I know from watching VIDEODROME that Nicki Brand is the kind of girl I'd just love to fuck three ways to Sunday and smoke a few cigarettes with afterward. Pop star Debbie Harry (from BLONDIE, paving the way for everyone from Madonna to Miley) is just so smokin' hot, disaffected, and sultry in her role as an S & M sexpot who leads James Woods' Max Renn character deeper and deeper into lust-filled lunacy that you just can't help but wanna nail her...for a few hours, anyway. Until she starts burning her naked breasts with cigarettes. (And Debbie is not shy about nudity, praise the Lord!) Or lashing the crap out of you with a horse whip. Or having you jab needles into sensitive areas for pleasure. Ahhhhh, that's just the kind of movie VIDEODROME is, and that's only for starters. "After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?" That line about sums up what VIDEODROME is all about. It completely blurs the line between reality and hallucination, much like Wes Craven did with reality and bad dreams in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET just a year later. Max Renn runs a small TV station that shows (HAWT!) softcore porn to paying customers. He's looking for something new, something cutting edge and tough...programming that paying perverts like me would enjoy. And he finds it with Videodrome, an underground show one of his employees taps into and "unscrambles" in a trial run via satellite transmission. Once Max begins to watch recordings of the show, his world is never the same. He meets Nicki (Harry), a sexy talk show host, and they embark on a bizarre sexual relationship that turns more intense and kinky as things go along. The Videodrome "snuff clips" they watch together and enjoy are very prophetic of what today's horror films have become (think SAW, HOSTEL and A SERBIAN FILM). As Max enters a completely hallucinogenic state of mind and Nicki is literally absorbed by the Videodrome show, the viewer goes along for one of the wildest rides in horror history. Guns morph with human flesh, beta video cassettes and televisions live and breathe, a gaping vagina grows in Max's stomach where tapes can be inserted to "program" him to kill as a conspiracy sub-plot kicks into gear. There are so many gory highlights and great moments in this film that they're impossible to recount and must be seen (or experienced!) to be believed. When one of the lead baddies, Barry Convex, is shot (with Max's "flesh gun") and his body falls to the ground, contorting and exploding in a gory mass of tumors (which Videodrome causes when you watch it too much), you know you're in Cronenberg Land. Captain C is not called The King Of Viral Horror for nothing! A superior mish-mash or rubber reality, video obsession, the decline of the Western Civilization, viral videos, sexual obsession, pornography and addiction....Videodrome is one of the best, most intelligent and fun horror movies of all time. It's also something we've BECOME as a society just three plus decades later....Now THAT is scary!
I know from watching VIDEODROME that Nicki Brand is the kind of girl I'd just love to fuck three ways to Sunday and smoke a few cigarettes with afterward. Pop star Debbie Harry (from BLONDIE, paving the way for everyone from Madonna to Miley) is just so smokin' hot, disaffected, and sultry in her role as an S & M sexpot who leads James Woods' Max Renn character deeper and deeper into lust-filled lunacy that you just can't help but wanna nail her...for a few hours, anyway. Until she starts burning her naked breasts with cigarettes. (And Debbie is not shy about nudity, praise the Lord!) Or lashing the crap out of you with a horse whip. Or having you jab needles into sensitive areas for pleasure. Ahhhhh, that's just the kind of movie VIDEODROME is, and that's only for starters. "After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there?" That line about sums up what VIDEODROME is all about. It completely blurs the line between reality and hallucination, much like Wes Craven did with reality and bad dreams in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET just a year later. Max Renn runs a small TV station that shows (HAWT!) softcore porn to paying customers. He's looking for something new, something cutting edge and tough...programming that paying perverts like me would enjoy. And he finds it with Videodrome, an underground show one of his employees taps into and "unscrambles" in a trial run via satellite transmission. Once Max begins to watch recordings of the show, his world is never the same. He meets Nicki (Harry), a sexy talk show host, and they embark on a bizarre sexual relationship that turns more intense and kinky as things go along. The Videodrome "snuff clips" they watch together and enjoy are very prophetic of what today's horror films have become (think SAW, HOSTEL and A SERBIAN FILM). As Max enters a completely hallucinogenic state of mind and Nicki is literally absorbed by the Videodrome show, the viewer goes along for one of the wildest rides in horror history. Guns morph with human flesh, beta video cassettes and televisions live and breathe, a gaping vagina grows in Max's stomach where tapes can be inserted to "program" him to kill as a conspiracy sub-plot kicks into gear. There are so many gory highlights and great moments in this film that they're impossible to recount and must be seen (or experienced!) to be believed. When one of the lead baddies, Barry Convex, is shot (with Max's "flesh gun") and his body falls to the ground, contorting and exploding in a gory mass of tumors (which Videodrome causes when you watch it too much), you know you're in Cronenberg Land. Captain C is not called The King Of Viral Horror for nothing! A superior mish-mash or rubber reality, video obsession, the decline of the Western Civilization, viral videos, sexual obsession, pornography and addiction....Videodrome is one of the best, most intelligent and fun horror movies of all time. It's also something we've BECOME as a society just three plus decades later....Now THAT is scary!
