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 Videodrome
1982
This is the first Cronenberg movie I've seen. I
have to say I liked it, in fact it's a really good mixture of what
I like in movies. A "trippy" movie where you're not sure what's real and
what's fantasy, effects that are kind of cheesy, and lots of
violence. This movie feels like a mixture of Jacob's Ladder, 8mm and
Evil Dead.
James Woods plays a cable programmer who's always looking for something
more hardcore, sleazy and so on for his channel, he finds out about a
snuff show called Videodrome that he wants to put on his station.
Eventually you find out that the show drives people crazy. Of course
there's more to it than that, but i don't want to be a jerk that gives
out spoilers.
All of the hallucination scenes are done well, and there are a lot of
them. By the end of the movie I wasn't
sure if everything was a hallucination or if I was watching a sci-fi
movie. I'm going to have to watch this movie a few more times to really
"get it", or to try to. Either way there's no CGI or any of that crap
here. And it really does provide an escape from reality.
The ending of the
movie kinda bummed me out, I was expecting more, maybe an explanation,
or something, but hey it was still a pretty good experience all around.
The first part of the movie is done well, very subtle for showing a lot
of violence and sex. Hey, you even see Deborah Harry of Blondie
naked. That was pretty cool, though the last part of the movie was more
exciting for me, with all of the cool make-up effects, blood and
violence. This stuff was fun to watch but it really changed the mood of
the movie, the message was still there, but it made it seem like a
b-horror movie. Of course these could be hallucinations anyway.
I'm pretty torn here, and I don't want to give away too much about the
movie. So for all of you gore-fiends out there I give you this screen
shot:
I picked up a barebones version of this movie from
Deep Discount
for about $6, this saved me about $25 over the Criterion version.
Criterion seems to be a synonym for "rape". For example " I would have
bought dinner and a movie but my wallet was Criterioned". This
movie was definitely worth the purchase, but if your only option is the
Criterion version you might want to just rent it. I'm sure some of the
short films and what not on the other version are nice, but I can't see
paying that much for a couple special features, and a not so cheesy
cover.
4 out of 5 skulls
Thanks to Edwin for the Recommendation
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