Videodrome (1983)
80 %
Reviews Counted: 44 Fresh: 35 Rotten:9 Average Rating: 7.2/10
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Synopsis:
Max Renn runs an unauthorized cable channel in Toronto that caters to viewers demanding increasingly violent and pornographic material. One night, in search of new programming fodder, he stumbles across a scrambled satellite transmission emanating from unknown regions -- a startlingly... [More]
Genre: Television
Starring: James Woods, Deborah Harry, Peter Dvorsky, Les Carlson
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
Film is dotted with video jargon and ideology which proves more fascinating than distancing. And Cronenberg amplifies the freaky situation with a series of stunning visual effects.
06/06/07 04:09 PM
Top Critic David Cronenberg's most visionary and audacious film up to the time of its making, Videodrome is a fascinating rumination on humanity, technology, entertainment, sex, and politics that is virtually incomprehensible on first viewing.
06/06/07 04:08 PM
Never coherent and frequently pretentious, the film remains an audacious attempt to place obsessive personal images before a popular audience -- a kind of Kenneth Anger version of Star Wars.
06/06/07 04:07 PM
Top Critic Veers from being risible to sinister as it explores how viewers are brainwashed by TV.
03/03/07 07:32 PM
Videodrome is arguably one of Cronenberg's best horror films, and it holds up brilliantly.
07/12/06 09:37 PM
There are distinct signs of strain in the plot convolutions, not least in the spectator's loss of faith over indiscriminate and cheating use of hallucination; what certainly survives is Cronenberg's wholesale disgust with the world in general.
01/26/06 03:16 AM
The director captures the worst-case scenario of what might happen at the dawn of the video era, going all the way back to our parents' warning us not to sit too close to the television.
09/26/05 03:16 AM
Underbaked, but you can't argue with its otherworldly aura. One disappointment: we don't get to see the belly-slit sex organs Baker designed for the never-used orgy finale.
03/09/05 05:41 PM
By the time it reaches its...inevitable-feeling conclusion, 'Videodrome' has become more than a mere horror film--it's an indictment of everyone represented by its characters.
09/29/04 10:21 AM
Cronenberg was ahead of his time with this gross-out horror flick.
09/20/04 07:53 PM
Thematically, it connects easily with most other titles in the Cronenberg oeuvre, with the added treat of having been released far ahead of its time.
09/01/04 09:10 AM
Though Videodrome finally grows grotesque and a little confused, it begins very well and sustains its cleverness for a long while.
08/30/04 10:17 PM
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