Videodrome

David Cronenberg

James Woods, Deborah Harry

Criterion edition

R1 DVD

The film stars James Woods appears in one of his best roles as Max Renn, the owner of a sleaze cable TV station who is always on the lookout for new shows. He feels that Chanel 83’s programming is getting a bit soft and needs something a bit more confronting and edgy to hold its audience. When his pirate TV researcher uncovers what seems to be a clandestine broadcast of a sex, violence and death program known as Videodrome he’s hooked. He begins to discover that this program causes hallucinations and makes changes to the way in which the body and mind interact.

This is still quite a startling film, in the 1980’s it was very different from the range of horror and science fiction films on the market. It had cutting edge special effects which are still impressive, lots of sex and violence (which caused it to be issued cut in most regions) and a great soundtrack.

The Criterion edition is absolutely impeccable, it had been directly approved by David Cronenberg and offers the best re-issue of this classic film yet. It is presented in a double DVD presentation case, designed to look like the video tape from the film! It has a 40 page glossy booklet of essays Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas and Gary Indiana to complete the package.

The film itself is uncut and the picture is as close to flawless as you can imagine, it is perfect. The new high-definition digital transfer was created on a Spirit Datacine from the 35mm interpositive. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, and scratches were removed using the MTI Digital Restoration System. The mono audio track was mastered at 24-bit from the 35mm magnetic tracks and audio restoration tools were used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle. The Dolby Digital 1.0 signal will be directed to the center channel on 5.1-channel sound systems, but a stereo track can be also used for a wider mono sound.

On the first disc, we get two audio commentaries (one by Cronenberg and director of photography Mark Iwrin, the other by actors James Woods and Deborah Harry), plus Cronenberg's recent short film Camera, which stars Leslie Carlson (Barry Convex in Videodrome) which again has some interesting things to say about film and reality.

The second disc includes a documentary about the special effects in Videodrome and an audio interview with the film's effects creators. There is also an insightful roundtable discussion from 1982 with Cronenberg, John Carpenter and John Landis plus the complete unedited video footage from various scenes in the film (with multiple commentaries). Theres also trailers and other marketing materials, and a library of still photos. A fascinating extra is longer and unedited footage from the Samurai Dreams video used in the film and quite extended unused footage from the “clandestine” transmission of Videodrome.

The Australian release, sad to say, has only basic extras (nothing compared to the Criterion edition) and a lot of missing footage, some of the cuts in the R4 release include:

The complete reveal of the Oriental dildo, which lasts 4 seconds longer.

When Max and Nicki first get together, Max picks up a needle from the floor and traces it along Nicki's legs and torso.

When Max pulls the needle from Nicki's left ear, four seconds showing the needle sliding out of the lobe and being held clear are cut.

Max pushing the needle into Nicki's right ear amounts to about 2 seconds of delete video.

The view of Max and Nicki making love on the floor of the torture chamber is longer by about 5 seconds.

The shot of Max's second executive murder runs for 23 frames in the PAL version and 48 frames in the NTSC version, amounting to 1 second of missing film.

The shot of Barry Convex's face splitting open is more lingering, as are some of the other points of view.

An additional close up of Barry's open chest, with the jagged ends of ribs clearly visible, amounts to 3 seconds.

These cuts are documented at The Cutting List - http://www.cosmos.net.au/~hologram/chopping/list_home.html