13 Nights of Shocktober: Videodrome

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and, October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

 

Night 10: Long Live the New Flesh: Videodrome

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome was released in 1983 and despite the major presence of VCR’s, Betamax tapes, and cathode ray tube television sets, this movie does not feel dated; if anything, it only feels even more relevant to 21^st century media based culture. James Woods gives a great performance as Max Renn, a sleazy television programmer for a low budget station that specializes in soft core pornography and violence. But Max is on the search for something beyond edgy for his channel; something hard, something visceral. He is shown a program called Videodrome that depicts people being tortured and murdered. He asks who these people are, what’s the plot? He is told there is no plot, it just goes on like that. In 1983 the idea of a television show with no story, or plot, or actors was incomprehensible.

As Max investigates the source of Videodrome, what unfolds is a type of horror noir story in which Max uncovers and becomes involved in a conspiracy far more complex and more sinister than a rogue snuff television program. The finer details of the conspiracy are hard to pin down, but that is not a fault against Cronenberg. His intricate story works successfully because it not only holds up to scrutiny but, more importantly, does not interfere with our experience of Max’s journey.

Nearly every visual effect in Videodrome still looks amazing. Max experiences vivid hallucinations; his mind has been invaded by the Videodrome signal and it mutates his body. A slit opens up his stomach to make it an entry for pulsating video cassettes. His sexually adventurous girlfriend Nicki, played by Deborah Harry, is so fascinated and turned on by Videodrome that she wants to audition to be on the show. It is her image that appears on the television screen to Max as the TV set pulsates and seems to breathe. The scene ends and Max wakes up, but there is no sense that he was dreaming. What Max sees on television and the mutations of his body appear and disappear; he is unsure of reality not because he is losing his mind but because reality is changing. 

Max encounters a media philosopher/prophet called Brain O’blivion. (based loosely on the philosopher of communication and media theory Marshall McLuhan). O’blivion believes that there will come a time when television replaces everyday life; the tool to achieve this is Videodrome. His daughter, Bianca O’blivion, has taken her father’s mission and philosophy a step further, attempting to bring about an age in which we exist beyond our bodies in “the new flesh.” Living in an age in which some aspect of almost everyone’s life exists on the intangible Internet makes the ideas behind Videodrome prophetic, creepy, and intriguing.

 

Videodrome will play at the Austin Film Society's Marchesa Theater on Halloween Night: Thursday, October 31st at 10PM.