Long Live the New Flesh

I think there are times where I have to admit that I don’t always feel “smart” enough to understand David Cronenberg’s movies. Sometimes he makes something pretty solid, something we all can watch and enjoy. Many (myself included) would consider The Fly to be not only one of his best films, but also one of the best horror movies ever made. And then there’s Scanners, which is a really weird movie, but an awesome one, too. I mean, who doesn’t love a film that starts with a man making another man’s head explode just with his mind?

Other times, though, I’ll feel like I just don’t get one of Cronenberg’s movies. Not because they’re bad, and not because they aren’t interesting, but because, for some reason, the film doesn’t click for me. It’s too weird, too off-putting, too gonzo in its ideas that I just can’t connect to it on the level I feel like I should. Cronenberg knows his way around a camera, and effects, and putting them all together, but there are times where it’s clear I’m just not seeing his vision the way that I should.

Videodrome is one of those movies, an acknowledged classic that is even in the Criterion Collection. And yet, going back and watching it I just don’t really get the movie. Is it about mind control and hallucinations? Is it about body horror? Is anything that happens for most of the film even real. It’s a trippy and strange film that goes all out trying to mess with the heads of the viewers as often as it can, and I do respect that instinct. But the same reasons why people acknowledge it as a strange and interesting piece of cinema is the reason why I just couldn’t settle into the film and enjoy it.

The film focuses on Max Renn (James Woods, playing a real creep of a person, which feels like real type casting considering James Woods is also a real creep of a person), the President of CIVIC-TV in Toronto. A small, UHF station (back when those were a normal thing to have on TV), CIVIC-TV plays the most crass, lewd, and violent content they can find, all in the name of trying to get eyeballs on their little channel. It doesn’t matter how objectionable the content is, and in fact if it’s truly objectionable then Renn is interested in it.

That’s what leads him to Videodrome, an illegal television feed that his tech guy, Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), manages to tap into. Regular broadcasts of the show, which features people seemingly getting tortured live on TV, stream out, and the more Renn sees of it, the more interested he is. He even gets his sadomasochistic girlfriend, Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry), hooked on the show. So much so, in fact, that once Renn and Harlan figure out that the show is coming from Pittsburgh, Nikki heads out to that city to audition for the show. But the more Renn watches it, the more he begins to hallucinate, seeing things that couldn’t be there, and having episodes where he can’t explain how he gets where he is. Is he going crazy, or has Videodrome someone warped his mind?

I will admit that going back to this movie forty-four years after its initial release, there was a bit of a technological culture shock. Videodrome is all about people getting illegal Betamax tapes and watching them, which worked perfectly well back in the early 1980s, when Betamax was all the rage, but it feels so quaint now, in an era of DVDs and streaming television. A version of Videodrome released today would be entirely focused on illegal streaming services from the dark web, and Max would be pirating streams to share on his Tor-backed Plex service. It’s amazing how far we’ve shifted.

Setting that aside, though, I did find the early acts of the film interesting. Renn is clearly a shitheel of a guy, crass and gross and willing to do anything for a buck. Watching him slowly descend into this world of torture and abuse feels not unlike a protagonist in a HellraiserBorn from a short story by Clive Barker, this series introduced a new kind of killer to the burgeoning 1980s Slasher scene, a demon from Hell with the promise of pleasures for those who opened a puzle box. Those pleasures, specifically, were: gore, screams, gore, terror, and gore. film discovering the “joys” of the Lament Configuration. You asked for this, Max Renn, and now you’re going to see all the pleasures that Hell can provide. Just, you know, without a Clive Barker license included.

With that said, it’s right around the time that the film gets weird, with Max seeing many strange and weird hallucinations, that the film begins to lose me. The special effects are pretty great, and even now, all these years later, they hold up. There’s something to be said for real, solid, tactile special effects using props, makeup, and puppetry. You simply can’t get that same feel from CGI. It’s too airless and stiff, but the special effects on display here, from a living, breathing television, to all the body horror Max eventually goes through, feels spot on.

But the fact is that the film never gives a clear sense of what is reality and what isn’t past a midway break in the film. Max falls deep down the rabbit hole, trying to find answers from any source that will give them to him, but enough weird and crazy things start to happen that you don’t know what’s going on, what’s real or what isn’t, and if anything past a certain point is really going on or if Max has had a complete psychotic break and lost all sense of reality. I think that’s what the film is going for, mind you, but from a storytelling perspective it didn’t really work for me.

It’s a matter of being able to invest in the story. There’s a proper, grounded sense of reality, even with the hallucinations going on around Max, that you can say, “this is happening but that isn’t.” But right around the point where Max grows a Betamax slot in his stomach, and then gets his gun bonded to his hand via wires and viscera that naturally grow from his own fingers, we lose that sense of reality. Either these things are happening, and there’s no explanation for how his body could shift and change like this from what we’ve seen, or none of it is happening, but that then invalidates at least one entire act of the film. That lack of grounding makes it very hard to understand or care about what happens to Max from that point forward.

And just because I hate Max doesn’t stop me from wanting to care in some regard. I want to see him find his rock bottom and learn lessons from the voyage he’s gone through. But if nothing we’re seeing is happening then it’s hard to actually get to that point. Videodrome drove him crazy, and that’s the end of that no matter how much longer the film has to play out. But if what we’re seeing is actually happening… then I have so many other questions that the film doesn’t have answer for, and that’s not satisfying either. Like, does Max actually have a Betamax slot in his stomach? He dispatches one of his foes by trapping their hand in his tape slot stomach, and then turning that hand into a stick grenade. That couldn’t have really happened, right? Like, what the hell?

Videodrome is maybe too strange and out there of a film for me to get into it. I need some kind of answers, some way to get me on board each strange twist and each new plot point. While the film is stylish, weird, and well made otherwise, the story itself loses me at a certain point and never gets me back. As a study in body horror concepts and great special effects, Videodrome absolutely nails what it’s going for. As a satisfying story about a man driven insane by illegal broadcasts, though… well, the film doesn’t have the conclusions I need. It’s a pity because I get why people like this film. It clearly just wasn’t for me.