Videodrome (1983)

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HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2021

Writer/Director: David Cronenberg

Stars: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Debbie Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley



Max Renn (James Woods) is the CEO of a sleazy little cable channel that is eking out its niche in the market by offering violence and soft-core pornography.

 


Always on the lookout for something tougher, he becomes excited by the pirate broadcasts of a program called Videodrome, 30 minutes of torture with no pretense to any plot.

 


He decides to track down the makers of the show, little realizing that he is already in way over his head...

 


David Cronenberg is a consistently interesting filmmaker and his major themes are on display here--the question of identity and the ways, both physical and psychological, that man is transformed by his technology.

 


"Videodrome" is prescient in the way it forecasted the ever-increasing levels of depravity and sensation that have become available in the media.

 


The film becomes increasingly surreal and phantasmagoric as the story progresses, but stick with it and think about it afterward.

 


All the pieces fit together.























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