If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Cronenberg's body horror presciently burrows into the hallucinatory immersion of virtual reality more than 30 years ago, VIDEODROME, its title refers to a series of video images with contents of mondo exploitation, torture and murder, which entice our protagonist Max Renn (Woods) into an almost involuntary addiction to its subversiveness and perverse sexual gratifications. Renn is the president of a Toronto-based television station, which specializes in producing subterranean programs consist of violence and soft-core pornography to a niche market. So, the discovery of Videodrome thrills him to the core, after shares it with his new acquaintance, a luscious radio host Nicki Brand (Harry, in her iconic filmic bravura), whose masochistic proclivity surprises him, Max begins to trace down the original source of Videodrome, which leads him to Bianca (Smits), the daughter of Professor Brian O'Blivion (Creley), one of the in-crowds, but only gets further befuddled by the video cassettes he is offered to watch, which elicit the eeriest hallucination starting from a suddenly animated cassette and a throbbing TV set, into which he can submerge his face, then he rips his own abdomen open and puts a pistol inside. This is a high water-mark for special effects and makeup work, under the supervision of the now legendary Rick Baker, before things turn into more conventional bloodbath and repugnant viscous mutations (quite Cronenberg's trademark) during Max's killing spree when he is brainwashed into slaughtering his colleagues, until he is rescued by Bianca, and enlightened into a "leave the old flesh"rebellion towards those who are behind this largely unspecified conspiracy theory, and finally accepts his predestined fate, to embrace his new flash in a nihilistic finale. By my lights, Videodrome is designed to eliminate those who are easily subjected to what it offers by fostering a certain brain tumor into the addicted viewers, so as to cull the deprived-minded from the mass and make North America strong again, which is an ingenious idea, but under the film's succinct length and Cronenberg's preference of stimulating our ocular sense, it doesn't hit the mark. The cast is utilitarian, James Woods can be very arresting on top of his every-man appearance, emblazoned by his maniac detachment; Debbie Harry, the leading singer of Blondie, is purely designed as a beacon of lust and self-destruction, heightened by the gratuitous nudity, and Peter Dvorsky, as Max's tech-savvy sidekick Harlan, serves as a key conspirator as a well-conceived game-changer. As an analog-era surreal horror, VIDEODROME bears the trappings of the epoch with the now obsolete video cassettes, cathode ray tubes and shoulder-padding garments, but what still remains as a hot-button topic is its savvy forewarning of the televised stimuli on individuals, now predominantly in the form of ubiquitous computer, laptop, pad, cell-phone screens, a trend seems to be unstoppable, it deeply shifts our way of assimilating information and communicating with others, not to mention, in the movie, there is also a prototype of VR helmet, as unwieldy and intimidating as it should be, we are expected to feel scary about it, but now, in 2017, many of us would take that gizmo immediately to luxuriate in a state of euphoria and get a kick into an unmapped un-reality so damning enthralling but also potentially perilous, yet, this is the future, and it is coming, which makes Cronenberg's vintage horror a more reflective and trenchantly ironic fable,

This is a transitional film for Cronenberg. It's the last film he made that bears the marks of his early style, and it points to the direction he will eventually (but not immediately) go in. While I have great admiration for the ambition it displays, it doesn't completely succeed for me, and is one of my least favorite of his early films. Only "Scanners" really works even less for me. What he's doing here is very similar to what he does later in a film like "Naked Lunch", or even "Spider" I guess, where an unreliable narrator affects the film in ways that makes everything depicted questionable. My issue with "Videodrome" is that the reality of the film breaks down to the point that I don't think anyone can really say what's really happening in the last 20-40 minutes of the film. Is that a serious problem? No, and I still think it's a remarkable film, but I think Cronenberg demonstrates less control over this film and it's subject matter than he does over earlier and subsequent films.

I like weird movies. I love it when a film maker decides to go outside of the box and use strange and surreal stories to present unusual concepts like TV ruling our world. Croneneberg-notorious for making strange films-directed this picture and his fingerprints are all over it. The questioning of reality, the dream like imagery and the hammy acting are all part of his charm. But frankly, it simply didn't work here. The story of the film is about the head of a TV station named Max Renn that broadcasts sleazy sex-ploitation movies. He comes across a new program called Videodrome that begins to affect the way his mind works. Eventually, reality begins to unfold around him as a war between fiction, reality, and rival companies comes to the surface. Now, the main problem with this film is that it leaves the audience with more questions than answers. Now allowing your audience to think for themselves is a good thing. But allowing too many questions to be wide open isn't. In Inception, letting the audience guess whether or not Leonardo Di Caprio's character was still in a dream or not was a great use of suspense. Videodrome slowly reveals the secrets of it's world but as it does so, it begins to make less and less sense.Did that actually happen or was just in his head? Was that person real or did Videodrome mess with your head? Why is an eyewear company getting involved with TV? It is like a piece of clothing that if you just pull out a little string than the whole thing unravels and turns into a mess. Now the visuals and the special effects are very well done, I will give the movie that. That doesn't make up for the fact though that it isn't really well constructed story wise. If you want to watch a really gross body horror film that questions what reality is, go check out eXistenZ-another Cronenberg film with similar themes to Videodrome but done way better.

Videodrome doesn't have the same well-written characters that The Fly (1986) did but it still has the power to draw us in due to its disturbing visuals and great themes.After a television executive searches for an intense new program for his TV network, he discovers a VHS tape called "Videodrome" which causes him to undergo a series of bizarre hallucinations.Sometimes, this movie becomes too disgusting to watch (which is a good thing) and for good reasons too because the visuals are very disturbing and well-done. The movie tends to surprise us with its visuals too when we're least expecting it which makes its scenes work even better.This also has great acting from James Woods. All of the other actors were great too but James Woods was really the only one who I felt stood out in the movie. However, his great performance was enough to carry the movie.This movie has a chilling message which becomes more powerful today seeing as how technology keeps on advancing which leads to explicit and graphic entertainment rise.This is still a great movie but I feel that The Fly is a better movie than this. The reason I think so is because The Fly contained well-written characters. I couldn't really connect with Max Renn as I did with Seth Brundle. However, this shouldn't bother you too much if you don't mind lack of character development. However, this is why I feel that The Fly is a little better.In conclusion, this is a disturbing movie which contains a deep message. It gives audiences some disturbing things to think about. This is an amazing movie and all. I just think that The Fly is better because of its character development. However, you should still see this one too.