Videodrome

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Videodrome is a 1983 film directed by David Cronenberg.

1 Plot
2 Cult film status
3 Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film's story begins with Max Renn, the president of a sleazy local cable TV station, looking for new material to titillate his viewers. His technical staff picks up transmissions of a bizarre, violent program with no plot, only torture and murder in an orange room: snuff TV. As the director searches for the source of the transmissions, he meets Professor Brian O'Blivion (a character based on Marshall McLuhan), who only communicates through video recordings. O'Blivion warns him of a force called Videodrome. He finds that he is hallucinating violent acts and his own body transforming. His missing lover, a radio therapist with a penchant for self-mutilation, appears in visions of the Videodrome room.

Because the film takes place entirely from Renn's point of view, it becomes difficult to tell what is real and what is hallucination. A vagina-like opening appears in his stomach, allowing the villains to mentally program him by inserting video cassettes into it. As the film goes on, the video cassettes are depicted to look more like tumours. Under the influence of his programming he takes a gun, which merges with his hand to form a literal "handgun", and shoots his former business partners. He is then literally reprogrammed by Bianca O'Blivion, so that when one of the villains attempts to insert another tumour-like cassette into him he is able to fuse a grenade to the man's arm (i.e., a "hand grenade") which explodes and kills him.

Woods's character finally takes refuge on a derelict boat in an abandoned harbor, where his lover appears to him on a television set. He sees a TV set showing an image of himself pointing his handgun at his head and saying "long live the new flesh". His on-screen image shoots himself and the TV explodes, spilling human intestines all over the deck. He then repeats the action he has just watched, pulls the trigger, and the screen goes blank.

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Cult film status

Videodrome's cult film status has made it a popular source for sampling and homage in industrial and heavy metal music. It ranks tenth on the Top 1319 Sample Sources list [1] and has been sampled in at least 32 individual songs.

Its most prominently quoted line, "Long live the new flesh," was used as the chorus for the Wiseblood song "0-0 (Where Evils Dwells)", later covered by Fear Factory.
The Belgian techno band Front 242 used Barry Convex's line at the SpecOps trade show, "You know me, and I know you. Every one of you!", as the intro to their song Masterhit off their album Official Version and its remixes.
The punk band Big Audio Dynamite used Barry Convex's line, "I hope you realize you're playing with dynamite", as an intro to their song C'Mon Every Beatbox, referring to the movie as well as their own band name.
The song Sexual Orientation, along with at least three Emergency Broadcast Network productions, consists mostly of sound effects and quotes from the movie.

The electro/shoegaze group, The Very Hush Hush, entitled the first part of their debut album, Mourir C'est Facile, "Long Live the New Flesh." Prominently featured on the front of the album cover is a computer generated picture of body transmogrification composed by the artist, Ray Caesar (often compared to David Cronenberg).

The metal band Videodrone takes its name from the film.

The Post-punk band Flesh For Lulu named one of their albums "Long Live The New Flesh."

Baltimore-based noise rock band the New Flesh takes their name from the film.

Videodrome is also the name of an independent video rental store in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in many hard to find foreign, cult, and anime features.

Japanese film director Hideo Nakata has said that the scene of the malicious ghost Sadako coming out of the television in the film Ringu was inspired by Videodrome. Coincidentally, the Ring virus of the Japanese films and the first two novels and the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus of the final novel, Loop, operate in a similar fashion to the Videodrome signal, although author Koji Suzuki has not said anything on whether or not this is also a reference to Videodrome.

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Trivia

Civic TV is a reference to a real-life Canadian cable TV station, CityTV. CityTV gained notoriety for airing extremely violent and pornographic programs on their station.
The Betamax videotape format was used in the movie because VHS tapes were too large to fit into a faux stomach.
Videodrome pioneered the technology used to film a television screen with minimal flicker. In earlier movies, film footage was superimposed onto blank television screens.
Actor David Tsubōchi (Shinji Kuraki) later became a Minister in the Ontario provincial government (from IMDB).
The pornographic video Samurai Dreams was made specifically for the film. While only a few seconds of video was used, the entire tape ran for approximately 5 minutes, and is available for view on the Criterion Collection DVD of Videodrome.
The Videodrome "murder/torture/mutilation" video consists of over 11 minutes of footage, and involved devices which, according to Cronenberg, are "as lethal as wet noodles". After the movie was released, the actresses' boyfriends reportedly called the producers to ask for the unedited footage. 7 minutes of Videodrome footage is included on the Criterion Collection DVD.
Harlan's (Peter Dvorsky) video lab consisted of old video equipment dating back to the 1970's.
Woods' character name, "Max Renn", is based on the motorcycle brand Renmax. Deborah Harry's character name, "Nicki Brand", is a pun on the words "Nick" (to be cut) and "Brand" (to be burned), both of which describe the self-inflicted wounds made by her character throughout the movie. Leslie Carlson's character name, "Barry Convex", is a reference to a convex lens.
As the Cathode Ray mission sequence was being filmed Jock Brandis, the film's gaffer, walked in and casually informed the crew that the power lines to the building were smoking because of the load imposed on them by the TV sets.
The entire concept of brain tumor-inducing television programs is based on an urban legend dating back to the 1940's, when people believed television waves would cause brain tumors. Canadian-based rumors of mind-controlling television from right-wing extremists in the United States also inspired the plot line.
In James Woods' appearance in the Family Guy episode "Peter's Got Woods", he shows Videodrome to Peter Griffin. When Peter asks about the film's nudity, Woods proudly points out that he shows his butt in the film.
In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, "Dirt Foot", Master Shake claims he knows "the difference between the TV and the flesh world...Like from Videodrome, right?"
Alternate titles for this film were "Network of Blood" and "Zonekiller".