Movie Essay: The Body Horror of Videodrome

Videodrome is director David Cronenberg’s philosophical deconstruction of American culture, circa 1983. Yet, it remains relevant today as a commentary on the way in which American style violence infects the world. The story of shock television programmer, Max Renn, played by James Woods, Videodrome is not so much about Max as it is about how the American culture of violence is like an infectious disease spreading across borders. 

Max Renn is a carnival barker in the guise of a television executive. As the proprietor of Channel 83, Canada’s least watched yet most controversial cable network, Max specializes in blood and guts from around the globe. His programming features pornography and violence and even pornographic violence. Anything to get attention and sell advertising is okay by Max. But beyond his anything goes style of programming lingers and emptiness, a soullessness that makes Max the perfect test subject for Videodrome. 

What is Videodrome? For max, it’s the next big thing in sex and violence. Via his expert engineer and satellite pirate, Harlan (Peter Dvorkin), Max has stolen Videodrome with the intent of airing it on Channel 83. All that Videodrome appears to be, from what we are shown, is an hour of excruciating BDSM. A nude woman, never named, is brutally whipped for nearly an hour. There is no plot, no characters, just sexual violence. 

Max is convinced that he has a hit on his hands. 

What Max doesn’t realize, not immediately anyway, is that Videodrome isn’t a TV show. Videodrome was not filmed on a soundstage in Malaysia or Pittsburgh. No, the Videodrome is real… sort of. With the aid of a long dead Professor, Dr Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), Max discovers that Videodrome is the creation of a shadowy American, political cabal. It was created to take over vulnerable minds, like Max’s, and use violent imagery to compel the vulnerable toward violence. 

Max was chosen because he was a soulless hack, a man with no moral center, a man who lacks character. Max is an empty vessel that Videodrome, and the cabal, behind it can manipulate to do their bidding. Max represents the world consumer, the viewer, the audience drawn toward the twisted thrill of blood and sex and violence. Videodrome is the hypnotic drug of sex and violence that once made up so much of American culture and spread around the globe by television and movies via VHS or Betamax. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Horror in the 90s Nightbreed

Nightbreed (1990) 

Directed by Clive Barker 

Written by Clive Barker 

Starring Craig Scheffer, David Cronenberg, Anne Bobby

Release Date February 16th, 1990 

Box Office Gross $16 million dollars 

Clive Barker wastes no time; you see his monsters before the credits roll in Nightbreed. In terms of visual storytelling, a wall of cave paintings tells us that the monsters here are ancient, perhaps a pre-cursor to, or a compatriot of, early man. If these cave paintings are telling a story, that's unclear. Holy crap! Again, we waste no time. A mess of monsters are racing about to a classically Danny Elfman score. The scene is very... Andrew Lloyd Webber. The monsters and the choreography of the chase is, at the very least Broadway inspired. 

This is a dream sequence which explains the highly theatrical production and the stage-setting for the action. Our lead character, Aaron Boone (Craig Scheffer) has awakened from a dream of these fantastical monsters and the way in which Cliver Barker self-inserts himself into the story is hard to miss here. Having his handsome main character dreaming up these fantastical monsters is a very obvious corollary to the writer-director-author who has, in fact, created these monsters for this movie. 

Nightbreed is based on the novel 'Cabal' by Clive Barker. Barker adapted the book into a screenplay and directed the film based on that screenplay from his own book. So, yeah, this is a Clive Barker joint through and through. I imagine having himself inserted as the main character, stopping just short of calling the character Clive and having him be a multi-hyphenate artist, won't be the last time we see parallels between Aaron, AKA Cabal, and his creator. 

Seemingly out of the blue we get a sequence of slasher horror that is among the best of the decade. Barker takes us to a random suburban home. A loving wife and her husband are laughing together and playful. They have a young son and he gives us the first sign of something unseemly occurring. The boy tells his mother that he's afraid and claims that he was kept awake by a 'bad man.' This bad man turns out to be the real deal, a slasher killer who makes an incredible first impression. 

Employing a a horror filmmaking trope, Barker has the mother open the freezer door in the kitchen. This serves to block a portion of empty space next to her. Naturally, the trained film watcher knows that when mom closes the freezer door, someone, or something, will be there and this scene will move jarringly from the suburban mundane to the terrifying. Here, since he's employing a familiar trope, Barker has to deliver something big. Something shocking. And boy does he deliver. 

A killer in one of the most terrifying masks we will see in 90s horror, is behind that freezer door. He immediately slashes mom to death with what is surely an incredibly sharp knife. The movement is swift and horrifying and your breath catches when you see it. The visual of the blood on the ground and the sight of apples that the mother was near or carrying covered in blood as the roll across the floor is a sublime horror visual. The gurgling of the mother character, having been slashed across the face and throat, and the seemingly realistic amount of blood, only serves to amplify the terror. 

Dad is next. The killer, wearing this incredibly scary mask and a long black trench coat, a look that evokes a much more frightening take on Claude Rains' The Invisible Man, enters the living room and shuts off the lights. In just a brief moment that superbly heightens the awfulness of what is to come, dad smiles to himself, assuming that his lovely wife has returned for more intimacy. He's wrong, of course, and that we know it and he doesn't adds another layer of deep dismay. Once dad is dead, the scene heightens again. 

Our mind flashes to that little boy at the top of the stairs. Knowing this, and taking remarkable advantage of our empathetic rooting interest, Barker chooses to move the camera to the child's perspective, looking down the stairs at the killer. Here, Barker masterfully pauses, giving us the brief hope that maybe the killer won't look for the boy, maybe the child will merely bea witnes to this terror. That hope is snuffed out as the killer's sickening gaze, through what looks like buttons where his eyes should be. The mask evokes another, much less well-known influence, 1976's The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a Charles B. Pierce directed film, and also a movie about a serial murderer in a mask. 

Does the child die? We don't know. in the moment but but it certainly did not appear that he had much chance of survival. I can't stress how great this scene is. In only his second feature film, following the less than stellar but entirely memorable, Hellraiser, Barker demonstrates masterful control over his camera, the patience of Hitchcock in letting his scene build while adding details to amp the moment, and an ingenious notion of how to end a scene thick with dread and intrigue. It's remarkable and I am shocked I've not heard about this scene before. 

Another example of Barker's growth as a director is his choice to follow this scene by letting off some steam. He needs to place his characters on a map for the story to proceed. Thus, Aaron is at work and his girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobbi), drops in for a visit. She explains that she's going to be at a nightclub that night, performing as a singer. The dialogue is all exposition but it's not tedious as Aaron and Lori are making out almost the whole time, breaking for dialogue and an occasional breath. Scheffer and Bobbi have tremendous sexual chemistry so the making out is a good choice but we now also know where the characters are going to be and why. What looks like a superfluous scene then, is thus now a scene that has set the table for what is to come and established the couple even further as young lovers we want to see together again. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review: A History of Violence Starring Viggo Mortensen

A History of Violence (2005) 

Directed by David Cronenberg 

Written by Josh Olson

Starring Viggo Mortenson, Maria Bello, Ed Harris

Release Date September 23rd, 2005 

Published September 23rd, 2005 

Streaming Rental through Amazon 

One unique trend in modern film is the connection between sex and violence. In thrillers and horror films these two disparate acts are often found at a crossroad. In horror; sex is punished, often with a bloody violent death, see Friday The 13th. In thrillers like Sin City sex and violence are married through characters. The prostitutes of Sin City are righteously violent vixens who mete out biblical justice when they aren't serving the few righteous citizens who prove worthy of their services.

In David Cronenberg's A History of Violence the sex-violence link is a little more murky. The sex is hardcore and the violence is bloody and excessive. There is no open link between sex and violence except that extreme forms of both are in the film. What in Cronenberg's mind links the two could be a philosophical circle of life, a birth and death connection. Or it could be that few things are more cinematically attention grabbing than sex and violence.

Whatever the reasoning, Cronenberg's A History Of Violence links sex and violence inside a thriller that never fails to titivate and fascinate.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortenson) has achieved the American dream. Living in a small town in Indiana, Tom own's a diner, his wife Edie is a successful lawyer and their two kids, 16 year old Jack (Ashton Holmes) and 6 year old Sarah (Heidi Hayes) are healthy and thriving. The Stall family is the perfect Norman Rockwell idea of homey goodness.

Lurking beneath the surface of this small town paradise are some violent and dangerous secrets that come to life when two thugs show up in Tom's diner. We have seen these thugs in the opening of the film callously murder the operators of a small motel, now they have arrived at Tom's diner at closing time with the same ill intentions. In a scene that is stunningly violent and graphic, Tom manages to stop the thugs from robbing the diner and murdering his customers.

The violent nature of Tom's turning back these bad guys is overlooked by residents who are just thankful for Tom's heroism. However, when Tom's bravery makes the paper his violent acts and recognizable face draw the attention of people Tom may have been trying to forget. On the heels of Tom's heroic act, three more thuggish types arrive in town and at Tom's diner.

The leader of this group of bad guys is Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris) who claims to recognize Tom as a man named Joey who some years earlier disappeared from Philadelphia after having taken Fogerty's eye out with barbed wire. Tom incredulously explains that he doesn't know who Joey is and is eventually forced to call in the local sheriff (Peter MacNeill) to run Fogerty out of town. That doesn't work and eventually Tom is forced to face Fogerty at his home in front of his whole family.

While all of this drama with Fogerty is going on, tensions at home have amped up over Jack's sudden bursts of arrogance and violence. Being bullied at school, Jack finally retaliated and badly hurt one of the boys who had been harassing him. There is also tension between husband and wife over Fogerty's accusations and holes in Tom's past that he refuses or simply can't resolve. Fogerty confronting Edie in a shopping mall plants seeds of doubt in her mind that eventually leads Edie to believe her husband may not be who she thinks he is.

A History of Violence is a mystery and a thriller. Cronenberg deftly walks the line in teasing the identity of Tom and Joey, allowing for intriguing speculation and cathartic revelation. It's a difficult tightrope to walk and since this mystery plot isn't even Cronenberg's real subject, his skilled handling of it is that much more impressive.

In A History of Violence, David Cronenberg asks; is violence inevitable? Uncontrollable? Is it simply part of human nature? Cronenberg even wonders if violence is hereditary. Is it possible that because Tom is capable of so much violence that he has passed this genetic trait for violence to Jack? Geneticists have debated a violence gene but most feel it is often more nurture than nature. Man is inherently predisposed to certain forms of violence through evolution, the survival of the fittest, but the trait for a violent nature is not passed from one generation to the next through the genes.

Evolution and the survival of the fittest have been a favored subject of David Cronenberg for years. A History of Violence is yet another example of his fascination with the subject. The film displays a kill or be killed example of characters who show themselves to simply be superior in knowing how to survive. One character specifically demonstrates that he is the fittest of all.

Then there is the sex and violence I mentioned in my opening paragraphs. The sex and violence in A History of Violence are graphic and closely examined by Cronenberg's camera. The film opens with offscreen violence which we witness the aftermath of, large pools of blood and a pair of battered bodies, and a shocking finale that also takes place just offscreen, though is no less stunning for not having been seen.

The first sex scene between Tom and Edie begins right away with a bit of kink as Edie dresses the part of a cheerleader and Tom the captain of the football team waiting to take her virginity. The scene progresses to sex that is not often portrayed in a mainstream movie. The scene is not graphic per se, but it is surprisingly frank and revealing.

The violence once again erupts at Tom's diner when the thugs attempt the robbery. Tom defends himself and his customers with serious violence. First shooting one thug in the head, a scene in which Cronenberg captures this mans head exploding from the bullet impact in a vividly realistic flash cut. Tom then kills the other guy with a shot to heart that sends the thug flying through a window.

More scenes of violence proceed the films final sex scene which is completely opposite the tender, loving lovemaking of the first scene. After a major argument in which Edie wonders if Tom may really be Joey, Tom violently takes Edie on the stairs of the family home. The scene begins as a rape but soon an excited and very into it Edie begins to enjoy the violence. This is a highly controversial moment that Cronenberg couches as not being a comment on women and violence but as a comment on Edie's character and her own attraction to danger and the unknown. That's debatable, it's fair to say, many women will justifiably find this scene of violent sex hard to watch so be prepared.

What I really liked about A History of Violence is Cronenberg's depth and curiosity and his bravery in examining so many subjects inside one story. The film considers evolution, violence, sex, and genetics in a frank and intelligent manner. Cronenberg does not hold back at all. His violence is shocking, his sex is no holds barred and his mind is open to exploring; through these characters a wide variety of interesting topics.

There is also in A History Of Violence a smart mystery thriller plot. Is Tom really a mob thug named Joey? Does Edie know the truth? Who is this man Fogerty and who is this guy he works for who claims to be Joey/Tom's brother, played by Oscar nominee William Hurt? This thriller plot combined with Cronenberg's lively mind make a formidable movie.

A History of Violence can be written off as exploitative, but that is only if you look at the surface of the picture. Beneath the surface is a smart and always curious film in search of truths about human nature and our propensity for violence. Inside A History of Violence is a clever dissertation on the modern survival of the fittest.

We rarely acknowledge and certainly do not examine modern examples of the survival of the fittest and the various ways one human thrives ahead another. David Cronenberg is the rare person who is quite taken with this subject. A History of Violence, I believe, is just one of many examples of how Cronenberg has and will continue examining this fascinating and disturbing subject.

Essay Hollywood Sex and Violence Link (2006)

In 2006, in the wake of the release of A History of Violence and Sin City, I wrote about how Hollywood movies linked sex and violence. This is that essay recovered from an old MySpace blog... 

FYI This post contains what you might call spoilers for the plot of the film A History of Violence. If you wish to watch that film with the mystery in place do not read until after you watch the film. Happy reading and please post your responses.

One unique trend in modern film is the link between sex and violence. In horror films and thrillers these two disparate acts are now often found at a crossroad. In horror films sex is often punished with a bloody violent death, see Friday the 13th as an example. Sexuality or sensuality is similarly punished, consider films like Slumber Party Massacre (not exactly a brilliant subject of serious discourse but follow me here) where beautiful woman are brutally and viciously murdered for the simple fact that they are beautiful. The camera spends ample time exploiting the beauty of the women in the film with copious nude scenes and scenes of woman in various states of undress. And then the film sets about destroying that beauty with hardcore violence.

In the thriller genre take an example like Steven Speilberg's Munich which transposes a scene of a husband making love to his wife, a reunion after a long absence by the husband who has been compromising his morals out of duty to his country. The conflicted husband cannot escape thoughts of horrific violence as he is going about the loving act of intercourse with his wife. The sex scene is edited to a chorus violent images of Israeli athletes being brutally killed.What is the purpose of the sex and violence link in Munich? I believe it was the demonstration of the husband's conflicted conscience. On the one hand he is engaged in a pure act of love. On the other he cannot escape the horror of the violence he has been set to avenge. He cannot escape the horror of violence even as he is experiencing the ultimate in pure human goodness and joy.

In Sin City sex and violence are uniquely linked by the prostitutes of Sin City. Led by Rosario Dawson's character the prostitutes are unlikely representations of justice and righteousness. They mete out the punishment of corruption with violence and reward perceived goodness with sexual favors. Thus, Michael Clark Duncan's corrupt detective is punished with violence while Mickey Rourke's Marv is rewarded for his good intentions with the sexual favors of Goldie.

The innocent but oh so provocative sexuality of Jessica Alba's character is protected by the righteous violence of Bruce Willis' cop character. He would be rewarded with sexual favor if he were so inclined. Sex and violence are linked in Sin City in a cause and effect fashion. The good receive sexual favors the evil are punished with violence. All is right with the world.

In A History of Violence the sex violence link is a narrative function. The film features the extremes of both sex and violence. The films central action involves a pair of psychotically violent killers who are first glimpsed having murdered the staff of an anonymous roadside motel and a small child of one of the staffers. They come to the small town Indiana diner of Viggo Mortenson's Tom Stahl with the intent of more violence and are met with a viciously violent reaction from the seemingly mild mannered Mr. Stahl. The violence of this scene is extreme. Tom shoots one killer in the head sending him flailing through a plate glass window. Tom is graphically stabbed in the foot by the other killer who is then shot in the head by Tom. Director David Cronenberg gives us a closeup look at the damage of the bullet through the killer's skull in all of it's gory glory.

Meanwhile at home, prior to the violence at the center of the plot Tom makes love to his wife played by Mario Bello. The first sex scene is tender and loving but with more than a little hint of kink. Tom's wife has chosen to dress as a cheerleader and the two role play as a high school couple entering their first sexual experiment. The sex then becomes more graphic as oral copulation becomes central to the scene before we fade to the next morning and the establishing of the films central plot. Oddly the first sex scene features no nudity. The only link between the sex and violence at this point is Tom. He is an attentive and gentle lover who later shows himself capable of terrific physical violence. This is central to the dichotomy that is Tom who is revealed to have a violent secret past.

The second sex scene takes place after further violence has established Tom as a dangerous figure. An argument between Tom and his wife becomes physical as Tom attempts to stop his wife from walking away from their argument. Tom grabs her forces her to the ground, they are fighting on the stares leading to their bedroom, she slaps and kicks to break away from him. He forces her beneath him. After seeming to subdue her the violent confrontation suddenly begins to become sexual. The wife becomes turned on as does Tom and the two engage in angry, violent sex right there on the staircase. The scene, I believe, demonstrates the wife's tacit acceptance of her husbands true nature. She is telling him at once that she is unhappy with his lie but accepts it and will eventually be able to put it behind her. It's a brilliant form of shorthand that eliminates the need for a merely melodramatic scene of a couple arguing.

None of what I've written however truly gets at the heart of the sex/violence link in modern film. I have demonstrated the link but not the reason. This is where you come in dear reader. What is your theory of why Hollywood has so directly linked sex and violence. Post your responses please.