Videodrome

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Not to be confused with the rock band Videodrone.
Videodrome
Directed by David Cronenberg
Produced by Claude Héroux
Written by David Cronenberg
Starring James Woods
Deborah Harry
Sonja Smits
Peter Dvorsky
Leslie Carlson
Jack Creley
Music by Howard Shore
Cinematography Mark Irwin
Editing by Ronald Sanders
Distributed by Universal Studios
Release date(s) February 4, 1983 (USA)
Running time 89 min.
Country Flag of Canada Canada
Language English
Budget $5,952,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $2,120,439 (USA)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Videodrome is a 1983 sci-fi horror film directed by David Cronenberg.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Videodrome begins with the daily routine of Max Renn (James Woods), president of CIVIC-TV (Channel 83, Cable 12), a sleazy Toronto UHF television station, on his endless search for new material with which to titillate his viewers. CIVIC-TV's pirate satellite dish receives transmissions of the sadistic, plotless program Videodrome that depicts only torture and murder in a bright orange room: snuff TV. He encounters Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley) (a Marshall McLuhan parody) on a chat show, who communicates only through video recordings of himself. Renn asks his techie employee-colleague to learn more about Videodrome, and is told that O'Blivion is behind the program. He visits the "Cathode Ray Mission", run by O'Blivion, and meets Bianca O'Blivion, the Professor's daughter, who tells him that her father died eleven months earlier.

Later, Max receives a videotape, sent him by O'Blivion, warning of a fascist socio-political force called "Videodrome". Afterwards, Max slowly grasps that he has begun hallucinating graphically violent and metamorphic acts showing the malleability of the human flesh. Bianca O'Blivion tells him the hallucinations are the intended side-effect of the Videodrome signal, which is maliciously provoking brain tumours in the viewer. Alone later, Renn sees his belly metamorphose and develop a wound. His lover, radio psychotherapist Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry), a sado-masochist prone to self-mutilation, appears in his recurring visions of the Videodrome room. She disappeared after going to search for the whereabouts of the Videodrome locale in order to audition for a role on the show.

The producer of Videodrome, businessman Barry Convex, of the Spectacular Optical corporation calls on Max Renn. He asks Max to put on and wear a helmet that records one of his hallucinations. As the story is told entirely from Renn's point of view, reality and hallucination merge, becoming indistinguishable. Later, Convex and his partner Harlan tell Renn that, by inserting the Videodrome signal in violent television programs, they are morally purifying North America so that it can survive the tough times ahead. Renn's abdominal wound video tape cassettes become amorphous. Under the influence of his violent programming, Max takes out a gun from his abdominal video cassette slot that metamorphoses with his hand. He goes to the CIVIC-TV offices and shoots his business partners. Bianca O'Blivion then reprograms him to betray and destroy Spectacular Optical. When Harlan attempts inserting another tumourous video cassette into him, Max fuses a grenade to Harlan's hand, which explodes and kills him. He then shoots and kills Barry Convex during a [[trade show]], causing Videodrome tumors to erupt from his head and torso, and shouts Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh! to the audience of businessmen and women.

Afterwards, Renn takes refuge on a derelict boat in an abandoned harbor, where Nicki appears to him on television. She tells him he has weakened Videodrome, but that in order to completely defeat them, he has to leave the old flesh. He then sees a TV set showing an image of himself pointing his handgun to his head, saying Long live the New Flesh. His on-screen image shoots itself and the TV set explodes, spraying human intestines on the deck. Max Renn then imitates and repeats the action he has just watched, squeezes the trigger; the screen goes blank.

[edit] Cult film status

Videodrome's cult film status has made it a popular source for sampling and homage in industrial and heavy metal music. It ranks tenth on the Top 1319 Sample Sources list [1] and has been sampled in at least 32 individual songs.

  • Apoptygma Berzerk used "It was only 26 hours ago in the building you see behind me..." from Videodrome on the track "Our Souls Will Remain" from their 1992 single "The 2nd Manifesto".
  • EMF used "Long live the new flesh..." in studio and live versions of "Children" from its debut LP, Schubert Dip.
  • Skinny Puppy used "You'll forgive me if I don't stay around to watch... . I just can't cope with freaky stuff" as an ominous intro for "Draining Faces", on 1987's Cleanse Fold and Manipulate.
  • Cyberaktif (a Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly side project) used "See you in Pittsburgh" at the end of the song "Face to Face" off the 1990 album Tenebrae Vision.
  • Techno band Messiah samples several lines from the film in their 1991 song "You're Going Insane".
  • The most prominently quoted line, "Long live the new flesh," was used as the chorus for the Wiseblood song "0-0 (Where Evils Dwells)", later covered by Fear Factory.
  • The metal group Strapping Young Lad has a song titled "All Hail the New Flesh" on their album City, released in 1997.
  • The Belgian EBM band Front 242 used a number of samples from Videodrome in their album Official Version. For example, Barry Convex's line at the SpecOps trade show, "You know me, and I sure know you. Every one of you!" is sampled as the intro to "Masterhit", and the word "television", off O'Blivion's first speech in the movie, can be heard at the end of "Television Station".
  • The band Big Audio Dynamite used Barry Convex's line, "I hope you realize you're playing with dynamite", as an intro to their song "C'mon Every Beatbox", referring to the movie as well as their own band name.
  • The industrial music band Hardwire uses a piece from Professor O'Blivion's interview speech as the intro to their song "Reformat", from the Master-Control album. The lyrics of the song itself also reflect upon the film.
  • The song "Sexual Orientation", along with at least three Emergency Broadcast Network productions, consists mostly of sound effects and quotes from the movie.
  • The industrial group My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult used a direct sample of "Death to the Videodrome" followed up by a sung "Long live the new flesh" in their song "After the Flesh", which was featured in the movie The Crow.
  • The experimental electronic musician Jack Dangers has used numerous samples from the film, namely on the Meat Beat Manifesto album Satyricon.
  • The 1996 Acid Techno track entitled "Reality" by Andrei Morant samples the character Brian O'Blivion's philosophical riddle: "There is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?"
  • The Post-punk band Flesh For Lulu named one of their albums Long Live the New Flesh.
  • On the debut album Appetizer (1994) from the Swedish hard rock band Freak Kitchen there are two songs inspired by the movie, "See You in Pittsburgh" and "The New Part".
  • The metal band Videodrone takes its name from the film.
  • Baltimore-based noise rock band the New Flesh takes their name from the film.
  • The song "Niky Braun" by French power electronics project Propergol mostly consists of samples from Videodrome.
  • In Sundsvall, Sweden there is a film store named Videodrome: Cult Film Import. It specializes in alternative film and rare videotapes. Collectors can go there to find films no longer available elsewhere (including out of print x-rated features).
  • Videodrome is also the name of an independent video rental store in Atlanta, Georgia specializing in many hard to find foreign, cult, and anime features.
  • Japanese film director Hideo Nakata has said that the scene of the malicious ghost Sadako coming out of the television in the film Ringu was inspired by Videodrome.
  • Long Island post-hardcore band Disarming Arctica wrote their song "Motives" completely around the concept of the film Videodrome. References are made in the lyrics including "Long live the new flesh" and "First it controlled her mind, then it destroyed her body".
  • The music to the first level of Tempest 2000 used the line "Television is the retina of the mind's eye".
  • Industrial metal band Whorgasm, on their album Smothered, samples the lines "It's just torture and murder", "No plot, no characters; just very, very realistic", and "I think it's what's next".
  • Electronic composer Esther Venrooy used bits of dialogue from Max's wake-up call in the beginning of the film in the track "pitch :: pine" on her album Hout.
  • Reanimator samples various dialogue from the movie in two of his songs ("Socially Positive (Man)" and "Socially Responsible (Reprise)") on his album Music to Slit Wrists By.
  • Videodrome Hands is a painting by artist Mike Retter, who uses the "look" of video and television in his paintings.
  • Dutch EBM band Grendel's 2007 release Harsh Generation contains a track named "New Flesh" which features samples from the film.
  • The Industrial group Nine Inch Nails featured a song entitled "The New Flesh" on the vinyl edition of the 1999 album The Fragile.

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Civic TV refers to a real Canadian television station, CityTV, notorious for broadcasting soft-core pornography among its programming.
  • Betamax videotape cassettes were used because VHS videotape cassettes were too large to fit the faux abdominal wound.[citation needed]
  • Videodrome pioneered the flicker-eliminating technology used to film a television screen's images; before, film images were superimposed onto blank television screens.
  • The pornographic video Samurai Dreams, of which only five seconds are seen in the film story, was made specifically for the film. The five-minute film is in the Criterion Collection DVD edition of Videodrome.
  • The Videodrome murder-torture-mutilation video is eleven minutes long. After the film's release, men claiming to be the actresses' boyfriends asked producers for copies of the unedited footage; seven minutes of Videodrome footage is in the Criterion Collection DVD.
  • The name "Max Renn" is based on the motorcycle brand Renmax; "Nicki Brand" is a pun on "nick" (to cut) and "brand" (to burn), describing her self-inflicted sexual wounds; "Barry Convex" refers to a convex lens; "Brian O'Blivion" refers to brain oblivion.
  • While the Cathode Ray mission sequence was being filmed, gaffer Jock Brandis told the film crew that the building's power lines were smoking, because of the power overload imposed on them by the TV sets.
  • The concept of brain tumor-inducing television programs is an urban legend dating to the 1940s; people believed television signals caused brain tumors. Canadian rumours of mind-controlling television from right-wing extremists in the United States also inspired the story.
  • Marshall McLuhan, the communications theorist on whom Prof. Brian O'Blivion is based, had a benign brain tumor. Author Philip Marchand, in his McLuhan biography, The Medium and the Messenger (1989), states it was a meningioma. He quotes a McLuhan associate describing the tumor: "as big as a tennis ball" that caused McLuhan fainting and seizures. Doctors warned that blindness and insanity would result if the tumor went unremoved. Despite initial resistance, McLuhan underwent seventeen hours of brain surgery in November of 1967; per surgeon Dr Lester Mount, it was the longest neurosurgical operation in American medicine to that time.[citation needed]
  • Barry Convex's exploding body innards were a plateful of General Tso's Chinese chicken.
  • In the Family Guy episode "Peter's Got Woods", James Woods keeps insisting on showing Videodrome to Peter Griffin; when he asks about the nudity in the film, Woods proudly notes that he shows his buttocks, while not mentioning Deborah Harry's nudity.
  • Alternate titles were Network of Blood and Zonekiller.
  • The film scored fourth as Bravo TV's "30 Even Scarier Movie Moments".
  • Most of Videodrome's major characters (Friday James, Nikki Brand, Brian O'Blivion, and Barry Convex) first appear in a television screen.
  • Brian O'Blivion is named after a Frank Zappa song.[citation needed]
  • Selected as one to the 23 Weirdest Films of All Time by Total Film.[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Films by David Cronenberg