Videodrome is a 1983 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Debbie Harry. Set in Toronto during the early 1980s, it follows the CEO of a small UHF television station who stumbles upon a broadcast signal of snuff films. Layers of deception and mind-control conspiracy unfold as he attempts to uncover the signal's source, complicated by increasingly intense hallucinations that cause him to lose his grip on reality.

Distributed by Universal Pictures, Videodrome was the first film by Cronenberg to gain backing from any major Hollywood studio. With the highest budget of any of his films at the time, the film was a box-office failure, recouping only $2.1 million from a $5.9 million budget. The film received praise for the special makeup effects, Cronenberg's direction, Woods and Harry's performances, its "techno-surrealist" aesthetic, and its cryptic, psychosexual themes. Cronenberg won the Best Direction award and was nominated for seven other awards at the 5th Genie Awards.

Now considered a cult classic, the film has been cited as one of Cronenberg's best, and a key example of the body horror and science fiction horror genres.

thumb|The film's trailer

Plot

Max Renn is the president of CIVIC-TV, a Toronto UHF television station specializing in sensationalist programming. Harlan, the operator of CIVIC-TV's unauthorized satellite dish, shows Max Videodrome, a plotless show purportedly broadcast from Malaysia depicting victims being violently tortured and eventually murdered. Believing this to be the future of television, Max orders Harlan to begin recording the Videodrome broadcasts.

Nicki Brand, a sadomasochistic radio host who becomes sexually involved with Max, is aroused by an episode of Videodrome. As Cronenberg explained, "I've always been interested in dark things and other people's fascinations with dark things. Plus, the idea of people locking themselves in a room and turning a key on a television set so that they can watch something extremely dark, and by doing that, allowing themselves to explore their fascinations." Cronenberg watched Marshall McLuhan, on whom O'Blivion was based, and McLuhan later taught at the University of Toronto while Cronenberg was a student there, although he never took any of McLuhan's classes.

Cronenberg's first exploration of themes of the branding of sex and violence and media impacting people's reality was writing a treatment titled Network of Blood in the early 1970s; its premise was a worker for an independent television company (who would become Max Renn in Videodrome) unintentionally finding, in the filmmaker's words, "a private television network subscribed to by strange, wealthy people who were willing to pay to see bizarre things." He later planned the story to be told from the main character's first-person perspective, showcasing a duality between how insane he looks to other people and how he himself perceives a different reality in his head. Concepts similar to Network of Bloods were further explored in a 1977 episode of the CBC Television series Peep Show Cronenberg directed, named "The Victim." The film's fictional station CIVIC-TV was modeled on the real-life Toronto television station CITY-TV, which was known for broadcasting pornographic content and violent films in its late-night programming bloc The Baby Blue Movie.

Victor Snolicki, Dick Schouten, and Pierre David of Vision 4, a company taking advantage of Canada's tax shelter policies, aided Cronenberg in the film's financing. Vision 4 dissolved after Schouten's death and reorganized into Filmplan International which funded Scanners. Solnicki, David, and Claude Héroux formed Filmplan II which gave financial backing to Videodrome. This was the last film Cronenberg made under Canada's film tax shelter policy.

Cronenberg's increased reputation made it easier for his projects to get produced, leading to the film's $5.5 million budget, more interest from studios and producers, and a larger number of interested actors to choose from. After the box office success of Scanners, Cronenberg turned down the chance of directing Return of the Jedi, having had no desire to direct material produced by other filmmakers. Cronenberg met with David in Montreal to discuss ideas for a new film, with the former pitching two ideas, one of them being Videodrome. Although talent for the film was attracted using the first draft, alterations were made constantly from pre-production to post-production.

Accumulation of the cast and crew started in the summer of 1981 in Toronto, with most of the supporting actors being local performers of the city. Videodromes three producers, David, Claude Héroux and Victor Solnicki, suggested James Woods for the role of Max Renn; they unsuccessfully tried to attach him to another film they produced, Models (1982). Woods was a fan of Rabid (1977) and Scanners, and met Cronenberg in Beverly Hills for the part; Cronenberg liked the fact that Woods was very articulate in terms of delivery,

Filming

The film was shot in Toronto from October 27 to December 23, 1981, on a budget of $5,952,000 (), with the financing equally coming from Canada and the United States. 50% of the film's budget came from Universal. The initial week of filming was devoted to videotaping various monitor inserts. These included the television monologues of Professor Brian O'Blivion, as well as the Videodrome torture scenes and the soft-core pornographic programs Samurai Dreams and Apollo & Dionysus. The video camera used for the monitor scenes was a Hitachi SK-91. The film's cinematography was handled by Mark Irwin, who was very uncomfortable with doing the monitor scenes; he was far more experienced with composing shots for regular film cameras than videotapes, disliked the flat television standards of lighting and color, and couldn't compose his shots privately as all of the film crew watched the monitors as the shots were being set up. Cronenberg stated that Videodrome was the first time that he fired a crew worker due to an incident between a hairdresser and Harry.

The Samurai Dreams short was filmed in half a day without any audio recorded at a rented spot at a Global TV studio in Toronto, and lasted five minutes longer than what ended up in the final film.

Three different endings were filmed. The ending used in the final film, wherein Max shoots himself on the derelict ship, was James Woods' idea. One of the initial intentions for the ending was to include an epilogue after the suicide, wherein Max, Bianca, and Nicki appear on the set of Videodrome. Bianca and Nicki are shown to have chest slits like Max, from which grotesque, mutated sex organs emerge. Woods found the stomach slit uncomfortable,

Music

An original score was composed for Videodrome by Cronenberg's close friend, Howard Shore. The score was composed to follow Max Renn's descent into video hallucinations, starting out with dramatic orchestral music that increasingly incorporates, and eventually emphasizes, electronic instrumentation. To achieve this, Shore composed the entire score for an orchestra before programming it into a Synclavier II digital synthesizer. The rendered score, taken from the Synclavier II, was then recorded being played in tandem with a small string section. The resulting sound was a subtle blend that often made it difficult to tell which sounds were real and which were synthesized.

The soundtrack was also released on vinyl by Varèse Sarabande, and was re-released on compact disc in 1998. The album itself is not just a straight copy of Shore's score, but a remix. Shore has commented that while there were small issues with some of the acoustic numbers, "on the whole I think they did very well".

Writing for film journal, Screening the Box, Olga Thierbach-McLean notes that the titular Videodrome is reflective of the exponential growth of cable television in mid 1970s and 1980s and the resulting cultural upheaval. Furthermore the film's central conflict over the control of Videodrome is heavily tied to the tension between public advancement and accumulation of private wealth in the expanding television industry.

Other scholars have focused on the film's themes surrounding sexuality, and pornography in particular. In Canadian Journal of Social and Political Theory, Bart Testa ties the production and control of erotic media to power, arguing that Max, as a distributor of pornographic media, begins the film as, "...the exacting consumer, the capitalized collector and especially... the discerning eye of videoporn...". However, as the plot progresses and he is influenced by Videodrome, " Max's position is flipped over, reversed and, in that reversal Max's mastery is transformed into a viciously imaged victimhood."

Release

David was able to get Universal Pictures to finance and distribute the film based "on a one-page description," according to Cronenberg. Videodrome was distributed by Universal Pictures in Canada and the United States, and by Les Films Mutuels in Quebec. It was released in six hundred theatres on February 4, 1983.

Cronenberg stated that Sidney Sheinberg regretted giving the film a wide theatrical release rather than treating it as an art film. Around 900 prints of the film were distributed according to Cronenberg, and the film was only in theaters for a short amount of time. Cronenberg stated that Videodrome "wasn't an exploitation sell, and it wasn't an art sell. I don't know what it was."

Reception

The film holds a aggregate rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average score of . Its consensus states, "Visually audacious, disorienting, and just plain weird, Videodrome musings on technology, entertainment, and politics still feel fresh today." It has been described as a "disturbing techno-surrealist film" Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D+" on an A+ to F scale.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked on the film's "innovativeness", and praised Woods' performance as having a "sharply authentic edge". Adam Smith of Empire gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "perfect example" of body horror. The staff of Variety wrote that the film "proves more fascinating than distancing", and commended the "stunning visual effects". Gary Arnold of The Washington Post gave the film a negative review, calling it "simultaneously stupefying and boring".

Trace Thurman of Bloody Disgusting listed it as one of eight "horror movies that were ahead of their time". It was selected as one of the "23 weirdest films of all time" by Total Film. Nick Schager of Esquire ranked the film at number 10 of "the 50 best horror movies of the 1980s". The BFI lists it at joint 243rd place in the greatest films of all time.

Awards

The film won a number of awards upon its release. At the 1984 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film, it tied with Bloodbath at the House of Death for Best Science-Fiction Film, and Mark Irwin received a CSC Award for Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature. Videodrome was also nominated for eight Genie Awards, with David Cronenberg tying Bob Clark's A Christmas Story for Best Achievement in Direction.

It was the first Genie Award that Cronenberg won.

Videodrome was named the 89th-most-essential film in history by the Toronto International Film Festival.

Home media

Videodrome was released on VHS and DVD in the late 1990s by Universal Studios Home Entertainment, who also released the film on LaserDisc.

The film was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection on August 31, 2004, and their Blu-ray edition was released on December 7, 2010. The Criterion Blu-ray features two commentary tracks, one with Cronenberg and cinematographer Mark Irwin, and the other with actors James Woods and Deborah Harry. Among the other special features are a documentary titled Forging the New Flesh; the soft-core video Samurai Dreams; the 2000 short film Camera; three trailers for Videodrome; and Fear on Film, which consists of an interview with Cronenberg, John Carpenter and John Landis, hosted by Mick Garris.

In 2015, Arrow Films released the film on Blu-ray in Region B with further special features, including Cronenberg's short films Transfer (1966) and From the Drain (1967), as well as his feature films Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). Cronenberg reportedly invited Etchison up to Toronto, where they discussed and clarified the story, allowing the novel to remain as close as possible to the actions in the film. There are some differences, however, such as the inclusion of the "bathtub sequence", a scene never filmed in which a television rises from Max Renn's bathtub like in Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. This was the result of the lead time required to write the book, which left Etchison working with an earlier draft of the script than was used in the film.

See also

  • List of cult films
  • Pirate television
  • Snuff film

References

Works cited

  • Lucas, Tim. Studies in the Horror Film - Videodrome. Lakewood, CO: Centipede Press, 2008. .
  • Videodrome review (archived) at InternalBleeding
  • Videodrome: The Slithery Sense of Unreality an essay by Gary Indiana at the Criterion Collection
  • understanding media - Videodrome, a list of academic texts about the film