There are two kinds of David Cronenberg films. The first are relatively straightforward affairs like The Fly or A History of Violence. Weird, certainly, but still recognisable as films where the plot can be explained without sounding like you’ve suffered a concussion. Then there’s Videodrome. Trying to explain Videodrome to somebody who’s never seen it is a bit like trying to describe a fever dream after three days without sleep. Halfway through you’ll find yourself saying things like, “James Woods grows a vagina in his stomach that accepts VHS tapes,” before realising the other person has quietly started backing towards the door.
The plot follows Max Renn (James Woods), the president of a struggling cable television station that survives by broadcasting softcore pornography, exploitation movies and whatever other sleaze he thinks people might watch after midnight. Max isn’t interested in making good television. He’s interested in making television people can’t look away from. That obsession leads him to Videodrome, a mysterious pirate broadcast intercepted by one of his technicians. Unlike the usual exploitation rubbish, Videodrome strips everything away. There’s no story, no characters, no explanation. Just anonymous people being tortured to death inside a grimy clay-lined room.
Convinced it’s simply an underground snuff production with incredible special effects, he begins searching for whoever is making it, believing he’s stumbled across the future of entertainment. Around the same time he begins a relationship with radio psychologist Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry), who reacts to Videodrome in what most psychiatrists would probably describe as “deeply fucking concerning.”
Rather than recoiling from the violence, she’s fascinated by it. She asks Max to pierce her ears during sex, openly admits she’s attracted to sadomasochism, and eventually decides she’d quite like to audition for Videodrome itself. Which, all things considered, is right up there with swimming through shark-infested waters wearing a bacon swimsuit as one of cinema’s worst decisions.
As Max digs deeper, reality begins to unravel around him. At first it’s just headaches and odd dreams. Then his television starts breathing. The screen bulges outwards like it’s trying to kiss him. VHS tapes begin pulsating like internal organs. Eventually a grotesque slit opens in his abdomen that functions as what can only be described as the world’s least hygienic VHS player, happily accepting videotapes, handguns and the occasional human hand.
Trying to explain the second half of Videodrome is where things become properly difficult. Max discovers that the broadcasts aren’t simply violent entertainment. Hidden beneath the images is a signal that causes malignant brain tumours, producing vivid hallucinations whilst making viewers susceptible to psychological conditioning. The organisation behind Videodrome intends to use it as a weapon to purge society of those they consider morally corrupt, transforming television into an instrument of ideological control.
Unfortunately for Max, he’s already watched enough of it to become little more than a walking guinea pig. Different factions begin literally reprogramming him by inserting videotapes into the opening in his stomach. He becomes an unwilling assassin, carrying out murders whilst becoming increasingly unable to distinguish reality from hallucination. One minute he’s executing his business partners with a handgun that’s fused to his own flesh. The next he’s talking to media philosopher Brian O’Blivion, a man who only ever appears on television screens despite supposedly being dead.
If that sounds completely fucking mental…that’s because it is. The remarkable thing is that beneath all the pulsating flesh and exploding tumours sits one of the smartest pieces of science-fiction ever committed to film. Cronenberg wasn’t really interested in violence. He was interested in our relationship with media. Made in 1983, Videodrome arrived at the height of the VHS boom, when politicians and moral campaigners were convinced “video nasties” were rotting the nation’s brains. Lesser filmmakers would’ve simply picked a side in the argument. Cronenberg does something far more interesting. He imagines a world where television literally rewrites the human body.
The famous line from Brian O’Blivion that “the television screen has become the retina of the mind” has only become more relevant with age. Replace television with smartphones, social media or endless doomscrolling and suddenly Videodrome stops feeling like speculative fiction and starts looking alarmingly prophetic. That’s the genius of the film. The body horror isn’t there simply because Cronenberg enjoys making audiences squirm – although I’m fairly sure he does. Every grotesque mutation reflects Max’s loss of autonomy. His body literally becomes another piece of media technology, capable of being programmed, manipulated and rewritten by whoever controls the signal.
It’s one of the few horror films where the practical effects aren’t just spectacular. They’re the central metaphor. And what practical effects they are. The breathing television remains one of cinema’s great surreal images. The stomach slit still looks revolting forty years later. The handgun gradually fusing into Max’s hand feels like something H.R. Giger might’ve dreamt up after falling asleep watching late-night cable. Even the exploding tumours in the finale possess that wonderfully tactile quality modern CGI can never quite replicate.
James Woods is perfectly cast as Max. Nobody played smug, morally flexible arseholes better than Woods. Even before the hallucinations begin he feels like somebody who’d happily sell his own mother if the viewing figures looked promising. Watching that confidence slowly erode into confusion, paranoia and outright terror is one of the film’s greatest pleasures. Debbie Harry is excellent too, bringing an unsettling mix of confidence and vulnerability to Nicki Brand. She’s less a conventional love interest than another symptom of Max’s increasingly fractured perception, and like so much else in Videodrome, you’re never entirely sure how much of her story is actually happening.
The supporting cast are equally memorable, particularly Jack Creley as Brian O’Blivion. O’Blivion speaks almost entirely in philosophical riddles that sound like complete pretentious bollocks when you first hear them, only to become increasingly profound once the film has finished crawling around inside your head for a few days.
That’s probably the biggest compliment I can pay Videodrome. It gets better after you’ve finished watching it. The first viewing is often bewildering because you’re too busy trying to work out what the hell is happening. The second is where the themes begin to emerge. By the third you start noticing how meticulously everything fits together beneath the madness. It won’t be for everyone. The pacing is deliberately slow, the tone relentlessly bleak, and Cronenberg steadfastly refuses to explain every mystery. If you’re looking for a straightforward horror film where monsters chase teenagers around an abandoned warehouse, you’ve wandered into entirely the wrong VHS aisle.
But if you like horror that leaves you thinking long after the credits roll, Videodrome remains one of the greatest examples of intelligent body horror ever made. It’s grotesque. It’s surreal. It’s darkly funny. And it’s more relevant now than it was in 1983. Long live the new flesh
P.S. Funny story about this film. In the early days of my relationship with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, she wanted to know what sort of horror films I was into. So, in the infinite wisdom of youth, I decided to show her Videodrome. To this day she no longer lets me recommend horror films. But we have been together for two decades now. And she did marry me. So, I ask, who’s the bigger freak?
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