Review: Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome (1983)

Rated R

Score: 4 out of 5

Videodrome, David Cronenberg's first "mainstream" film made with the backing of a Hollywood studio, is a film that was years ahead of its time in many ways, especially given how it initially bombed at the box office. It was "analog horror" that's actually from the era that a lot of modern examples of that style are hearkening back to. It was a horror version of Network, a satire of where television's pursuit of the lowest common denominator was headed that's only become more relevant since then, especially with how its vision applies even better to the internet and what it became. It's an archetypal "Cronenbergian" body horror flick in which terrible, grotesque things happen to people's flesh beyond just getting torn apart with sharp objects. It's a film with a lot to say that knows how to say it, and while it can be uneven in a few spots, its vision of where communications technology was taking us not only stands the test of time but feels like an outright prophecy. It's a dark, grim, and messed-up little movie, and one that's genuinely intelligent and biting on top of it, one that I think deserves to be seen at least once whether you're into graphic horror movies or want something more intellectually stimulating.

We start the film introduced to Max Renn, the president of Civic-TV, a UHF station in Toronto on channel 83 whose programming is characterized by "softcore pornography and hardcore violence" as a talk show host interviewing him calls it. (It was based on the Canadian network Citytv, which in the '80s actually was famous for broadcasting softcore porn late at night like an over-the-air version of Skinemax. The rules in Canada are... different.) Searching for more fucked-up content to show, he and Harlan, the operator of Civic-TV's pirate satellite dish, stumble upon a pirate television signal coming out of Pittsburgh that broadcasts nothing but sex and violence, specifically plotless sequences of people being brutally tortured to death. Seeing something trashy enough for his tastes, Max looks into these broadcasts further, only to start having vivid, terrible hallucinations of horrible things happening. His journey leads him to a kinky radio host named Nicki Brand who he strikes up a relationship with, an eccentric professor/preacher who calls himself Brian O'Blivion who has Thoughts about where television is headed, and a conspiracy to shape the future of humanity.

This film having been made in 1983, it was talking chiefly about the awful, awesome power and potential of television, but the medium it predicted better than any other was the internet. We all remember the first time we saw 2 Girls 1 Cup, an ISIS or cartel execution video, livestreamed footage of mass shootings, or other online videos that went viral specifically because they were some of the most depraved shit imaginable. In the late 2000s and early '10s especially, before the rise of centralized online video and streaming platforms with strict content standards and no time for terrorist propaganda, there was a real sense that the internet was a bold frontier of daring new media and raw, uncensored reality that could never be shown on TV or even in cinemas. It produced a culture that proclaimed that all the old, outdated laws and morals governing humanity needed to be swept away so we could reshape our world in the image of the new medium of the internet, the apotheosis of the hacker and cyberpunk movements of the '90s that gave Silicon Valley its ideological core. Looking back, I have very little nice to say about this culture and what it's actually given us, a far cry from the utopian promises and dreams it loudly proclaimed. The world that the internet created is one in which antisocial behavior is elevated and celebrated, and those who reject it are scorned with various epithets: pussy, normie, cuck, libtard.

If I'm being perfectly honest (and without spoiling anything), I can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the villains here and what they seek to accomplish, as brutal and monstrous as it is. Brian O'Blivion, in light of what's actually happening, comes across like an '80s TV version of the various tech evangelists who, over the course of the 2010s, saw their faith in the positive power of computer technology and the internet crumble as they witnessed the creation they'd proclaimed would lead us into a new golden age instead feed our darkest impulses. He prepared himself for an age where his work revolutionized humanity, to the point of changing his name (eerily echoing the rise of gamertags, avatars, and pseudonymity online in the years to come), only to watch it get hijacked by people with a very different vision for the "brave new world" this work could be used to create that he'd never considered until it was too late. And when the villains explain their evil plan, I couldn't help but be reminded of a famous climatic speech in the video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which was explicitly talking about the internet in a way that suggested its director and lead designer Hideo Kojima understood human psychology better than anybody in Silicon Valley. Without spoiling anything, the villains are a group of people so disgusted by the state of the modern world and television's role in this cultural rot that they decided to do something about it, and came up with a rather sick but admittedly creative way of doing so. And here, too, the idea of stumbling upon some forbidden pirate broadcast via your satellite dish that could come back and cause you physical harm is an idea that's been reborn in this day and age with the many urban legends that exist about the dark web, where you can allegedly stumble upon snuff films and then find yourself targeted by their creators. This is a film that you could easily remake today, with Max now a streamer, Civic-TV swapped for a YouTube or Twitch parody, and the "Videodrome" broadcast turned into something from the dark web, and you'd barely have to change anything else.

It helps that this film is expertly told, too. Max's descent into madness, witnessing his body develop strange growths and orifices that may or may not be hallucinations, is conveyed wonderfully by James Woods, who starts the film playing Max as a sleazeball yuppie who ruthlessly pursues the lowest common denominator only to start crumbling mentally and physically as Videodrome slowly but surely claims him and does its work on him. Cronenberg, filming in his native Toronto stomping grounds, gives them a measure of grit and bustle that contrasts nicely with the electronic madness that Max descends into, and once the really weird shit starts happening, Rick Baker's special effects work will certainly make you cringe in disgust. There's a reason the word "Cronenbergian" has the associations it does, and this movie was mainstream audiences' introduction to why. Like a lot of mind-screw movies where you can't really tell what's real and what's in the protagonist's head, the plot does start testing the limits of the guardrails as it progresses towards its conclusion, and while it never flies completely off the rails, logical questions about what really happened and when do start to pile up as it goes on, without ever really being resolved. This is a film that's more about themes and visuals than about tight plotting, and I was left scratching my head at a few moments during the third act. (Even if it was gnarly to watch a man start turning inside out like his own guts and brain are trying to escape his body, all while he's audibly screaming in pain.)

The Bottom Line

This movie is an experience whose message is arguably more biting today than it was when it first came out forty years ago. It comes at the cost of narrative cohesion towards the end, but it's still a movie that I highly recommend. Long live the new flesh.