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Videodrome (Widescreen)
 
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Videodrome (Widescreen)

James Woods (Actor), Deborah Harry (Actor), David Cronenberg (Director) | Rated: R (Restricted) | Format: DVD
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
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Product Description

Amazon.ca Canadian Essential

David Cronenberg directed Videodrome, a horror movie that invites extreme reactions--good and bad--from viewers. It's a good example of Cronenberg's style: Unsettling and freakish, but intelligent. In the end Videodrome is a potent treatise on the effects of total immersion into our mass-media culture.

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Equal parts smart and sleazy, David Cronenberg's Videodrome depicts a cable TV owner who falls under the sway of a pirate program. Instead of bachelorettes and dancing stars, kinky sex and sadistic violence fill his screen. In the first commentary track, Cronenberg and cinematographer Mark Irwin talk about the cast and the makeup effects, like the gaping maw that opens up in Max Renn's abdomen. While Cronenberg praises the actor's performance, he reveals that James Woods refused to wear the virtual reality helmet, forcing the director to become his stand-in. Citing Marshall McLuhan as an inspiration, Cronenberg notes that "a lot of people have thought of this film as being very prophetic," adding "I have never been interested in being a prophet of any kind," and yet the movie predicts today's wired world. Despite the dark themes and tight schedule, Irwin remembers the shoot as a "pure joy." Woods and Deborah Harry tackle the second track, in which the former explains that the filmmaker "writes from inspirations he gets from his dreams." A 2004 documentary allows Rick Baker and Michael Lennick to go into more detail about the film's visceral imagery, including the exploding television and the exit of Len Carlson's Barry Convex. Other supplements include a stills gallery, the new wave-style trailers, a Universal featurette, excerpts from the fictional broadcast, a terrific episode of the 1982 series Take One (with Cronenberg, John Landis, and John Carpenter), and the unexpectedly tender 2000 short film Camera starring Carlson. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Customer Reviews

70 Reviews
5 star:
 (46)
4 star:
 (12)
3 star:
 (6)
2 star:
 (5)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (70 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Why Would Anyone Want to Watch a Scum Show Like Videodrome?, Sep 7 2004
By 
Ashley Allinson (Alliance Atlantis) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Videodrome (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)
Because it's on and is certainly more entertaining than The Beachcombers, Magnum P.E.I. or any other Canadian television programming circa 1982. Riding on the wave of his previous box-office success, Videodrome (1982) marks the first time that Cronenberg creates a story revolving around a single character. Like Donleavy's Singular Man (1964), introduction to conflict appears in the first person, point of view narrative acting as the catalyst within which Max Renn (James Woods) is to exist. There is a distinct break between what is supposed to be reality and that of hallucination (revisited later in Naked Lunch [1991]), the point to which is open for debate, a trajectory to which the film never resurfaces from. Certainly, the audience sees what Woods perceives, first person.

Establishing Max Renn as head of Channel 83, the opportunist runs a Toronto-based television station geared at projecting the sensational. After picking up a renegade channel from the otherness of the third world, Max becomes the product of McLuhanesque experimentation, pulses from television signals controlling his thought processes and subsequent actions. The character of Max Renn, it is said, was modeled on Moses Znaimer, head of CITY TV, Toronto's equivalent to Channel 83: Brian Oblivion's monologues a la Speakers Corner.

Our hero's artillery consists of a phallic-like extension housed in a vaginal opening. Nikki Brand (Deborah Harry) represents the desirable introduction to a product that he himself markets, perhaps an obviation that until this point was unattainable? Max's transgressive tendencies are projected through the videodrome, liberating him from the stigmatic purveyor of physical explicitness.

In a sense, Cronenberg has created his notion of Videodrome both as way of weeding out and destroying cells aroused by such activity, and as a way of gauging public sentiment toward this subject matter. The film itself was exposed to the judgmental ardor: its text encompassed, picketed by female members of parliament and removed from public screening, the subtext of subtext. Cut into three versions, the television cut is laughable; the VHS version appears as mise en scène in Atom Egoyan's Speaking Parts (1989), and the old DVD contains an original theatrical trailer that is a fitting pre-curser to this masterpiece.

The Criterion Collection's DVD has the following extra features:

-Two audio commentaries: David Cronenberg and director of photography Mark Irwin, and actors James Woods and Deborah Harry

-Camera (2000), a short film starring Videodrome's Les Carlson, written and directed by Cronenberg

-Forging the New Flesh, a new half-hour documentary featurette by filmmaker Michael Lennick about the creation of Videodrome's video and prosthetic makeup effects

-Effects Men, a new audio interview with special makeup effects creator Baker and video effects supervisor Lennick

-Bootleg Video: the complete footage of Samurai Dreams and seven minutes of transmissions from "Videodrome," presented in their original, unedited form with filmmaker commentary

-Fear on Film, a 26-minute roundtable discussion from 1982 between filmmakers Cronenberg, John Carpenter, John Landis, and Mick Garris

-Original theatrical trailers and promotional featurette

-Stills galleries featuring hundreds of rare behind-the-scenes production photos, special effects makeup tests, and publicity photos English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

-Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be considered a classic, Nov 1 2000
This review is from: Videodrome (Widescreen) (DVD)
If any film deserves to be called a modern classic, it is definitely Videodrome. This is an incredibly disturbing and dark tale about sex & violence on television. James Woods stars as Max Renn, head of the upstart cable station Civic TV, whose main draw is outrageous softcore pornography and extremely graffic violence. Renn intercepts a show called Videodrome which is nothing but hardcore violence for a half hour and becomes instantly mesmerized by its content. He soon discovers things about the show that should not be told or discussed to anyone until they see the film for themselves. The cast is brilliant, and Cronerberg seems to get his normal sleepy performances from everyone involved, including Woods and Deborah Harry, lead singer of 80's band Blondie. The only thing that will deter people from seeing this film is the amount of highly disturbing imagery and disgusting gore effects by makeup whiz Rick Baker. This is an abosolutely outstanding film that touches on a subject that is still hush hush in today's soceity. This is not a movie only for film buffs. It is a movie for everyone.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, Aug 20 2009
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This review is from: Videodrome (Widescreen) (DVD)
Shipping was fast, packaging was great, not much else to say, a good transaction all around. Thanks!
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