Videodrome

Film Review by Alan Bett | 16 Dec 2011
Film title: Videodrome
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: James Woods, Deborah Harry
Release date: 26 Dec 2011
Certificate: 18

In the paranoid Cold War coke comedown of the early 1980s David Cronenberg unleashed this unsettling masterwork, now on Blu-ray. James Wood is Max, a sleazy cable TV president looking to feed the dark desires of his ravenous audience. As Debbie Harry's kinky character states: "We live in over-stimulated times... we always want more." And this is what Max aims to provide, even if that more is torture and murder. What he finds, however, is Videodrome, a mind-altering experience leaving him with a soluble sanity fizzing away to nothing in the bottom of a glass. Replace video with dot com and this disturbing parable relates directly to our own digital age where beheadings and hardcore sex are readily available online. Cronenberg goes beyond body horror and delivers horrific mind mutilation, leaving us with a twisted psychological spasm of a film which directly tackles TV, the demon in the corner of the room. Long live the new flesh. [Alan Bett]