Acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg's 1983 film "Videodrome" stars his frequent collaborator James Woods as Max Renn, the owner of a Canadian video channel that plays the raunchiest content Max can find, offering viewers things that they can't find on major networks. In his search for new material, Max stumbles across Videodrome, a shockingly violent program of sadomasochistic torture.
Max can't help but develop an obsession with the program — as does his thrill-seeking lover, the advice hotline radio host Nicki Brand. He inquires about Videodrome and is directed to the office of Professor O'Blivion at the Cathode Ray Mission, a place that offers people free access to television in confessional-like cubicles. Inside he meets the professor's daughter, Bianca O'Blivion, who offers to send him a taped message from her father.
In his tape, the professor explains that he helped develop Videodrome, but it caused him to develop a brain tumor. O'Blivion...
Max can't help but develop an obsession with the program — as does his thrill-seeking lover, the advice hotline radio host Nicki Brand. He inquires about Videodrome and is directed to the office of Professor O'Blivion at the Cathode Ray Mission, a place that offers people free access to television in confessional-like cubicles. Inside he meets the professor's daughter, Bianca O'Blivion, who offers to send him a taped message from her father.
In his tape, the professor explains that he helped develop Videodrome, but it caused him to develop a brain tumor. O'Blivion...
- 2/17/2024
- by Shae Sennett
- Slash Film
Although analog technology has gone all but extinct in the 40 years since Videodrome first permeated viewers’ psyches, there’s no denying the prescience of its themes. Writer-director David Cronenberg, circa 1983, portended the exploitation of the internet age, virtual reality, and media manipulation. At its core, Videodrome confronts the viewer to examine their own relationship with entertainment.
As the head of Civic TV, Max Renn caters to the subterranean market, transmitting sex and violence into Toronto homes over Uhf airwaves. His appetite for depravity no longer fulfilled by the likes of softcore pornography, Max’s interest is piqued by a mysterious pirated broadcast called Videodrome. As he describes it, “It’s just torture and murder. No plot, no characters. Very, very realistic. I think it’s what’s next.”
Max’s perception of reality is altered from the moment he’s first exposed to Videodrome, as devious hallucinations — from a cancerous...
As the head of Civic TV, Max Renn caters to the subterranean market, transmitting sex and violence into Toronto homes over Uhf airwaves. His appetite for depravity no longer fulfilled by the likes of softcore pornography, Max’s interest is piqued by a mysterious pirated broadcast called Videodrome. As he describes it, “It’s just torture and murder. No plot, no characters. Very, very realistic. I think it’s what’s next.”
Max’s perception of reality is altered from the moment he’s first exposed to Videodrome, as devious hallucinations — from a cancerous...
- 10/17/2023
- by Alex DiVincenzo
- bloody-disgusting.com
The enemy, as it seems it always has been, is within in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but its violence, gore, and torrential mayhem is hard to miss. Influenced by the writings of Marshall McLuhan, this 1983 vision of the intermingling ideas and functions of technology, the mind, and “the flesh” is, like a great deal of Cronenberg’s work, endlessly fascinated with decay, bodily fluids, wounds, and growths. All of which come to bear in one form or another on Max Renn (James Woods), a forager of outré entertainments at Civic-tv, a sleazy Uhf television station in Toronto that he helped to found, and whose motto, “The One You Take to Bed with You,” is more ominous than goofy.
But where softcore pornography would effectively crawl up the ass of any major network executive and start biting as if it were its last meal, Renn is bored by shots of Asian...
But where softcore pornography would effectively crawl up the ass of any major network executive and start biting as if it were its last meal, Renn is bored by shots of Asian...
- 10/9/2023
- by Chris Cabin
- Slant Magazine
This article contains some spoilers
In 1995, we screamed, “Hack the planet!” Today, my mom can watch any movie on her phone. When we walk around with computers in our pockets, fantasies about jacking into cyberspace and accessing vast amounts of information seem quaint, if not outright laughable. But it’s that very mundane nature that makes cyberpunk such an important genre, even in 2023.
The cyberpunk genre began in literature, first in stories published in the UK magazine New Worlds and later in novels from writers such as William Gibson (Neuromancer), J.G. Ballard (High Rise), and Philip K. Dick. These writers took a darker look at the technology of the future, showing how new inventions did nothing to change inequality and corruption, only reinforcing the worst parts of humanity.
For most people, cinematic cyberpunk is synonymous with 1982’s Blade Runner, an adaption of the Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
In 1995, we screamed, “Hack the planet!” Today, my mom can watch any movie on her phone. When we walk around with computers in our pockets, fantasies about jacking into cyberspace and accessing vast amounts of information seem quaint, if not outright laughable. But it’s that very mundane nature that makes cyberpunk such an important genre, even in 2023.
The cyberpunk genre began in literature, first in stories published in the UK magazine New Worlds and later in novels from writers such as William Gibson (Neuromancer), J.G. Ballard (High Rise), and Philip K. Dick. These writers took a darker look at the technology of the future, showing how new inventions did nothing to change inequality and corruption, only reinforcing the worst parts of humanity.
For most people, cinematic cyberpunk is synonymous with 1982’s Blade Runner, an adaption of the Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
- 6/9/2023
- by Kirsten Howard
- Den of Geek
Crimes of the Future (2022).Aging is a practice of managed decline. Bit by bit, the mind slows, the body goes, acquaintances pass, and, if a person is fortunate enough to survive long past it all, daily life becomes a series of painful trials, a great reduction of experience to the most basic tasks. We spend so much of our lives bathed in our own consciousness, yet only at the extremities of birth and death does it become bitterly clear how yoked the soul is to the body, and once the latter goes, that’s it.Much great art has been made about this process—the works of Terence Davies come to mind—but much has also emerged from experiencing it. Some art historians attribute the sketchy brushwork and spectral figuration of the late-career paintings of Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos, otherwise known as El Greco, to his worsening astigmatism, a phase in which...
- 6/23/2022
- MUBI
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