A sci-fi body horror movie that stands out in Cronenberg’s ‘80s oeuvre for its special effects and just-as-relevant-today commentary on our obsession with the screen.

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Possibly David Cronenberg’s defining work of the ’80s, and to some, albeit in retrospect, his finest achievement, Videodrome remains a polarizing work.

Cronenberg was a serial provocateur, a master of body horror movies such as The Brood (1979) and Scanners (1981) that made audiences squirm.  Like them or not, they were ingenious in their use of practical special effects and makeup to advance the narrative.  

Seen today, Videodrome might feel too bizarre, though it effectively pulls you into its ghastly world, filled with frightening and surreal imageries. 

What it has going is the prescient if overt commentary on our obsession with the screen.  Made during the VCR era, when home video heightened our scopophilic desires, Videodrome draws parallels with our screen enslavement with depictions of sadomasochism on screen. 

“Television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

With James Wood in the lead as Max Renn, who runs a sleazy cable channel out for more exploitative and sensational content, the film brings him into the fold as a victim of his desires and actions. 

His performance carries the bulk of the film, and his physical body (through astonishing special effects) becomes a conduit for the troubling mind. 

“Long live the new flesh!”, shouted with gusto by Max, suggesting a melding of the mutated body and corrupt mind, under the control of a metaphysical entity.

This is not unlike our current world which is eerily similar to what Cronenberg prophesied three decades earlier – we seek pleasure from the screen, in whatever modern manifestation, enslaved by something we can’t see – the videodrome as it were.

With a salacious mixture of sex, torture and gore, Cronenberg’s film promises to blur the lines between reality and ‘realities’.  In its finest moments, it becomes a hallucinatory Freudian journey. 

Grade: A-

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