David Cronenberg’s most out-there ick-thriller precedes 30 years of weaker blow-your-mind sci-fi ‘mind evolution’ sagas, Matrices, etc.. It’s the scary truth: humanity is merging with communication and entertainment technology — is your cell phone physically attached to your body yet?  Slimy James Woods and fearless Deborah Harry tresspass into a shady cable TV realm that proffers intolerable taboo content 24-7. Do we really prefer to live in a nerve-wired, heightened-sensation hallucination?  The storyline may go haywire, but Cronenberg’s vision of alarming trends is chillingly consistent. Long Live the New Flesh.

Videodrome 4K
4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 248
1983 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 10, 2023 / 39.95
Starring: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley, Lynne Gorman, Julie Khaner, Reiner Schwartz, David Bolt.
Cinematography: Mark Irwin
Art Director: Carol Spier
Film Editor: Ronald Sanders
Costume Design: Delphine White
Original Music: Howard Shore
Special Video Effects: Michael Lennick
Special Effects Makeup: Rick Baker
Produced by Pierre David, Claude Héroux, Victor Solnicki
Written and Directed by David Cronenberg

Today’s horror movies know no bounds when depicting physical atrocities, but 1983’s Videodrome creeps people out with genuine  Dangerous Concepts. David Cronenberg’s ideas about a McLuhanesque, Ballardesque merging of man and media take a fantastic route to reveal futuristic fears. Criterion has brought one of their earlier releases back in a full 4K Ultra HD presentation, including all of their excellent original extras.

Videodrome is core social science fiction. Writer-director David Cronenberg had pioneered queasy body-horror Sci-fi, first in his experimental Stereo and Crimes of the Future. With this effort he hit his pace as an purveyor of bizarre intellectual concepts. His elegant presentation of a virtual reality world (forget Tron) packs more dangerous ideas than had ever seen the light of a movie granted major distribution: insidious technology, underground video, porn, violence, sado-masochism and snuff movies.

They’re all in the service of an adult concept light-years ahead of the competition. Readers of Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch might have felt right at home, but much of the ‘normal’ 1983 audience was lost, lost, lost.

We now have something like Videodrome, only we call it the Internet.

Cronenberg’s script begins with a man looking for new experiences . . . to sell. Soft-core cable entrepreneur Max Renn (James Woods) is hot for edgy material. His tech assistant Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) taps into an unregulated, blatantly illegal satellite transmission ‘not acknowledged to exist,’ an all-torture, all-murder TV signal called Videodrome. Max dispatches porn agent Masha (Lynne Gorman) to find Videodrome for his cable company, and follows the cyber-trail to Bianca (Sonja Smits), the daughter of video cult visionary Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley). Seemingly existing only on videotape, techno-guru Brian dispenses weird wisdom about a new age in which people will physically merge with the virtual video world. Max also becomes attracted to radio psychologist Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), a masochistic sensationalist who introduces him to mild S&M. When she finds out about the Videodrome horrorshow, her immediate response is to seek it out — to become a ‘contestant.’

David Cronenberg’s erratic hit ‘n’ miss string of exploitative shockers before Videodrome were always built around deep-dish sci-fi concepts. The grandiose themes of  Shivers and  Rabid overshadow their grindhouse nudity and gore. Shivers is a sexualized gloss on the classic  Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Scanners hit the commercial jackpot with a hybrid of Philip K. Dick’s expanded-consciousness worldview. But the show is remembered as the Exploding Head movie — the mind-expanding ideas are there, even if commercial considerations require a payoff in audience-pleasing chase scenes and telekinetic gore.

Videodrome re-visits Cronenberg’s chronic themes — strange new body orifices, exploding flesh, technological conspiracies to transform mankind — but ties them to the Dickian idea of altered reality. The Videodrome video signal is like Dick’s drug “Chew-Z”: we share Max Renn’s disconcerting hallucinations as his mind is altered. Exploring new conceptual territory with his eyes wide open, Max becomes a classic surreal hero, like Buñuel’s  Archibaldo de La Cruz or Ernesto Gastaldi’s  Dr. Bernard Hichcock.

All hail The New Flesh.

Cronenberg’s later remake of the 1958 The Fly greatly expanded George Langelaan’s original concept: the transformation of Seth Brundle from man to monster becomes a voyage of grotesque but miraculous possibilities. A different kind of disease is changing Max Renn from the inside out; instead of ‘insect politics’ he must come to grips with an unknown future he calls ‘the new flesh.’ Scientific progress blends with spirituality when the ultimate escape from ‘the old flesh’ becomes all too obvious.

Videodrome saw Cronenberg leaving the exploitation realm behind. This high profile Universal release has fewer production compromises. For the first time his actors are all top-rank. The effects don’t overpower the story and the story doesn’t rely on a third-act chase to maintain thriller interest. Good pacing helps us confront weird techno-pornographic concepts, such as a television transformed into a pulsing, veined sexual organ. Max Renn withdraws an ‘organic pistol’ from a vagina-like slit in his stomach — his organic melding with a steel gun is both an hallucination and a kind of practical evolution. The Videodrome state brings absurd desires to ‘reality’ — the changing of a man’s hand into a hand grenade is like a gag from a Looney Tunes cartoon. We can achieve such miracles in our dreams . . . so when dreams and reality become indistinguishable?

VHS tapes . . . a generation of 20 year-olds may not recognize them.

Cronenberg’s madness is conceptually consistent. In The Fly Seth Brundle becomes partially fused with his own invention, and drags the steel door of his teleportation pod behind him like an albatross. Cronenberg sees man fusing with his inventions, like the morbid car fetishists in Crash … which he later adapted for film.

James Woods proves perfectly suited to the role — not many actors can play a voyeur and softcore smut peddler, and retain this level of sympathy. The little touches Woods gives the role become funnier on repeated viewings. Deborah Harry’s Nicki Brand is an original as well, a surreal heroine in pursuit of transcendent experience. She generates the erotic connection Cronenberg needs and makes a convincing masochist. Nikki’s early exit to become a virtual presence probably sparked resentment among the fan-base that wanted a flesh & blood Blondie to stick around longer. She goes straight to the center of her obsession, and never looks back.

Among the excellent supporting players is Lynne Gorman, who Cronenberg manages to make intriguing just by allowing a woman older than fifty to have a sexual appetite. Cronenberg plays with light comic irony, too. At one point Max Renn tries on a pair of dark-framed glasses and for a second becomes a substitute David Cronenberg. During an escape in an alley, Renn passes workers moving a series of doors. Are they a visual pun for the ‘doors’ of consciousness?

What Scares Ya, Baby?

On a first viewing the show generates real chills, as Max intrudes into the heart of Videodrome’s unknowable torture studio. But what we remember the most are the bizarro instances where erotic and technological taboos merge. Max Renn is able to have physical sex with a pair of lips on a television screen. His ‘stomach vagina’ can hide a weapon. Cronenberg’s illusions go a step beyond classical film surrealism, inviting us to share the subjective sensations of the surrealist adventurer.

A few concepts aren’t as well established. Renn’s obscenely mutated gun-arm reminds us of the diseased arm of the mutating Victor Carroon. The movie only hints that the flesh-gun shoots not bullets, but instant-growing cancerous tumors. All of Max Renn’s Videodrome-inspired ‘miracles’ center on sex as something lethal, both feared and desired.

There’s also the gross ending where Max Renn is shown the next step in his personal evolution by a virtual Deborah Harry, who woule appear to speak to him from other ‘dimension of consiousness.’ His crossover is accomplished by imitating something he sees on television. Cronenberg’s movie ideas are way, way out there in the best possible meaning of the term. They’re always driven by a coherent, consistent interior logic.

The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray of Videodrome is a 4K remaster presented both in Ultra HD with Dolby Vision, and on a second standard 4K disc with the company’s extras. Mark Irwin’s cinematography is as crisp as ever, highlighting the strange video effects. By retaining the ragged NTSC video look of 1983, the movie is forever anchored in a time when video enterainment and personal electronics were exploding: computers, cable and satellite TV, more programming than anybody could possibly watch. Cable companies were indeed looking for new kinds of entertainment — would innovators create entirely new forms of entertainment?  The ugly ‘raw content’ TV programming seen in A Clockwork Orange suddenly seemed a logical next step.

The excellent package of extras hasn’t changed. Overseen by special effects maestro Michael Lennick are plentiful behind-the-scenes docus and galleries, accompanied by interviews and filmmaker commentary. The insert essayists are Carrie Rickey, Gary Indiana, and also Tim Lucas, who was a frequent visitor to the film’s Canadian set. The commentators are Cronenberg, his cameraman Mark Irwin and his stars Woods and Harry. All are articulate about their contributions to the film. Also included is a Cronenberg short subject from 2000.

Another docu covers the makeup effects, utilizing lots of on-set video. There are also separate audio interviews with makeup effects men Rick Baker and Lennick. A section called Bootleg Video includes the complete footage of Max Renn’s softcore cable show Samurai Dreams and seven uncut minutes of Videodrome torture sessions, including ‘notorious’ material not seen in the film. Topping it all off is a 1981 roundtable interview with Cronenberg and fellow directors John Carpenter and John Landis, hosted by none other than Mick Garris. At the time all were involved in fantastic films. The least demonstrative of the three, Cronenberg seems the only one with ‘something to say.’ He tries to get a viable discussion going, but the other two directors don’t look ready for a debate.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Videodrome 4K
4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary with David Cronenberg and Mark Irwin
Audio commentary James Woods and Deborah Harry
Short film Camera (2000) by Cronenberg
Short documentary Forging the New Flesh by Michael Lennick about the video and prosthetic makeup effects
Audio interview Effects Men with Rick Baker and Lennick
The complete footage of Samurai Dreams and seven unedited minutes of‘Videodrome’ transmissions with filmmaker commentary
Roundtable discussion Fear on Film (1982) with Cronenberg, John Carpenter, John Landis, and Mick Garris
Original theatrical trailers, promotional featurette
Full stills Gallery
26-page illustrated pamphlet with essays by Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas and Gary Indiana.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case in a card sleeve
Reviewed: October 12, 2023
(7012vide)

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Here’s Mick Garris on Videodrome: