This film is part of Rentals
Videodrome
James Woods and Debbie Harry star in David Cronenberg’s mind-melting sci-fi about media domination.
Fantasy 1983 87 mins
Director: David Cronenberg
Overview
David Cronenberg’s mind-bending mixture of Marshall McLuhan-inspired media theory and grotesque bodily transformation remains one of the 1980s’ ultimate outré extremes. When TV producer Max Renn (James Woods) discovers the pirate broadcast of a seemingly real torture show, he becomes drawn into a dangerous and increasingly hallucinatory conspiracy to indoctrinate the North American viewing public.
Renn’s sense of reality becomes further fractured once two rival, shadowy organisations begin reprogramming him by inserting organic ‘videotapes’ into the gaping orifice he’s developed in his abdomen. With its images of sadomasochism and graphic fusion of man and machine, Videodrome may be one of David Cronenberg’s most visually extreme experiences, but it’s also his most influential and intelligent. And while the videotape-based technology featured in the film may have dated, its ideas around media proliferation and viral dissemination remain as relevant as ever.
Contains strong sex and violenceAccessibility
Related
Fantasy
The Wandering Jew
Fantasy 1934 102 mins Director: Maurice Elvey
After spitting on Christ on the way to crucifixion, a Jewish man is cursed with immortality
The Bespoke Overcoat
Fantasy 1955 38 mins Director: Jack Clayton
A clerk in a cold warehouse wants one of the warm sheepskin coats stacked around him.
The Untamed
Horror 2016 98 mins Director: Amat Escalante
Amat Escalante follows Heli with a boundary-pushing, mind-blowing mix of sex, sci-fi and social drama.
Spaceship
Comedy 2016 90 mins Director: Alex Taylor
British teen cinema gets an injection of hallucinogenic imagination, plus a few unicorns and aliens, in Alex Taylor’s unclassifiable debut feature.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
Fantasy 1989 94 mins Director: Bruce Robinson
Richard E. Grant and director Bruce Robinson’s companion piece to Withnail and I is a dark satire about an ad-man who grows a second head.
The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz
Comedy 1999 88 mins Director: Ben Hopkins
An unusual comedy about a stranger who arrives on the eve of the millennium to erase London, mankind and existence.
Halloween
The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears
Horror 2013 102 mins Director: Bruno Forzani
Another giallo-inspired exercise in operatic violence from Belgian duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, directors of the acclaimed Amer.
Antiviral
Horror 2012 108 mins Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Body horror and celebrity satire are served ice cold in this extreme offering from Brandon Cronenberg (son of David).
Spring
Horror 2015 110 mins Director: Aaron Moorhead
An American tourist in Italy falls for a stunning local woman with a dangerous secret, in this startling horror-romance.
Evolution
Drama 2015 82 mins Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
The long-awaited second feature from Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence) is a gorgeously surreal coming-of-age tale laced with bizarre body-horror.
Creep
Horror 2004 82 mins Director: Christopher Smith
The tube will never look the same again after this frenzied chiller about a woman trapped in the London Underground for the night, pursued by twisted killer.
The Mummy
Horror 1959 88 mins Director: Terence Fisher
Classic Hammer horror of a reanimated ancient Egyptian mummy, who returns from his tomb to seek vengeance on its desecrators.
Directed by David Cronenberg
Spider
Drama 2002 94 mins Director: David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg directs Ralph Fiennes in this chilling psychological drama about a mentally-disturbed man facing his horrifying childhood memories.
Rabid
Horror 1976 91 mins Director: David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg’s classic bloodbath introduces us to a young woman (Marilyn Chambers) who hungers for human flesh after some plastic surgery has gone wrong.
Maps to the Stars
Drama 2014 112 mins Director: David Cronenberg
Julianne Moore and John Cusack star in David Cronenberg’s caustic take on modern Hollywood, depicted as a nightmare world of ego and obsession.
New
Beast
Drama 2017 106 mins Director: Michael Pearce
The hunt for a Jersey serial killer sparks a dangerous awakening in a young woman in this astonishing psycho-sexual thriller, which sets all the senses aflame.
Mad to Be Normal
Drama 2016 105 mins Director: Robert Mullan
David Tennant is inspired as the renegade Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, whose unorthodox therapeutic ideas chime with the radical spirit of 1960s counterculture.
Sicilian Ghost Story
Drama 2017 119 mins Director: Fabio Grassadonia
A gripping real-life story of a Mafia kidnapping in Italy is enthrallingly re-imagined as supernatural fantasy by the directors of the acclaimed Salvo.
Black
Drama 2015 90 mins Director: Bilall Fallah
Star-crossed lovers from rival street gangs conduct an illicit affair in this pulsating urban romance.
Discreet
Crime 2017 80 mins Director: Travis Mathews
From the director of Interior. Leather Bar. comes this eerie and powerful psychological thriller that offers a disturbing insight into the dark heart of Trump’s America.
Girls on Film 3: Goddesses
Anthology 2018 111 mins Director: Karishma Dev Dube
Eight more award-winning short films from around the world, exploring female desire, empowerment and the realities of being a woman, a lesbian and a feminist in the modern world.