Podcast: Videodrome
With guest Love Connie
Bring Me The Axe! Horror Podcast
Episode 96: Videodrome
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Bring Me the Axe! is a comedy podcast celebrating the best (and worst) horror from a time when the video store ruled the night. Every other week, brothers Bryan and Dave White (and the occasional guest) heed the call of nostalgia and evaluate the classic 70s and 80s horror movies they loved in their childhood to determine whether the movies are still relevant today or should be allowed to fade into obscurity.
This week we’re joined by actor, drag queen, and Debbie Harry fanatic, Love Connie, for a look at David Cronenberg’s sexy and sadistic meditation on horror, television, and society: Videodrome. The early 1980s saw a revolution in consumer video. Small UHF stations broadcast trashy movies at night to compete with the larger VHF networks. VCRs and cable introduced theatrical films to the home market uncut for broadcast. Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, had some real deep thoughts on what that would mean for our society and how it would change our consciousness. Cronenberg saw a movie in there and he cast James Woods and Debbie Harry as pawns in a game played by shadowy figures using television signals to physically transform the viewers.
Max Renn is an executive for CIVIC-TV, a small UHF station in Toronto, a station that broadcast violent and pornographic content. He’s on the lookout for the next sensation that’ll broaden his audience and he stumbles on to what appears to be a snuff show called Videodrome. It’s nothing but brutality, no plot, no characters, just violence. The deeper he looks into it, the worse his hallucinations become. What’s real? What’s fantasy? Does it even matter? What is Videodrome doing to him?
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