Videodrome

Videodrome is a 1983 found-footage mindscrewer from David Cronenberg. Typical for a Cronenberg film, Videodrome features several yukky things, which are even more yukky than the stuff in David Lynch movies. Videodrome first established David Cronenberg as the "king of yukkiness" until he was usurped in 2005 by Ben Affleck.

Videodrome is notable for being a box-office bomb, despite being chill as Hell. This is because audiences in 1983 had notoriously bad taste and took David Cronenberg for granted, and that's why there aren't any more David Cronenberg movies, just David Lynch movies, which to David Cronenberg movies are like Bazooka to Fruit Stripes. Videodrome is also notable for its yukky imagery. David Cronenberg knows how to make you squirm. He wants you to squirm. Go ahead and squirm. You earned it.

Videodrome will screw you up.

Synopsis

Joe is just your typical guy, right? He just works at the cable company. He eats cheeseburgers. He drips and he drives, sometimes at the same time. He shuffles through papers, and he watches TV. One night, he sees this crazy deal on TV! It's not Videodrome yet, because that'd be too obvious. He sees Baywatch: Nights, and he thinks about how David Hasselhoff's career has really gone down since Knight Rider. So then he flips the channel, and he sees- "OHMIGOD IT'S VIDEODROME!!1! HECK YEH!" -interrupts your stoner friend, who has all the Cronenberg movies on DVD and thinks Cronenberg is like the best, You just yawn and eat some more Fritos. So then Joe, who's this average guy, notices that the weird broadcast is coming from Canada, and he thinks, "Yeah, the Canadians are weird, they'd come up with something like this."

But, in a super-twist, it turns out that Joe is actually Canadian, and the broadcast is coming from Pittsburgh! Joe must now adapt to his life as a Canadian. It won't be easy. He should have known. Videodrome isn't Canadian, Canadians have taste. It's those lousy Americans showing Videodrome, what a joke they are. Videodrome. Big deal.

Suddenly, the top of Joe's TV gets bloated, and the vent at the bottom lets out several small burps. A pair of juicy lips appears on the screen. Joe is kind of unnerved by this, but they are some nice lips. He asks the lips what they want. The lips say they want him, and then his screen turns into silly putty and a hand comes out of it. Joe is annoyed, because he had just gotten his TV repaired last week, and the guy who repaired it was fat and unpleasant to work with. The guy also charged him more than it was worth, Joe suspects. So Joe flips his TV off and goes to bed.

Videodrome Part 2: Revenge Of The Moon

Soon, Joe is making a fortune as a TV dish repairman and Canadian peat moss magnate. He watches Videodrome occasionally, but not all the time, because it's pretty interesting, y'know, but not like THAT GREAT or anything. It's better than The Young And The Restless, but not as good as Friends. Joe really likes Friends. But he watches Videodrome sometimes late at night when he's bored or drunk. Eventually, Joe watches too much Videodrome and his boss, Harlan Ellison, calls him into the office and fires him on the spot. Joe is upset by this, but doesn't mind it too much, because the Videodrome static hand can come out of the TV and give him a relaxing massage.

Joe finally got his converter box installed, and it only took one year of work!

When Joe gets home, though, the static hand and juicy lips say they're too tired to give him a massage. Joe is disappointed at this, but figures he can just watch something else. He asks the juicy lips how they're able to go through the TV screen, and they explain that they can do that because they're magic. "Ok," Joe says, and flips to the O.J. Simpson trials.

Soon, Joe notices that his stomach has grown a VHS player. He's shocked at first, but then realizes that he was going to buy a VHS player anyway, and so Videodrome was very thoughtful to provide him with an internal one, and, when you get right down to it, his stomach is as good a place as any to play old tapes on. Joe is thankful for the convenience VHS offers. That's how it was back in the day, VHS was king, and even if the VHS player was in your stomach, you didn't ask questions.

Joe does some research, and discovers that the official slogan of Videodrome is: "First It Controls Your Mind, then It Destroys Your Body." Joe is confused by this, because he knows that corporations ALWAYS have people's best needs in mind and would never seek to actively hurt a consumer. He also feels OK psychologically. However, Videodrome has created a festering, bloody wound in his stomach due to the VHS player being old and dirty. Joe feels that the slogan would be more accurate the other way around. Joe sets aside these semantics and waits for the mind control part to begin. He goes through his VHS collection and finds the Homeward Bound series. Joe remembers that his friend said Homeward Bound was kind of good, so he pops it into his stomach. He realizes that his VHS player isn't hooked up to a display of any sorts, and Joe wonders how he can hook his stomach VHS player up to the TV.

Joe then calls the TV repairman only loosely mentioned in Videodrome Part 1. In a mega-super-ultra-high definition-twist, the repairman is actually Weird Al Yankovic. This makes sense because, as a UHF technician, he knows all about analog TVs. Joe tells Weird Al what a big fan he is, before remembering that he actually isn't that big a fan. Al gets to work, and points out to Joe that he has a VHS player in his stomach and he's not equipped for this kind of work and goes outside and vomits, and then leaves forever. Joe is disappointed, so he turns on the TV and watches some Videodrome. Tonight, as it turns out, there's a Videodrome marathon.

Suddenly, stuff blows up. Joe finds that his eyes have turned into miniature floppy disks and his feet are Macintoshes. This is where things really start to go crazy, and Joe calls 911, but they don't believe him. Joe wonders if he's on drugs, but he hasn't done any drugs! Then, as his hair becomes little bytes and his fingers morph into pong paddles he reaches a shocking realization: Videodrome IS the drug! And he should have watched more Friends. A moral flashes:

Moral: Videodrome is the dug. Don't do drugs!

Trivia

• Even though in-universe Joe has a VHS player, only Betamaxes were able to fit in the artificial flesh wound. Heaven help the poor man with a Betamax player lodged in his gut.
• This was the last film appearance of Weird Al Yankovic Sr. before he was killed by his son, Weird Al Yankovic Jr. who has a bigger chin, creepy eyes, longer hair, and no mustache.
• A third installment in the series was planned but was scrapped due to the invention of DVD, since DVD isn't scary.
• Videodrome was one of the most successful films of all time, gaining $200M+ in the Box Office compared to the Film's budget of $240.78 and a $20 Subway Gift Card with only $7 left on it.