McGregor.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (02/04/83)
If you thought TRON was off-the-wall, look at this.
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BC-REVIEW-''VIDEODROME''
(Newhouse 006)
Film review, for use when ''Videodrome'' opens at local theaters
By RICHARD FREEDMAN
Newhouse News Service
(UNDATED) When it comes to exploding heads or imploding tummies, no
one can serve them up with greater zest, dash and even elegance than
Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg (''Scanners'').
In ''Videodrome'' - aided and abetted by Rick Baker, who won an
Oscar last year for his grisly makeup effects in ''An American
Werewolf in London'' - Cronenberg outdoes himself.
Most of the horrors here happen to Max Renn (James Woods), who
richly deserves them. As the head of Toronto's Civic Cable TV station
(''The One You Take To Bed With You''), Max is eternally on the
lookout for bizarre fare to titillate his small but avid public.
Aided by electronics whiz Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), a scruffy type who
calls himself ''The Prince of Pirates,'' Renn can steal and tape
soft-core satellite transmissions from as far away as Malaysia.
But the really intriguing show Harlan has turned up is something
called ''Videodrome,'' coming from no further away than placid
Pittsburgh. It's pure snuff-TV, in which real victims are tortured
and killed before the glazed eyes of what is euphemistically called
''the subterranean market.''
And Max is a great believer in that market, on the theory that
pornography and violence are better contained in the television set
than let loose on the street.
In the course of ''Videodrome,'' he learns better.
He loses his masochistic media-junkie girlfriend (Deborah Harry of
the rock group ''Blondie'') to the show. He locks horns with the
mysterious Professor O'Blivion (Jack Creley) who seems to exist only
on tape, and his frosty daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits), who helps her
father run the Cathode Ray Mission for derelicts in need of a fast,
free TV fix.
Most menacing of all is Barry Convex (Les Carlson), the jovial head
of the Spectacular Optical Company, which sells cheap glasses to
Third World myopics as a front for more sinister operations.
It would be unfair even to hint what these are, except to say they
involve video hallucinations, in which the boundary line between
electronic image and flesh-and-blood reality blurs and then
disappears altogether.
So in the course of his fascinated exploration of the Videodrome
phenomenon, Renn undergoes some horrific transformations, including
his navel becoming a gaping wound (Cronenberg shows us perhaps more
of the lint in Woods' belly button than we really need to see).
Wonderfully eerie, occasionally sickening, and at times downright
disgusting, ''Videodrome'' is nevertheless a classy nightmare of
paranoid, futuristic horror. Its macabre wit is directed at folk who
think they can't live without the dubious comfort of non-stop
television. They discover they can't live with it, either.
Better, on the whole, to read a book.
X X X
FILM CLIP:
''VIDEODROME.'' Eerie, occasionally sickening horror film about
James Woods as the boss of a cable TV station catering to the
''subterranean market,'' who falls victim to his own TV set. Clever,
gory nightmare by David Cronenberg, who made ''Scanners.'' Rated R.
Three stars.
SG END FREEDMAN
(DISTRIBUTED BY THE FIELD NEWS SERVICE)
nyt-02-03-83 1831est
***************Lawler.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (02/04/83)
This film was reviewed on Sneak Previews last night. Both reviewers felt is one of the worst films that they ever sat through. According to them it is one of the most brutal, masochistic films produced in a long time. The original idea of the movie is lost in the first fifteen minutes and the remainder is masochistic sex acts that are poorly produced. They felt is is a media hype.