Videodrome

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Videodrome
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Produced by	Claude Héroux
Written by	David Cronenberg
Starring	James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits
Music by	Howard Shore
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	February 4, 1983
Running time	89 min.
Language	English
Budget	$5,952,000 (estimate)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Videodrome is a 1983 film directed by David Cronenberg.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cult film status 3 Trivia 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Plot

The film's story begins by showing the daily grind of Max Renn (James Woods), the president of CIVIC-TV (Channel 83, Cable 12), a sleazy local UHF TV station, on his never-ending search for new material to titillate his viewers. The station's pirate satellite dish picks up transmissions of a sadistic, plotless program called Videodrome that depicts only torture and murder in a bright red room: snuff TV. He encounters Professor Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley) (a character loosely parodying Marshall McLuhan) on a chat show, who communicates only through video recordings of himself. Renn asks a colleague to find out 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 O'Blivion's daughter Bianca, who tells him that her father died 11 months ago. He is later sent a tape by O'Blivion, who warns Renn of a political or social force called only "Videodrome". He slowly realizes that he has begun hallucinating graphic acts that show the malleability of the human form. In one scene, Renn sees his own belly become a receptacle. His missing lover, a radio therapist Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry) with a penchant for self-mutilation, appears in his recurring visions of the Videodrome room.

Renn is contacted by Barry Convex of Spectacular Optical, who produces Videodrome. He is asked to wear a headset which records one of his hallucinations. Because the film takes place entirely from Renn's point of view, it becomes difficult to tell what is real and what is hallucination. A rectangular opening appears in his stomach, allowing the villains to mentally program him by inserting video cassettes into it. As the film goes on, the video cassettes begin to look increasingly amorphous. Under the influence of his programming he takes a gun, which merges with his hand to form a literal "handgun", and shoots his former business partners. He is then literally reprogrammed by Bianca O'Blivion, so that when one of the villains attempts to insert another tumour-like cassette into him he is able to fuse a grenade to the man's arm (i.e., a "hand grenade") which explodes and kills him. He kills Convex during a trade show, memorably causing Videodrome tumors to erupt from his head and torso.

Renn finally takes refuge on a derelict boat in an abandoned harbor, where Nicki appears to him on a television set. He sees a TV set showing an image of himself pointing his handgun at his head and saying "long live the new flesh". His on-screen image shoots himself and the TV explodes, spilling human intestines all over the deck. He then repeats the action he has just watched, pulls the trigger, and 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(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 techno band Front 242 used Barry Convex's line at the SpecOps trade show, "You know me, and I sure know you. Every one of you!", as the intro to their song Masterhit off their album Official Version and its remixes.
• The punk 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 from this movie. Track 5 "See You In Pittsburgh" and track 12 "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.

[edit] Trivia

• Civic TV is a reference to a real-life Canadian TV station, CityTV. CityTV gained notoriety for airing soft-core pornographic programs on their station.
• The Betamax videotape format was used in the movie because VHS tapes were too large to fit into the faux stomach. The cover of the Criterion Collection DVD case is a picture of a Betamax cassette. There is a goof on the cover: The sticker on top of the 'tape' (which reads LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH) should show the recording modes as Beta I, Beta II and Beta III- but instead reads "Digital 8" and "video Hi8", two formats that didn't even exist at the time Videodrome was released. The little piece of "duct tape" on the back of the tape shows that Videodrome is # 248 in a videotape collection - this is its actual place in The Criterion Collection.
• Videodrome pioneered the technology used to film a television screen with minimal flicker. In earlier movies, film footage was superimposed onto blank television screens.
• The pornographic video Samurai Dreams was made specifically for the film. While only a few seconds of video was used, the entire tape ran for approximately 5 minutes, and is available for view on the Criterion Collection DVD of Videodrome.
• The Videodrome "murder/torture/mutilation" video consists of over 11 minutes of footage, and involved devices which, according to Cronenberg, are "as lethal as wet noodles". After the movie was released, men claiming to be the actresses' boyfriends reportedly called the producers to ask for the unedited footage. 7 minutes of Videodrome footage is included on the Criterion Collection DVD.
• Harlan's (Peter Dvorsky) video lab consisted of old video equipment dating back to the 1970s.
• Woods' character name, "Max Renn", is based on the motorcycle brand Renmax. Deborah Harry's character name, "Nicki Brand", is a pun on the words "Nick" (to cut) and "Brand" (to burn), both of which describe the self-inflicted wounds made by her character throughout the movie. Leslie Carlson's character name, "Barry Convex", is a reference to a convex lens. O'Blivion's presumably self-chosen name, obviously, refers to oblivion.
• As the Cathode Ray mission sequence was being filmed Jock Brandis, the film's gaffer, walked in and casually informed the crew that the power lines to the building were smoking because of the load imposed on them by the TV sets.
• The entire concept of brain tumor-inducing television programs is based on an urban legend dating back to the 1940s, when people believed television waves would cause brain tumors. Canadian-based rumors of mind-controlling television from right-wing extremists in the United States also inspired the plot line.
• Marshall McLuhan, the 1960s-era communications theorist on whom the character of Professor Brian O'Blivion was based, actually had a benign growth in his brain. Author Philip Marchand, in his 1989 biography of McLuhan, "The Medium and the Messenger", writes that the growth was a meningioma located under McLuhan's brain. Marchand quotes a McLuhan associate as describing the growth as being "as big as a tennis ball" and he reports that it was causing McLuhan to suffer blackouts and seizures. Doctors warned that blindness and insanity would result if the growth were not removed. In spite of initial resistance to the procedure from McLuhan who feared doctors and surgery, the growth was removed in a marathon seventeen and a half hour operation in a New York hospital in November of 1967. The operation, led by US brain surgeon Lester Mount, was the longest neurosurgical operation in the history of American medicine to that time.^{[citation needed]}
• In James Woods' appearance in the Family Guy episode "Peter's Got Woods", he shows Videodrome to Peter Griffin. When Peter asks about the film's nudity, Woods proudly points out that he shows his butt in the film.
• In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, "Dirt Foot", Master Shake claims he knows "the difference between the TV and the flesh world...Like from Videodrome, right?"
• Alternate titles for this film were "Network of Blood" and "Zonekiller".
• Some conspiracy theorists have speculated that the government uses a signal broadcast over the TV called the "videodrome signal", presumably after this movie, to control people's minds. [2]
• Future Ontario cabinet minister David Tsubouchi has a small role as one of the Japanese salesmen in the film.

[edit] See also

• Numbers station
• Motif of harmful sensation
• List of Films about Television
• List of films that break the fourth wall

[edit] External links

• Videodrome at the Internet Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Carrie Rickey
• Criterion Collection essay by Tim Lucas