big Cronenberg marathon not too long ago, rewatching some stuff I hadn't seen in years and finally watching some stuff that I'd never gotten around to. I honestly didn't remember much of the plot to this film. It really just stuck in my memory as various images, most vividly James Woods' torso vagina. I also can't remember if I first saw this one in film school or if the film school viewing was just the one where I really started to dig it. But I've always enjoyed this movie and my recent rewatch reaffirmed that. Not my favorite from Cronenberg - I'm partial to Scanners and The Dead Zone - nor his best IMO - I'd probably nominate The Dead Zone and eXistenZ as his best - but it's one of his coolest premises and he definitely does some interesting stuff here.

I'll be back to talk about it in greater detail after I get a chance to check out Bait, which I have ready to go on my computer hopefully for tomorrow, @HenryFlower

 

[the ambush]

The practical effects usage was exceptional and it becomes a trial run of what will a person see next. I take it many drugs were experimented with in the production of this movie.

 

[moreorless87]

For some reason I'v not watched this in about 15 years but I do recently remember it being very impactful, didn't see it until the mid 90's but really even at that point I would say that it and Lynch's Blue Velvet were generally considered subversive arty cinema de jour. I spose by that point things hadn't really fundamentally changed, video cassettes and cable/satellite were still the main medium and there was still somewhat of the video nasty scuzzy image(although Blockbuster were starting to take over and force it out) around them. That sense of being subversive having to seek it out of video or watch it on late night channel 4 I think certainly helped with its image.

As said its was the set pieces that stay in the memory, rewatching it the early stages of the film are rather more down to earth than I remember and the small budget perhaps more obvious. Unlike say The Thing I wouldn't say it has quite the impact it once did in pure strangeness and tension until perhaps the latter stages but I can also see a lot more dark humour to it these days which Woods is well suited to.

I would say its pretty clearly a turning point in Cronenberg's career as well, the shift away from his more conventional horror focus in the 70's and early 80's towards something a bit more surreal and politically charged that would make up most of his work until Spider in the early 00's brought him back down to earth.

I think its interesting that unlike a lot of meta horror like say Mouth of Madness the film doesn't take a purely conservative view, the evil force at work is actually some kind of conservative body working against that kind of content from within which the more subversive side rebels sgainst. The killing of Harlan and his transformation almost feels like he's been killed by the video nasty content he was trying to suppress although the nature/aims of the subversive side and the "new flesh" are ultimately quite obscure.

 

[SalvadorAllende]

Okay... Just watched this one.

I failed at the timing: 20 minutes in diner was ready. Definetly not something to watch while eating if you are kind of impressionable like me. lol.

Anyways.. this not my type of film and after 2 minutes I thought this was going to be garbage. I was suprised on how entertained I was throughout the whole movie. I loved James Wood performance and that girl was a dime piece.

Not a lot to say about the plot. Pretty much what I expect from a film like this.

I can say I enjoyed this one despite not being my favorite genre (body horror? that is a new one for me).

 

[MusterX]

Good movie... Cronenberg is an odd cat. Debbie Harry was something else back in the day.

She looked good in Videodrome for sure, she also liked to be cut and have cigarettes put out on her breasts.

 

[MusterX]

Some strange things about this film I noticed on my rewatch, I say rewatch because I saw it years ago but went back to remind myself what the film was really all about. I have to say that this viewing was not at all like the first viewing I had around late 80's or early 90's. So on to the strangeness of this film.

The first thing I noticed that was really odd in a script is that the character Brian O'Blivion is running a church cult group called the Mission of the Cathode Ray Tube.

That combined with O'Blivion's words on his television interview, something about the excitement of the future vibrations of the cathode ray tube, got me thinking about the weird connection with the real world creation of televisions. As it turns out, the cathode ray tube was invented in an indirect sort of way by a man named William Crookes.

Crookes was a pretty damn serious scientist. He proved the existence of cathode rays by using a device named a Crookes tube. He discovered the element thallium through the use of spectroscopy.

He invented the Crookes radiometer, also known as a solar engine, which rotates in the presence of electromagnetic radiation.

William Crookes work led to the creation of the cathode ray tube and then later the television. Perhaps the strangest thing about Crookes is that he was also into the paranormal, so much so that he set up a laboratory for testing mediums and psychics to see if they really could contact some sort of other world. Here is a pic of Crookes with another person who he claimed was actually a ghost named Katie King.

So there is this strange connection to the cathode ray tube and a man named Crookes that was into weird spiritiulism of the time as well as a brilliant scientist. There were other strange things as well, for example, the character Barry Convex is the guy responsible for Videodrome and he is running a cover company called Spectacular Optical.

I immediately thought of the Virtual reality known as Oculus Rift.

That pretty much makes Zuckerberg the real life version of Barry Convex. Think I'm lying? What did Maxx, played by James Woods, put on when he met Barry Convex? A VR Headset, in a movie in 1983.

Modern Oculus, with same eye logo as Spectacular Optical in Videodrome.

I mean we even see things like the two dimensional television morph into a more three dimensional image.

Really weird because when I originally viewed the film there was no way of knowing how the world would be dominated by various types of information and media by 2020 and certainly no way to know what VR would look and feel like. Its awesome by the way, I use a Valve Index headset. I mean if one of the messages of Videodrome is that we are headed for a world where reality is warped by media, in Cronenberg's era it was the television, then he did an incredible job with portraying the three dimensional "hallucinations" of what would later be known as virtual reality.

Oh yea, in case you think this post is a rambling mess, I blame Cronenberg, but one last thing. Lets go back to William Crookes for a moment, the guy I said was a brilliant scientist and also a paranormal investigator. He's also the guy that discovered the electron. Let that sink in some. The electron is responsible for all your electronics. I don't know what to make of all this other than to say there is definitely someone on the other end of the script that spent some time thinking about this stuff more than just coming up with a weird film idea.

There is a real world connection between the message of Videodrome and the advent of electronics, which traces back to William Crookes and his Crookes tube experiments.

 

[MusterX]

For some reason I'v not watched this in about 15 years but I do recently remember it being very impactful, didn't see it until the mid 90's but really even at that point I would say that it and Lynch's Blue Velvet were generally considered subversive arty cinema de jour. I spose by that point things hadn't really fundamentally changed, video cassettes and cable/satellite were still the main medium and there was still somewhat of the video nasty scuzzy image(although Blockbuster were starting to take over and force it out) around them. That sense of being subversive having to seek it out of video or watch it on late night channel 4 I think certainly helped with its image.

As said its was the set pieces that stay in the memory, rewatching it the early stages of the film are rather more down to earth than I remember and the small budget perhaps more obvious. Unlike say The Thing I wouldn't say it has quite the impact it once did in pure strangeness and tension until perhaps the latter stages but I can also see a lot more dark humour to it these days which Woods is well suited to.

I would say its pretty clearly a turning point in Cronenberg's career as well, the shift away from his more conventional horror focus in the 70's and early 80's towards something a bit more surreal and politically charged that would make up most of his work until Spider in the early 00's brought him back down to earth.

I think its interesting that unlike a lot of meta horror like say Mouth of Madness the film doesn't take a purely conservative view, the evil force at work is actually some kind of conservative body working against that kind of content from within which the more subversive side rebels sgainst. The killing of Harlan and his transformation almost feels like he's been killed by the video nasty content he was trying to suppress although the nature/aims of the subversive side and the "new flesh" are ultimately quite obscure.

Wouldn't you agree though that the message of Videodrome is more applicable to today than it ever was when it came out. The obsession the world now has with media, with YouTube, with social media, with video games, now with Virtual Reality technology, as well as an ever more present sense of being numb to shock videos. When James Woods is watching the torture videos, I kept thinking, we have that now in the real world and worse. We have beheading videos or anything you might imagine.

 

[MusterX]

Okay... Just watched this one.

I failed at the timing: 20 minutes in diner was ready. Definetly not something to watch while eating if you are kind of impressionable like me. lol.

Anyways.. this not my type of film and after 2 minutes I thought this was going to be garbage. I was suprised on how entertained I was throughout the whole movie. I loved James Wood performance and that girl was a dime piece.

Not a lot to say about the plot. Pretty much what I expect from a film like this.

I can say I enjoyed this one despite not being my favorite genre (body horror? that is a new one for me).

Videodrome is a strange film where one might watch it and think what in the hell is this weirdness but deep down its about a warping of what is real and what is not. Its society being altered and changed by media. What has happened in the world in the last 20 years has made Videodrome strangely relevant if you ask me. People watch vile videos that can't be unseen, we engage in some form of media on average most of the day for most people. We have to try to discern what is fake news and what is real news. Now technology is delving into virtual reality and deep fakes that make anyone say or do anything.

 

[moreorless87]

Wouldn't you agree though that the message of Videodrome is more applicable to today than it ever was when it came out. The obsession the world now has with media, with YouTube, with social media, with video games, now with Virtual Reality technology, as well as an ever more present sense of being numb to shock videos. When James Woods is watching the torture videos, I kept thinking, we have that now in the real world and worse. We have beheading videos or anything you might imagine.

To be fair people have been claiming that new media will damage society for as long as its existed but yes a lot of the specifics shown here do feel like they've become closer to reality in the following generation. I think what makes the film interesting is that its not only concerned with pushing a conservative message about fear of the new. Horror has very often done that and honestly I find it a bit disappointing that whats often been quite a modern youth culture plays to conservatism.

Here really what we see is I'd say more of a battle for influence as videodrome itself is revealed to actually be run by conservative quasi fascist forces who are battling against the kind of content it shows. That feels like its playing on the old link between counter culture and establishment conspiracy's, something like LSD being both linked heavy to the former but also having been invented by the latter and potentially used to control soldiers. I think its interesting how this is shown as well, perhaps part of it is the limited budget but there not some vast corporate body, rather there shown in a very down to earth retail store, a kind of apple pie America that conservatism often looks to play up.

It doesn't seem entirely clear what the O'blivions represent or what their aims are but generally they seem to be some kind of counter culture cultish worship of the new giving themselves totally over to it. Again I think the assassinations almost feels like the conservative forces are being killed by the kind of content they are looking to surpress, not just killing them but turning them into horror monsters.

Woods and his TV station by comparison seem more like a relatively benign small-time enterprise, perhaps quite close to situation some indie cinema producers who were behind so much of the horror boom of that era? you could argue perhaps that woods main fault is that he seems politically unaware and mostly driven by a profit motive and that this leaves him open to manipulation by the above forces.

The film does seem rather different to a lot of such cinema(especially of that era) when it comes to how it uses female characters as well. We don't see any helpless scream queens but instead sexually empowered women were right from the start the porn producer tells woods she prefers younger toy boys. The fetishism in the film obviously seems to have a female focus as well with Harry having BDSM tendacys and Woods visions(or not) taking the form of a chest vagina.

 

[SalvadorAllende]

Wouldn't you agree though that the message of Videodrome is more applicable to today than it ever was when it came out. The obsession the world now has with media, with YouTube, with social media, with video games, now with Virtual Reality technology, as well as an ever more present sense of being numb to shock videos. When James Woods is watching the torture videos, I kept thinking, we have that now in the real world and worse. We have beheading videos or anything you might imagine.

I think it's applicable but I won't go that far. I don't think media is nearly as powerful as some people thought it might be back in the day.
There is a big debate that goes beyond this thread about it. But my opinion mainly stands on the fact that I come from a place where we have been in the situation you guys are now (regarding media and political polarization... assuming you are from the US) about 12/13 years ago and we came out of that. The result is a completely discredited media that less and less people take seriously.

But the part when they say that virtual reality is going to be the only reality makes a lot of sense when thinking about social media. But there is a difference there: In social media we create our own reality/content (more or less, since a lot of imposed by trends) and in Videodrome the reality is imposed to the people.

I've always avoided the rabbitholes about shocking videos (torture, muders, etc) but I remember those being more present when I was a teenager (about 17 years ago). Maybe is the fucked up people I grew up with (might be) or the nature of teenagers, but I haven't been introduced to that kind of stuff as an adult and don't know anyone who is into watching that. Is that just me?
BTW.. not denying that there are people who are into that but I've never felt it reached mainstream status despite being easily available.

 

[moreorless87]

It has always been an easy path to take to show such content as having a strong influence on people taken to the supernatural extreme of stuff like Mouth of Madness or Demons but I don't think Cronenberg is only doing that here. Videodrome is created by conservative forces who think such content is corrupting and weakening the population but they think nothing of making actual snuff films for their own ends and then depend on a subliminal signal to have an effect on people. You could argue that's as much a comment that moral panics about fiction pale in comparison next to the reality of the evil the establishment is willing and able to carry out.

 

[MusterX]

I think it's applicable but I won't go that far. I don't think media is nearly as powerful as some people thought it might be back in the day.
There is a big debate that goes beyond this thread about it. But my opinion mainly stands on the fact that I come from a place where we have been in the situation you guys are now (regarding media and political polarization... assuming you are from the US) about 12/13 years ago and we came out of that. The result is a completely discredited media that less and less people take seriously.

But the part when they say that virtual reality is going to be the only reality makes a lot of sense when thinking about social media. But there is a difference there: In social media we create our own reality/content (more or less, since a lot of imposed by trends) and in Videodrome the reality is imposed to the people.

I've always avoided the rabbitholes about shocking videos (torture, muders, etc) but I remember those being more present when I was a teenager (about 17 years ago). Maybe is the fucked up people I grew up with (might be) or the nature of teenagers, but I haven't been introduced to that kind of stuff as an adult and don't know anyone who is into watching that. Is that just me?
BTW.. not denying that there are people who are into that but I've never felt it reached mainstream status despite being easily available.

When I said "media", I didn't mean news, I meant information media, data, all the things you look at on that phone that's in your pocket. I'm sure its difficult for young people to envision this, not necesarily you, but I grew up in a time NOT dominated by media, and it wasn't very long ago. The information age has fundamentally transformed humanity and if you were born into it then you don't know any different, its hard to try to imagine what that was like.

My point was that the idea of transforming reality with media has already happened, its happening now. When I was a kid there wasn't even cable T.V., now everyone has a smartphone in their hand 24 hours a day. We have been transformed, especially in our behaviors, as it pertains to the explosion of technology and not just a little, radically. I guess what I'm saying is, I see the transformation in a much different way than someone born in say, 1990.