Videodrome

Had a hard time sleeping last night, so I decided to watch a movie and hopefully fall asleep to it. I don’t know why, but my choice was “Videodrome.” Now, I’ve seen “Videodrome” probably a dozen times. I know what I’m getting into. And somehow, I thought that should be my lullaby. Needless to say, I didn’t fall asleep. I was, as always, hypnotized.


If you’ve never seen “Videodrome,” please, please, please rent/buy it. This is Cronenberg at his best. I’ll admit that it is not an easy movie to watch. It’s gruesome and crude and really fucking smart. I still have a hard time getting friends to watch this movie. Mostly because I don’t want to give away the whole thing when they ask, “What’s it about?” My answer to that is usually something like, “It’s about a guy who watches a pirated broadcast of a show called ‘Videodrome’ and it causes him to begin hallucinating and before too long he grows a six-inch vagina in his abdomen and people put video tapes in the vagina to brainwash him.” Only one of my friends has watched it.

Regardless, I fucking love this movie. “Videodrome” is prophecy come true. The paranoia about television and people’s lives through exposure to and on media is incredibly poignant today. And this even before the (at the time non-existent) internet, which, when factored in, makes Cronenberg’s script seem like a goddamn crystal for the new millennium.

I want to keep this review short so as to not give much of the movie away because nearly every scene is a revelation. Every word rings scarily true. Every effects shot trumps any CG magic. (Consider CGI when listening to Professor O’Blivion and you’ll get shivers at the implications.)

This is one of the great, little-seen classics. Get a hold of it, watch it, then show it to your friends and wow them with its awesomeness. LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!

Rating: 10 out of 10 (I need to review a bad movie here soon.)