Videodrome - Long Live the New Flesh (1983)

 I finally picked up the Criterion Blu Ray of Videodrome (1983) after eyeing it time and again at Barnes & Noble. I wish I would have bought it at the store in my nearest city, but I found it at an excellent price on Amazon. Granted, I hate giving Bezos anymore of my money, just the same, this release, seeing it on my big flat screen (this has been a great purchase, picked up ridiculously cheap on a sale), was just fabulous. While I will keep my gritty DVD release, picked up years ago, of the film, the Criterion presentation, "Director Approved" according to the back of the box, is a gem. I have "Scanners" (1981) coming soon, so I'm also excited about finally picking up the Criterion of that (I had to get the DVD because the Blu Ray was insanely expensive now). I won't lie to you, though. Even late Saturday Evening's viewing, probably my sixth or so (I saw this one later in life, probably in my 20s in the early 2000s), I'm still often thinking with that big bubble above my head: What the fuck?! I love this film, though. For it's time, Baker and Cronenberg's surrrealist "video signal brain tumor outgrowth is more than just a killer that produces hallucinations" Canadian sci-fi horror show was ahead of its time. I do believe the right filmmaker could make a sequel today using the cellphone. I think very much the cellphone/internet and us are in a stage of symbiosis. Whatever you consider "the new flesh" I very much think the use of the "internet signal" has produced a new human. I know that sounds ridiculous. Anyway, what we have with a signal called Videodrome, produced by Barry Convex (Les Carlson) and his tech genius, Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) that causes a cancerous like growth on the brain that produces such advanced hallucinations that reality becomes "corrupted" and what he sees and feels is all too real...and we are taken on his journey. A vagina forming on his stomach that you can inject a type of "control tape" that "encourages" a sleazy UHF station president named Max Renn (James Woods) to kill his colleagues at his Civic TV (a small station that produces porn and violent content), and a "cancer gun" that becomes "part of him" that he uses to shoot those he's ordered to kill so the Videodrome signal can infect all the viewers who watch his television content (considered by Convex and Harlan as reprehensible trash deserved of their fate). But an ally (so to speak) to Renn is the daughter of a "media professor" named Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), a figure considered an authority in what the "cathode ray tube" (television) can be used for in regards to the public at large. And that is pretty much what I personally got out of it.

Seeing Woods with a gun he "installs" into the vagina wound of his stomach (it itches and eventually opens like a VCR ready to receive a tape), not to mention, later when Convex has his own cancer tape (it looks like an infected tape that pulsates) that pretty much orders Renn to kill his employees at the station, inserted into him, this kind of make up effects is unlike anything we had seen at the time. The gun, as it becomes one with Woods, a pulsating television with the luscious Debbie Harry luring Wood to bury his head into her protruding "signal lips", Harlan (attempting to inject another control tape with kill orders into the vagina wound of Woods) pulling his hand from the wound VCR with a bomb replacing it (eventually blowing him to smithereens), and Convex shot by Woods' gun causing his body to explode and erupt in cancer are makeup effects that remain very visceral, outrageous, and so outside the norm of anything realistic, but with Cronenberg shooting this as if it was very much of our world gives the whole second half of the film this jarring impact. Because Woods' reality is basically distorted and we are with him. Whatever his next phase is, beyond the form of what he was, according to O'Blivion he will be quite different.

***The idea that in Pittsburgh there is a clay-walled single room where regular folks are brought into it to be abused and tortured to death might be a very disturbing thought, but who's to say that right now it is available for those who like such sick, twisted shit***

***I did fail to mention a lot in the film, such as Masha (Lynne Gorman), as well as Japanese visitors, bringing Renn "prime content" for his channel. Knowing his audience likes "niche material", you see Renn often debating whether or not the material is too soft, not rough enough. I think he'd have plenty of customers today***

***I wanted my uncle to check it out to see if he might like "Videodrome" in the mid 2000s but he didn't ever get around to watching it. He died of a brain tumor in 2011.***

***Debbie Harry's radio personality, often a sort of therapist for damaged callers seeking advice and a cry for help, is an absolutely fascinating character to me. Sensuous, complex, a seeker of thrills that can be quite dangerous; Harry can't resist going to Pittsburgh to participate in what she thought was a performance that featured S&M type interplay. Her use as a lure for Woods becomes a tool that Convex uses for his benefit but ultimately results in his own destruction.***