Death to Videodrome, Long live the new flesh!

For my third film by David Cronenberg I watched his 1981 cult classic Videodrome. This movie, starring James Wood, tells the story of a sleazy TV station executive who is always looking for something new and edgy for his station. He stumbles upon a video feed of basically an orange room where he witnesses purely acts of rape, torture, and murder and nothing more. He is strangely compelled to watch the tape, but suddenly realizes that he starts hallucinating from it. These hallucinations start out small but eventually over take him, making him think that he has a whole in his stomach and other such abnormalities. We realize that the feed, Videodrome, is actually just a tape that gives people brain tumors that make them hallucinate and in a way mind controlled. This was his co-worker and the creator of Videodromes plans all along, and they try to make him an assassin and release Videodrome onto an unsuspecting public.

Once again, Cronenberg returns in fabulous, gory form, even more unrestrained in his 80's form as this was long before he acquired mainstream fame. Such examples as mutilation during sex and the eruption of tumors from a shot mans head and body exemplify his love of body horror and attempts to "gross" audiences out at every corner.

James Wood does a surprisingly good job as the protaganist of the movie, documenting a descent into madness not unlike , yet in a more humorous way, Ellen Bursten in Requiem for a Dream and keeps his character throughout the whole film. It is particularly amusing, in a sadistic way, to watch him shoot up his co-workers with a "Meat Gun" that is grafted to his arm through his hallucination.

In typical Cronenberg fashion, the camera angles change frequently but are for the most part static so they do not move around the actors much. Most of the movie, as opposed to his other films, are seen through the action and less through the dialogue which is atypical for him and is something that he might have grown more into as his career developed.

Videodrome was, bar none, my favorite Cronenberg movie and a great way to end the study on this director.

Akira Kurosawa

I'll start this by saying I rather enjoyed the Kurosawa unit. I had been meaning to watch some of Kurosawa's movies other than Seven Samurai, which I had seen in 10th grade and enjoyed, for awhile now. I highly enjoyed all of the movies that I was exposed to in this unit and I feel that they represent a wide range of the director, from his beginnings to his peak of fame and then to his later years.

A thing I noticed between all of his films was a use of an abnormal hero character in all of them and, in Ran's case, no protagonist. In Stray Dog, the main protagonist is a rookie cop who just came back from the war who's pistol is stolen and, in trying to find the person that stole it, realizes that he and who he pursues are very similar people, only having gone down different paths after the war. This sense of connection in ones adversary is something that we do not see very often in movies, bar maybe STAR WARS, and it really helps create another layer to the story.

In Yojimbo on the other hand the protagonist has seemingly no ties to the people around him, but is but an exterior force that comes in, mops up the towns mess, and leaves. He has no real motive or anything at stake to help the villagers, but does anyway and about as quickly as he enters, leaves. This is very uncommon to see in most films nowadays (Besides its 2 remakes) and really adds another interesting element to the story.

Finally in Ran Kurosawa does not make a main hero character as he was past that stage in his movie making Career. Because of this, there is no one really to empathize with in the movie because the audience is left feeling that everyone got what they deserved. The movie is based off of King Lear so this was not a new concept to story telling but after having made so many movies surrounding a hero or heroes this was an interesting move for Kurosawa and overall was my favorite film of the unit

Alfred Hitchcock

Overall, I was very impressed and pleased by my foray into Hitchcock that I was exposed to in this class. Having obviously, as most people have, heard of most of his work, I had only really seen "The Birds" by him, it being frequently on AMC and as something to curb my boredom during the summer months. The three movies that we watched, having heard of 2/3 of the before I took the class (The 39 steps was new to me) lived up to my expectations of what I had come to expect from him as a director.


One theme that is apparent to many that I thought made his films unique and enjoyable was the wrong man that stars in them. What I and others mean by this is the predicament that the main character, in these movies male, is put into after already having suffered a difficult ordeal (well, in 2 of the 3), being it either a broken leg or acquiring a case of vertigo. These men are normal, everyday guys who just happened to be in the wrong (or right) place at the right time. These men also seem to have in a sense an obsessive attitude that drives them, be it in Rear Window with his wanting to solve a mystery and becoming a stagnant peeping tom, or in Vertigo where his want to acquire ones love drives him to obsession.


I was also impressed by the camera work that Hitchcock uses in his films. Never one to have a fixed camera for a very long time, he fancied doing intricate tracking shots and long takes (as exemplified in one of his earlier films Rope) as well as doing creative things such as creating the "Vertigo" effect looking down the stairwell by tracking back and zooming in on a sideways stairwell, paying thousands of dollars just for a few seconds of footage.


Overall I think that Hitchcock was a worthwhile director to study as his pioneering craftsmanship and attention to detail really set him above alot of other directors that have existed.

A History of Violence

The 2nd video I have had the privilege to watch from David Cronenberg was his 2004 film. A History of Violence. A History of Violence follows a small town man named Tom Stall ( Viggo Mortenson). After a freak violent attack on his cafe that he locally owns and operates, Tom becomes the center of the towns attention as his actions are said to not have been capable of doing by any ordinary man, and the sudden appearance and trailing of strange men who seem to be part of the mafia don't help his case. He continually denies there claims that he is another man, as he is from the look of things the most normal a man can be. The mafia men start to get more and more brutal, eventually taking his son hostage which prompts him to reveal who he was in the past in order to save him. He kills the mafia men, but his family learns his secret. His family believes they cannot trust him and that they have been living a lie for a number of years. He in a way redeems this by going full circle and killing his former mob boss, gaining back a little trust in his family in that he wasn't the hitman that he used to be in the end of the film.

Typical of Cronenberg, his body horror is very evident in this film as even with it being not as extreme of a subject matter as some of his previous films he manages to but enough blood and gore in it for the whole family. An example of this is when Tom has the gangsters in his yard about 2/3 of the way through the film. He basically out of the blue decides to attack them and gives one of them a rather nasty "Tiger Palm" to the face resulting in a twitchy, gory mess that the camera focuses on for a few seconds.

Cronenberg also uses the character and dialogue do the story telling, not trying anything technical as far as camera angles or editing goes in the film. He does a great job in the characters of showing just how much Tom Stall is the epitome of "the average guy". You empathize with him throughout the whole movie because he, other than a brief part at the end, never shows his bloodlust and willingness to kill casually even during the scenes when he is defending himself.

Overall I thought that A History of Violence, said to be Cronenberg's foray into mainstream cinema, was an above average thriller/quasi-action movie. It kept me guessing with its twists, and the acting overall was very good, as Viggo always tends to put on a good show. It kept me interested in finding out more of Cronenberg's work and im highly anticipating the next movie we watch of his.