Videodrome

A solid wacky ride from the 1980s made by a madman, which plays homage to the VHS. That’s how I’d describe Videodrome in a nutshell. James Woods played his weirdo with so much passion that every time he goggled his eyes on the screen made me fear for my life, and every time some guts were spilled I felt incredible disgust. A solid horror movie in the vein of Carpenter’s The Thing, in comparable quality. (23/07/2019)

The film is interesting also because Deborah Harry appears in one of the main female roles here, perhaps better known as Debbie Harry, the lead singer of the band Blondie. And she looks good with dark hair too. Cronenberg succeeded with the film, it is a beautiful example of the influence media can have on us, how our brain connects with the images that are served to us daily, and we constantly want more and more and more. But we can never get enough. The final loop is proof of that. (22/11/2013)

Big disappointment. Unlike The Brood, for instance, Videodrome is not intense enough. Cronenberg keeps his feet incredibly close to the ground and we don’t get anything special from all the possibilities offered by the topic of hallucinations, which is utterly unexploited (yeah, the cassette in the belly is interesting, but can’t be called brutal, disgusting or shocking, as other users have written). Unlike David’s other films, this one keeps the viewer at arm’s length and never brings them into the story, which takes place only on screen instead of within the viewer. Totally depersonalised and neutral, this time for also the viewer. (22/04/2008)

The film is violent and detailed, but also unnecessarily brittle and superficial, applying basic Cronenbergian clichés to its inherently interesting and schematically rich idea. In its time it may have been strongly timeless physical horror thanks to its direct depiction of taboo scenes and their symbolically destructive effects on the human psyche, nowadays, however, it’s a rather outdated presentation of 80’s genre hype with zero effect on the slightly more jaded viewer, whose unreadable plot still doesn't lose its impact, but the untapped potential of the hallucinogenic and severely depressing subject matter is felt more and more noticeably. (14/07/2016)

*SPOILER ALERT* I could very well be wrong, but I don't think Videodrome has a classic mindfuck structure that makes a point in the end. The threads of reality and disreality here are not insidiously intertwined, as they usually are, but connected, though they do not form a whole. When all is said and done, Videodrome is indecipherable, and though that may also be a fault on my part, it is nonetheless a directorial concern. For just as the protagonist is convinced of the boundary between the television world and the real world, so the audience has an idea of the film's plot, which has, shall we say, certain rules they already know and consider unwavering. And yet the plot here is so atypical (the arrangement of the scenes alone is really weird) that the viewer gets into the same loop as the main character. Who is completely kindred to the viewer – once he is convinced of the hallucination, the viewer is too. The viewer doesn't know any more or have any room to think any differently than the main character, who shoots himself at the end (twice for good measure)... no wonder you leave the screening with a festive mess in your head. EDIT: we know the rules of what's happening on screen as well as the main character knows the rules of our reality. We accept whatever we put on. If the action gets surreal, we tend to explain it away. We can't help ourselves with Videodrome. The surrealism in this film is not an alienating element, but a encompassing one. Through it, crucial decisions and reversals are made. That is, the triumph of the new procedure ("Long live the new flesh") over the classical one ("death to Videodrome"). Evolution, even in your television -) (31/05/2011)