Debbie Harry was in this 1983 Sci fi thriller
Starring
Videodrome 1983
An adult TV programmer discovers a bizarre broadcast that seduces and controls its viewers in David Cronenberg’s mind bending sci-fi classic.
The movie opens with a video wake up call for Max, our main character who seems to sleep through it.
But we are greeted in the next scene by his bachelor pad apartment kitchen. He thumbs through some photos of topless photos titled Samurai Dreams while he eats leftover pizza out of the box on the counter and coffee bubbles from the well used coffee pot on the stove.
He goes to an office to meet a man, about the show called Samurai Dreams, a Japanese art film of sensual nature. Back in his office, Max and his partners are reviewing the tape and they remark that it’s not tacky or sexy enough for them. One wonders what kind of material they need for their channel.
Max and his editor are in the ‘lab’ and they are apparently hacking video feed from a satellite, they can’t tell where it’s from. They get a minute; which looks like a crime in progress, then they lose picture.
Then, we see that Max is on an interview for a tv talk show. The host discusses the nature of his channel with him. He covers soft core porn to hard core violence. Explaining himself as providing an outlet for violent tendencies with his channel. Nicki, another guest on the show engages in the conversation with him regarding his views. He turns to start asking her out right on the stage while the host talks to Mr. Oblivion, interviewing from video feed, rather than in person.
Back to the editing room, the feed of Videodrome is nearly recovered enough to see that there are hours of violence and beating and torture on this feed. Previously unsure of the source, suspecting Malaysia, the editor says the feed is actually coming from Pittsburgh.
Max and Nicki go out on a date. She is into his video collection and as it turns out. She has him pierce her ears with a pin and a cork as foreplay. Yes. Really.
The next day, Max is at his office and talks to a movie creator who proposes some artistic production of Greek mythology types lounging about, cooing and giggling. Max lets her down as gently as possible since his channel is more hard core than her giggling Greek fantasy.
She proposes the idea of him doing his own show and asked Max, “What kind of show would you do?”
“Would you make Videodrome?” She inquires.
Nicki, Max’s new girlfriend, is packing up. She’s going to Pittsburgh and wants to try out for Videodrome. She is all about the violent production and wants to go be in it. Max protests.
She puts a cigarette out on her breast as if to show him she is ready for the violent scene of Videodrome.
The soft movie creator and Max go lunch, talking about Videodrome. She says to leave it alone.
Videodrome is not for public consumption, she advises.
She thinks its dangerous
“What you see on the show is real, Its snuff tv.”
He doesn’t believe it. He pushes her for contact information. Finally, she gives him one name.
Professor Brian Oblivion. The only name she gives Max, the only lead to go on for finding answers about Videodrome.
We now see Max arriving at Cathode Ray Ministry, it looks like an underfunded homeless shelter.
Looks like cubicles with TVs in them, but they’re make shift. Cobbled together with street trash like carboard and wooden signs. Everyone is staring into tvs in their cubicles, surrounded by cardboard, stacks of spare tv’s and other street refuse.
Max talks to the Bianca Oblivion, who seems to run this place. She is the daughter of Professor Brian Oblivion. They go upstairs and everything is ornate and decorative. It’s opulent in this room. A complete contrast to the room below. The office windows; behind expensive drapes, look over the cubicles made of trash and food hand outs while the less fortunate gather and take their places in cubicles, one to each, sitting close to the tv, almost touching it sometimes.
Later that night he is unwrapping a handgun, but a knock at the door makes him close it up quickly and hustle out of the room to whomever came in.
Max sees his assistant, from the wake up call in the beginning of the story. She came in to his house and had a confusing encounter before she says she brought another video for him and quickly leaves.
Max goes to get the tape and it sort of breathes to life, morphing a bit in his hands.
He jumps. You can tell by now he is starting to have problems with reality.
“The battle for north America is going to take place on Videodrome,” the man at a desk explains
Tv is reality. Your reality is half video hallucination.” the man says. He is directly talking to Max through the video.
The man says that he thinks the visions caused tumor. They removed the tumor and it became Videodrome.
Then the man is strangled on the screen by a looming hooded figure just off screen, the man never stops talking and doesn’t fight the strangulation.
The hooded figure takes its hood off and its Nicki, Max’s girlfriend.
The tv starts pulsating and breathing at him all insisting he come to he till finally, he leans into the TV face first. The screen fades out on him looking a bit stuck with his face in a morphing TV screen drawn around his face.
Oblivion says he was hallucinating since seeing Videodrome. The signal creates a brain tumor, creating the visions.
Max goes to speak to Professor Brian Oblivion, but speaks to Bianca Oblivion again. She explains that her father died 11 months earlier. He made thousands of tapes of himself, and that is how he had done the interview with Max and Nicki.
Bianca explains that at the end, the father was more in touch with the Tv than reality. She gives him more tapes to watch. He leaves.
Back at the “lab” the studio, he asks his editor if he has been hallucinating
The editor said he hasn’t been hallucinating.
Back home, Max watching the video again with the Brian Oblivion. Professor Oblivion thinks that the tumor is a new organ, a new outgrowth of the human brain producing hallucination. He says that there is nothing real outside our perception of reality.
Max thinks he sees a gaping hole in his stomach.
He puts the handgun in his stomach, like a pocket. When he removes his hand, the wound is healed
The gun is no where. As he tears everything up looking for it. There’s a phone call.
A car is waiting for him downstairs. It’s a grey limo As the car travels through the streets, a video plays on the car television. The intro for Spectacular optical rolls across the screen. The owner of Spectacular Optical, Barry Convex explains that they produce glasses for needy and high tech military lenses in their wide range of production.
He also states that he is the owner of Videodrome.
The car goes to a spectacular optical store front
He wants max to put on a big helmet and to record one of his hallucinations
He says that max seems to be functioning well. Having been exposed to Videodrome, no one has made it this far.
So he wants to run tests.
He is hooked up to the oldest VR headset ever
And he is hallucinating Nicki again. She gets him to whip her, it turns into a tv with her on it. Then, it doesn’t look like Nicki anymore. Max is just whipping the shit out of this Tv till the scene fades out.
As the camera angle draws out, before it fades… it doesnt even look like Nikki anymore. She looks older, different.
He suddenly wakes in his bed, The tv is fuzzy.
There’s a dead elderly lady tied up in bondage in his bed, under the covers.
Max goes to the phone and calls Harlon, The editor. Max tells Harlon that he wants him to go take photos of what’s in his bed. The editor goes in and looks, he comes out and says there is nothing there.
Max says he needs to see the most recent Videodrome and insists he needs to see him in the lab (production studio) in an hour even though it’s like 5 am and Harlon, the editor protests.
Harlon the editor meets him at the lab. He tells Max that there was no tape of Videodrome last night. Or ever.
The owner of Spectacular Optical; who is also the owner of Videodrome Productions, comes in and explains that Video drome was never sent on open broadcast.
Harlon the editor was playing Max tapes, and Harlon did not watch it.
They exposed him to the Videodrome signal. It works on anyone that would watch the torture and murder.
Harlon the Editor explains that they have plans to use Videodrome to feed off of the dredges of society that would watch such things.
“Ready for something new?” Spectacular Optical/ Videodrome owner, Barry Convex asks. He brings out a VCR tape.
The video pulsates and the wind starts blowing. Max’s stomach opens up again.
The man puts the VCR tape in maxes stomach.
Max crawls along the floor and hears a voice. Kill your partners at channel 83.
Max digs the gun out of his stomach and suddenly there are metal parts growing through his fingers and down his wrist. The latex hand and metallic looking cords now part of his hand, locked in around the gun
Max arrives at the office and we see no weird attachment on his hand, just the gun. But no ine else sees it. He walks into a big board room and shoots the both partners without delay. During the bustle of everyone running to the gunshots, he hunches over and looks to be shot, his assistant hustles him out of the room, he slips on out of the room as she realizes he might not be hurt
Max runs off again
Back to the Cathode Ray Mission. The voices tell him to kill Bianca Oblivion. He breaks a window to get into the church where Bianca Oblivion’s office is.
In walks Bianca Oblivion.
Max tries to insist that he just runs his tv station, but she isn’t fooled. She says that they control him like a video. And he is going to try to destroy her.
Max reached in his guts for the gun again and it looks grosser. His hand and gun covered in gross ooze.
The tv screen reaches out reflecting his hand gun shape.
The shape from the TV shot him. Now, Max seems to be under some kind of a trance.
He repeats after Bianca Oblivion:
“The video word made flesh, Death to Videodrome, Long live the new flesh”
Off to kill the owner of Videodrome.
Max goes to the Spectacular Optical store. It’s a regular glasses store up front. In the back room, Harlon the editor is taping up boxes. The owner, Barry Convex is at the spring line release show.
Editor holds up a tape that looks like its made of flesh and he puts the tape in maxes stomach. His arm is suddenly locked into place in maxes stomach and the wind blows out of nowhere again. Max’s stomach bites the flesh off of the editors hand and now he has a primitive club like robot hand, sticking out from the gore that was his arm. He stumbles back and hits a wall where he explodes. Cinderblocks blow apart the wall has a hole in it the size of a truck.
Max goes to the Spring Release event. There’s dancers on stage. Videodrome is owned by the Spectacular optical owner, who is in the middle of his announcement to the audience when Max walks on stage pointing his gun hand at the owner.
Max’s hand is morphed with the gun again more fleshy and gooey. Kind of purple now. It’s getting pretty gross now. That’s probably infected.
He shoots Spectacular Optical owner on the stage and dude melts away, bubbles and crumbles apart in 80s horror true fashion.
Max runs off and hides out in a cargo ship. A tv appears in front of him. His dream girl, Nicki is on it and telling him to complete the transformation by killing his old flesh.
Gun merged alien gross hand, he shoots himself in the head.
Long live the new flesh.
Fade to black
That is Debbie Harry, from Blondie that played Nicki, the dream girl.
Bad Old Horror Love 