As the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he happens upon "Videodrome," a TV show dedicated to gratuitous torture and punishment, Max sees a potential hit and broadcasts the show on his channel. However, after his girlfriend auditions for the show and never returns, Max investigates the truth behind Videodrome and discovers that the graphic violence may not be as fake as he thought.
Practical Effects
The flesh-gun prop still makes SFX artists weep with envy.
Direction
Cronenberg turning a TV antenna into existential dread.
Acting
James Woods commits to unraveling with sweaty desperation.
Director
David Cronenberg
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cronenberg shot in actual Toronto slums and used a real public access station, blurring his fiction with the city's grimy media landscape.
The 'new flesh' philosophy predicts internet identity fragmentation decades early—O'Blivion's disembodied existence is basically a Twitch streamer with worse hardware.
CA
