Videodrome
Year: 1982
Language: English
Format: 35mm Colour
Runtime: 87 min
Director:
David Cronenberg
Producer:
Claude Héroux
Writer:
David Cronenberg
Cinematographer:
Mark Irwin
Editor:
Ronald Sanders
Sound:
Bryan Day
Music:
Howard Shore
Cast:
Lynne Gorman,
Jayne Eastwood,
Les Carlson,
David Tsubouchi,
Harvey Chao,
Henry Gomez,
Lally Cadeau,
David Bolt,
Reiner Schwartz,
Julie Khaner,
Jack Creley,
Peter Dvorsky,
Sonja Smits,
Deborah Harry,
James Woods
Production Company:
Filmplan international II Inc.,
Universal Pictures Inc.
Max Renn (Woods), a small-time cable television producer in Toronto, lacks scruples as much as he has and is driven by ambition. When Harlan (Dvorsky), Max’s resident satellite pirate, locks in on a Pittsburgh-based signal featuring sadomasochistic sex, Max is thrilled by the commercial possibilities and sets out to find the perpetrators of the signal known as Videodrome.
Max meets the attractive Nicki Brand (Harry) who introduces him to a variety of kinky sexual games. His obsession leads him to Brian O'Blivion (Creley), a media expert who only exists on television, and his daughter, Bianca (Smits). Max is soon drawn into a nightmare of hallucination, mind control and identity fragmentation. It becomes apparent that Max is — and has been all along — at the mercy of a sinister Orwellian conspiracy of business interests that devised the Videodrome signal as a means of entering and altering the minds of anyone exposed to it. By the time Max makes this discovery, it appears to be too late for him to do anything about it.
Videodrome is one of David Cronenberg's most profound and accomplished films — a searing vision of a society trapped within its own, often incoherent, technological illusions. At the same time, it is a telling portrait of an "innocent" Canada, bedevilled by media that’s not of its own making. Max Renn, the television entrepreneur, is more interested in disseminating images created by others than creating and disseminating his own images.