Videodrome (Canada: David Cronenberg, 1983)

 

When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry in one of her first film roles, Videodrome is one of writer/director David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. With groundbreaking special effects makeup by Academy Award®-winner Rick Baker, Videodrome has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and mind-bending science fiction films of the 1980s. - The Criterion Collection

Following the respectable box-office of the disreputable Scanners (1981), David Cronenberg secured $6 million for his next venture (almost double his previous budget), plus major studio backing and access to A-list stars. Lead by a typically skeezy James Woods, with support from an atypically dark-haired Debbie Harry, the body-horror pioneer’s eighth feature sees a cable TV station head stumble across a pirate transmission of an ultra-violent snuff show while hunting down new content for his X-rated channel. Bigger budgets often come with bigger expectations and thus bigger risks, but Cronenberg’s refusal to dilute his vision for mainstream palatability resulted in his most ambitious film yet. Further exploring the synergy between the physical, psychological and technological central to his 1970s work, while anticipating the eroticised technophilia of Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), Videodrome is Cronenberg at his most deliciously Cronenbergian. – Michael Blyth

Videodrome (Canada: David Cronenberg, 1983: 87 mins)

Aldouby, Hava. "Virtual Reality Turns Biological: The Case of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ." Making Reality Really Real. Ed. Roy Ascott, et al. Trondheim: 2010: 18-21.

Allinson, Ashley. "Great Directors: David Cronenberg." Senses of Cinema #22 (October 2002)

Bale, Miriam. "They Came From Within: Yonic symbolism in the films of David Cronenberg." Moving Image (January 20, 2012)

"David Cronenberg and Ron Sanders on Videodrome: Selected Bibliography." Higher Learning (September 24, 2010)

Flores, Steven. "The Auteurs: David Cronenberg (Part 1)." Cinema Axis (October 28, 2013)

---. "The Auteurs: David Cronenberg (Part 2)." Cinema Axis (October 30, 2013)

Ford, Phil and J.F. Martel. "Long Live the New Flesh: On David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome.'" Weird Studies #157 (November 8, 2023) [""Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!" It was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the film at Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington, JF and Phil set out to interpret Cronenberg's vision... and come to dig the New Flesh."]

Glasby, Matt and Mike Muncer. "Mind and Body Pt. 10: Videodrome."  The Evolution of Horror (2021)

Indiana, Gary. "Videodrome: The Slithery Sense of Unreality." The Current (December 7, 2010)

Johnson, Annica. "Videodrome: 'I just can’t handle the freaky stuff.'" Letterboxd (September 25, 2023)

Lattimer, James. "Evolving Mantras and Restricted Vocabularies." The Notebook (February 23, 2015)

Lucas, Tim. "Medium Cruel: Reflections on Videodrome." The Current (December 7, 2010)

McCormack, Tim. "Laws of Desire: What did David Cronenberg's Videodrome get right about us?" Moving Image (January 26, 2012)

"The Movie Videodrome and the Horror of Mass Media." Vigilant Citizen (August 29, 2012)

Rickey, Carrie. "Videodrome: Make Mine Cronenberg." Current (December 7, 2010)

Sperb, Jason. "Scarring the New Flesh: Time Passing in the Simulacrum of Videodrome." InTheory #3 (February 2006)





In the final scene of Videodrome, the television set explodes and burns, but this is only part of a repetitive video loop in which Max is trapped. He shoots himself after seeing himself shoot himself on TV. The quasi-religious doctrine of ‘the new flesh’ pushes Max to a limit, but holds out no promises as to what he will encounter on the other side. The film ends with the sound of his gunshot—perhaps a finality, or perhaps a rewind to one more playback. — Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (University of Minnesota Press, 1993: 142)

 The Post-Punk Cinema Manifesto - Side A from Scout Tafoya on Vimeo.


 The Post-Punk Cinema Manifesto - Side B from Scout Tafoya on Vimeo.