10 Canadian Horrors Far More Original Than Those From America

3. Videodrome

Cronenberg's films after Shivers, including Rabid, The Brood and Scanners, were all arresting and grotesque in equal measure, but largely continued the misanthropic, satirical body horror vein of his breakthrough. All those elements are also present in Videodrome, but there is plenty more to the movie Roger Ebert once described as: "one of the least entertaining films of all time". In tackling people's relationship with technology and the way we view and take part in TV, Videodrome was forward thinking in the early 1980s and continues to seem relevant and even prescient thirty years later. Videodrome's world in which TV stations compete to bring the most sensationalist shocking programming (as characterised by James Woods' Max Renn) is becoming more and more a part of the every day as we are bombarded with more channels and media platforms than ever before, as is the sort of chat show debate further sensationalising the already controversial programme content that we see Renn engaging in with the disembodied image of Professor O'Blivion (Jack Creley) who foresees a future where everybody only exists in television. The literally tumour inducing Videodrome itself, the show within the film, prefigures the 21st century popularity of narrative free torture porn with its ever continuing loop of footage of anonymous victims being brutalised and murdered and in its combined desire to tantalise and chastise its audience with what they choose to enjoy. Cronenberg's trademark body horror is given a techno-surrealist twist that makes Videodrome one of the more visually bizarre and inventive horrors of its age. Thanks to special effects genius Rick Baker much of this visual boldness is impressively successful, in particular the iconic scene in which Renn's chest opens up as a slot to receive video cassettes.