The Grim Cellar

1983, Canada, Directed by David Cronenberg

Colour, Running Time: 89 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Criterion, Video: Anamorphic 1.82:1, Audio: Mono

Max Wren runs a small Television station providing the kind of sex and violence that Americans don’t usually get to see on broadcast, this allegedly being a means of survival in the face of much bigger and more financially powerful stations. Max is always on the lookout for harder stuff to pull in wider audiences so his interest is understandably piqued when one of the technicians introduces him to a show called Videodrome depicting sexualised torture and murder. Intercepted by their satellite, Videodrome is apparently being broadcast from Malaysia, as is evident by the distorted and delayed reception. He begins trying to track down the source of the show, finding out that the Malaysian origins are false when the signal delay is found to be a decoy - the broadcast is being sent from Pittsburgh. Max discovers that the mastermind may be an eccentric man, Brian O’Blivion, who he was previously interviewed with for a talk show, but after watching a tape personally prepared for him by O’Blivion, Max begins to experience vivid hallucinations. To his horror he finds out that the Videodrome program is actually responsible for inducing the growth of a tumour in his brain, one that’s causing the hallucinations that are predicted to get worse. Sure enough, before long he is finding it difficult to distinguish between the twisted visions in his mind and what is apparently reality: his grip on life is spiralling out of control.

Creating some disturbing sci-fi tinged horrors during the 70s Cronenberg really found his feet by the time the production of Videodrome came about. The plot is not only unique but also philosophically intriguing, questioning as it does the nature of perception of reality - that is, to what degree does an organism accurately perceive reality and how much more relevant are the perceptions of one organism over another considering these perceptions are all effectively contained within the mind anyway? This is a concept that the director later went on to explore further in Naked Lunch as well as eXistenZ (and, to a lesser degree, Spider). The fragments of the plot in Videodrome that may at first merely appear to facilitate genre-typical use of extreme special FX (skillfully created by Rick Baker) gradually reveal themselves to more cognitive viewers to be metaphorically representative of the hallucinogenic interpretations of what’s actually happening around and to Max - this is a film in which I noticed more and more subtle detail each time I watched it and even after something like eight or nine viewings I was deciphering certain things that had previously eluded me. As Max’s visions intensify and his confusion grows so too is the viewer taken along on the same trip, as Cronenberg refuses to signal when these visions begin and conclude (if, indeed, they do conclude). On first viewing this may be disconcerting but repeated viewings are rewarded with increased understanding. Another conceptual strand that underlines the film is contradictory at a glance: Cronenberg appears to be suggesting that people can be influenced by watching things on a TV screen (i.e. Max views a video transmission and this indirectly results in aggressive, homicidal behaviour on his part), an argument that was particularly rife in the 80s as video became popular and, in the minds of do-gooders, the media and politicians, threatened the very fabric of law and order (though they appear to have done a good job of allowing crime to become rampant in the UK without video; lack of discipline and appropriate punishment are far more potent here than video nasties ever were). For someone who effectively made his name creating violent films it seems strangely hypocritical to present something that appears to advocate censorship. Perhaps there’s more to it than that… One of the great composers of our time, Howard Shore, provides a soundtrack that weaves a path towards certain doom, reminding the viewer that there can be no upbeat result to the proceedings of this story. James Woods was a good choice for Max, satisfactorily representing a man on a confusing descent towards the unknown as his understanding of reality disintegrates piece by piece. Debbie Harry plays his girlfriend, an unhinged woman (ironically, she hosts a radio program to help emotionally imbalanced people) experimenting with S&M who becomes interested in ‘applying’ to appear on Videodrome after seeing some young girl being brutally whipped on the show while staying at Max’s house. With a multi-layered conceptual structure that is intriguing, thought provoking and highly entertaining, this engrossing film is somewhere at the top of Cronenberg’s produce and remains one of genre cinema‘s greats in my opinion.

Thank God for both Videodrome and Criterion. Available from Universal on both sides of the pond in its R rated version, Criterion came along and blew that one into oblivion. This is a 2 disc set collating just about anything worth having, including the indispensable commentary by Cronenberg, documentaries, plus a 40 page booklet containing three articles plus credits. The uncensored transfer was extensively restored from the 35mm interpositive and, while grainy in the opening reel, settles down to become the definitive presentation of this film. No 5.1 remixing has been done, as one expects from Criterion: purism is the operative approach and a very clean mono track provides the audio. However long DVD continues to survive in the wake of HD’s arrival, this package (nicely designed inside to look like an old betamax cassette) will remain one of the all-time greatest DVD releases for me.