Another entry from our good pal David Cronenberg. This also marks the second appearance of Debbie Harry in this marathon after Tales from the Darkside. Max Renn (James Woods) owns a small late-night channel catering in soft-core porn and violence unable to be broadcast during regular waking hours. He is always on the lookout for the newest, most extreme tapes so when his pet pirate Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) shows him a scrambled feed called Videodrome that features nothing but torture and murder, Max is interested. It becomes very apparent very quickly that something is horribly wrong as Videodrome sparks hallucinations of horror and death within the viewer. Max is increasingly unable to tell his nightmare visions from reality even as he becomes convinced that he is a pawn in a much greater conspiracy.
This movie felt incredibly timely despite the utterly dated technology on display (Betamax!) The crux of the plot rests on how violence in media desensitizes and for a small subset of viewers replaces reality. There have been many studies shown that violence, especially sexual violence, in videos normalizes violence in real life, especially for younger people. The specific example given by my psychology professor was violence in pornography as it relates to dehumanizing and demeaning women. It's not definitively linked to a propensity for committing violent acts, so no, listening to Eminem or playing Call of Duty will not make your teenager shoot up a school but it has been shown to reduce empathy and increase aggressiveness. Combined with other risk factors, it could lead to violence being more likely but as always, it depends on the individual. Some people are perfectly fine and others mail pipe bombs. It has to do with susceptibility to the message.
The message in the film does get a little muddled when Max is effectively "programmed" to go commit murder and then counter-programmed to commit even more murders. Ostensibly, Videodrome is intended to be a weapon against those who would seek out this overly violent content but ends up being used to promote the very violence it's supposed to stand against. Maybe that's part of the commentary, I don't know, but it took away some of the impact for me.
Rick Baker provided the body horror prosthetics and his expertise is undeniable. James Woods has always excelled at playing total assholes and Debbie Harry is her sultry best. It's definitely worth a watch.
Pumpkin rating: 4.2/5
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