Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: David Cronenberg
Stars: James Woods, Debbie Harry, Sonja Smits
Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/35DAfwJ
Synopsis
Max Renn wakes up to a video call that reminds him about his mornings’ appointments. He goes to see a guy about a new show called “Samurai Dreams.” He says it’s too soft; he wants something tough that’ll make a name for his network.
He watches some kind of pirate snuff film, and he likes it, then tells his engineer to track it down. His network deals in porn, violence, and socially negative programming. He watches the pirate signal, called Videodrome, again, and watches the torture, murder, and mutilation, and he wants to know how they get actors to do that.
He meets Nicki, a radio phone-in psychiatrist. She watches the Videodrome tape, and she likes it. She likes the torture video, and she has cuts on her body to show that she really likes it. He pierces her ear in the middle of sex just for the fun of it.
The next morning, he gets an agent to hunt down the Videodrome producers. She says he should produce his own shows. Nikki plans to go to Pittsburg and audition for the Videodrome show. She thinks it’s a challenge. Max thinks it’s a very bad idea. She burns herself with a cigarette to prove she can take it.
Marsha the agent says Videodrome is not for public consumption; it’s dangerous and he should stay away from it. It’s more political than she can explain. It’s all for real, there’s no acting. It really is snuff TV.
Max goes looking for Professor Brian O’Blivion. He runs a homeless shelter that encourages TV watching- the Cathode Ray Mission. O’Blivion won’t speak directly to him, but does send a videotape. Max starts seeing things about this time, but he’s not usually prone to hallucinations. O’Blivion explains that “TV is reality, and reality is less than TV. Your reality is already half video hallucination.” Then O’Blivion is murdered on the tape, which triggers more hallucinations.
O’Blivion’s daughter says Videodrome is actually a signal, not a show. This signal creates a brian tumor in the viewer. Brian O’Blivion has been dead for nearly a year, but he left thousands of videotapes. Videodrome killed him. Max hallucinates pushing a gun inside an open belly wound, and then when he wakes up, he can’t find the gun. Things then get weirder and weirder, with a plot to take over the station. Will the ones behind all this completely brainwash Max to murder for them?
Commentary
It looks like the filmmakers were trying to cash in on the newfangled product called the VCR. I don’t remember there actually being a lot of fear concerning VCRs, unlike the rise of the home computer, but for a while, video was seen as a major world-changing event. Whether or not it actually changed the world is still up for debate.
There’s a lot here about the idea that what you see becomes your reality, and who can control reality, and becoming whatever you can envision. Oh, and you can blow stuff up with your mind if you really want to.