Videodrome

Movie Information

In Brief: David Cronenberg's brilliant horror-sci-fi-satire Videodrome seemed pretty far-fetched when it hit movie screens in 1983, but his vision of a world where technology would become so out of control that the line between mankind and his devices would become blurred in one gooey package (termed "the new flesh") no longer seems all that bizarre in our always "connected" present. In fact, it feels disturbingly prophetic.
Score:

Genre: Sci-Fi Horror Satire
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: James Woods, Sonja Smits, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Jack Creley
Rated: R

When you look at David Cronenberg’s nearly 30-year-old Videodrome (can it really be that long ago?) it’s incredible to realize how comparatively quaint the technology in the film is. It’s also hard not to realize that the points — warnings really — Cronenberg was making about technology overtaking our lives have only become more and more relevant with the passage of time. Ideas like a society that has to be patched back into the world through soup-kitchen-like missions that offer doses of TV, seem disturbingly real when you encounter news stories of homeless people putting a higher priority on an Internet connection than a place to sleep. The concept of an inanimate object becoming a permanent body fixture doesn’t appear anywhere near as ludicrous in a world where people can’t be parted — even briefly — from their cellphones or their Twitter account. How far away are we really from Cronenberg’s prophecy of “the new flesh?” For more on the film, you have your choice of my old review or Justin Souther’s:

http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/videodrome
http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/videodrome1

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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