Videodrome (1983)

Max Renn runs a TV channel, and when looking for new material to show--he discovers "Videodrome." His girlfriend, Nicki Brand, goes to audition for the show, and Max gets drawn into the underlying plot that uses the show as its front for a global conspiracy.

Videodrome is a 1983 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg, starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Deborah Harry.  David Cronenberg has given us lots of films that range from the bizarre to the slightly less bizarre to the stupefying.  This movie was Cronenberg's first masterpiece in my opinion.  The film was Cronenberg's vision of our relationship with TV and manages to repulse and intrigue simultaneously.

DO NOT change that dial

Just about everything works with this film.  The acting, even by Debbie Harry in her first starring role, is excellent. James Woods, in particular, excels.  He really does a great job becoming the sleezy Renn.
Woods disbelief graduating into terror graduating into acceptance is the rock upon which Videodrome rests.  The set pieces are good and the special effects are pretty damn awesome for 1983.  Music is another key element at work.  The score by Howard Shore swells up during the film's most intense and surreal moments, the best is during Woods's lovemaking with his television.  Yeah you read that last line correctly.

Hey dude....I got a great videotape for you to watch.

Let's bounce back to Miss Harry and her role for just a second.  Her character is into some weird sexual shit.  She enjoys cutting herself for pleasure and having her lover stick things through her earlobes while banging.  Oh and for fun she burns her chest with a lit cigarette. The character has a smaller role in the film but as you can see, it's memorable. No heart of glass with her.  The tide is not high here son.  Ok...they're super weak Blondie jokes but I had to throw it in.

When you bang a chick and she starts burning her chest with cigarettes....it's time to punt son.

Videodrome is a movie that was ahead of its time.  The innovative mix of science fiction, sex, violence, surrealism and horror has lost none of its punch over the years.  I'm limited from going into much detail on the plot and events as the spoilers could ruin the film should you decide to watch it.  It's a good little film to check out.  Long live the new flesh.

Trivia:

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.

Among the scenes that were scripted but deleted was one where Max Renn's TV rises up out of his bathtub, while showing an image. The crew had researched how to do this - there had been talk of having the actor IN the tub - and had come up with several solutions. One involved filling the tub with a clear fluid that was non conductive, but that would have cost $25 a quart. The crew eventually decided to take a real TV and simply cover its insides with layers of waterproofing insulation. It worked - they dunked the TV into a swimming pool and found, to their astonishment, that TVs float due to the ultra-high vacuum inside the picture tube. The scene was axed just before it was to be filmed.

During filming of the Cathode Ray mission sequence, the film's gaffer, Jock Brandis, walked in and casually informed the crew that the power lines to the building were smoking because of the load imposed on them by the TV sets.

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

See what happens when you watch too much television. 

Andy Warhol called the movie "A Clockwork Orange of the 1980s".

The character of Brian O'Blivion is based on Marshall McLuhan. David Cronenberg was a student of McLuhan's during college. 

The TV station "Civic TV" is patterned after City TV, an actual television station which started out in Toronto and was particularly infamous for showing soft-core sex films as part of its late night programming schedule. At one point in the film, one of Max Renn's partners is called "Moses" which is a reference to City TV founder Moses Znaimer.

 One of five Sci-Fi/Horror movies that were heavily promoted by Universal Pictures prior to their impending releases in 1982 and given prospective release dates. The others were: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Thing (both set release dates for that summer), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (October), The Dark Crystal and Videodrome (December). This ultimately changed when Universal pushed back the film from its original slated release date to February 1983.

Let me get this out for you. Just a second.

An epilogue was planned but never filmed. In it, Max Renn, Bianca O'Blivion and Nicki Brand appear on the set of Videodrome. Bianca and Nicki are shown to have chest slits (vaginas) of their own, from which emerge strange mutated sex organs. The scene was scrapped along with many others due to cost overruns, bad timing (Deborah Harry had stomach flu and James Woods was visiting relatives), and the sheer difficulty of executing such a special-effects scene. A number of other ambitious special effects sequences were also dropped.

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.

The chest-slit sequences had James Woods built into a couch with the chest-slit apparatus glued onto him. Woods swore he would never work with anything that had to be glued onto him ever again! During filming the sequences with the flesh-gun (which "fired" bursts of cold, vaporous gas), Woods played a prank on director David Cronenberg by smearing his (real) hand with blue paint and pretending he had frostbite.

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

Woods gives new meaning to the term " Giving Head"